Leading From Below: Low-Power Actors as Organizational Change Agents

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the low-power actor as a facilitator of organizational change. While most research on organizational change documents the role of elites as leaders, findings presented here highlight the role of low-power actors as change agents and offer new insights into change initiatives that emerge from the bottom up. By way of illustration, this analysis focuses on 18 human service practitioners, identified as low-power actors, who led multicultural organizational development efforts in their agencies. Study findings convey a more multifaceted understanding of who leads organizational change and the organizational properties that differentially shape these transformations.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership and organizational change
• management
• organizational theory and analysis
• workforce/workplace issues in human service organizations