A Longitudinal Case Study of a Public Sector Change Team

Organizational change is a complex and daunting task which can overwhelm and frustrate individual employees. To improve the implementation of change, organizations are turning to special teams of change agents assembled to help lead the transformation effort. Despite the importance of both organizational change and effective teamwork in organizational life today the factors that influence the effectiveness of change teams have yet to be empirically established. The potential for change teams to improve how organizations plan and implement change appears to warrant the conceptual development of a framework for organizational change teamwork.;The findings from this research suggest that change teams face challenges related to both teamwork and the task of implementing change. The use of change teams appears to have benefits for both the organization and the individuals on the team. The findings from this case study also revealed that change team effectiveness may be influenced by the change life-cycle. Finally, the results of this study show that senior level support for these change teams is essential for the success of the change team.;The case study concludes with recommendations for supporting the work of change teams and the development of a model of change team effectiveness to be used in future research on change teams.;This exploratory case study applies a longitudinal qualitative methodology to describe the effectiveness of a public sector organizational change team and examine how government administration can better support change teams to plan and implement change. The change team under study was the Strategic Transfer Initiative Team which was responsible for leading the first wave of a Government of Canada wide transformational change to shared information technology services. Semi-structured interviews and a team effectiveness survey were conducted with twelve team members at both time I and time 2. The semi-structured interviews explored the unique factors affecting teams working on change and asked team members to comment on ways to improve the effectiveness of change teams.