Agents of Change

This work focuses on the transition faced by business organizations and their stakeholders as they move from protected markets to open competition, and it explores how these changes can be facilitated by outside interveners/agents.

This work focuses on the transition faced by business organizations and their stakeholders as they move from protected markets to open competition, and it explores how these changes can be facilitated by outside interveners/agents. The four authors - two from Europe and two from the United States - have worked separately as consultants with leaders of many companies and unions facing these challenges, including AT&T, Lucent, Electricite de France, and the Italian State Railways (Ferrovie dello Stato).;The reader is thus afforded an unusual insight into the process of change in a large organization - not only close-up accounts of what happened, but understanding of the relationship between the researcher/consultant and different groups within the organization - senior managers, HR people, unions, and ordinary employees.

PART I: INTRODUCTION; 1. Introduction; 2. Overview of the Cases; PART II: CASES; 3. AT&T: Cooperation Is Not Enough; 4. Ferrovie dello Stato [the Italian State Railways]: A Vision Without Agreement; 5. Lucent: Towards Strategic Engagement; 6. Electricite de France: Moving Towards the National Policy Level; PART III: THE INTERVENTION APPROACH; 7. A 'Full Engagement' Approach to Intervention; 8. Techniques and Methods; 9. The Consultant Role: Transference and Counter-Transference; PART IV: THE EMERGING STAKEHOLDER REGIME; 10. Assessing the Interventions: Achievements and Limitations; 11. The Current Impasse; 12. Towards Post-Industrial Relations