Shaping the Other Maintaining Expert Managerial Status in a Complex Change Management Program

Abstract

This article examines the micro politics of organizational change by presenting the results of a long-term case study of complex technological change in an automotive manufacturing firm. The article focuses on the political contest around the generation of legitimate knowledge within the change program. The article discusses managerial strategies of knowledge appropriation and employee strategies of resistance to such appropriation. The article follows the evolving managerial accounts of change and highlights the way in which managers developed pragmatic accounts of change in response to the concerns of the employees, accounts that left intact their claims to be change experts in control of the change process.