Strategic Change and Choice of Change Agency at Commercial Bank of Africa in Kenya

Abstract

Strategic change is a result of the need to be or to continue to be more competitive. Strategic change can be an award winning success or utter failure due to one reason or the other. Many reasons have been found for strategic change failure but there isn’t much focus on the choice of change agent. A change agent is one who initiates, manages and supports the institutionalization of change. This means that the direction which the change process takes depends heavily on the change agent chosen and their capacity to influence people to change. There are several types of change agents. The research question is thus, if the change agent has such a weighty responsibility, is it possible that there could be an optimal choice of change agency based on type of change being experienced? The change agent, when hired has a mandate to convert the critical components of change (people, processes and technology) from what they are to what they need to be based on the corporate strategy. This involves taking them through the change management cycle to give results required for effective change management to be said to have taken place (Appendix 1). The core role of the change agent in executing the change lies in the ability to influence and change behavior of people. Schools of thought of behavioral study look at how people behave and how to influence behavior. The change agent’s core work is to change human behavior through influencing cognitions and perceptions of the people aspect of a corporation with an aim of eliciting corporate change. It is therefore important to regard the capacity of the change agent to influence the people in an organization. To determine the change agent’s capacity, a case study of Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) has been done and the change agent’s performance has been appraised through the use of the balanced scorecard. The results of the findings were compared to the related theoretical framework and have led to the conclusions of this research.