C/B/112. MBA Dissertation. What is the optimal approach to change organizational culture: Change agent or consultancy?

The purpose of this dissertation was to analyse which approach to organisational culture change is better: through the external consultancy (where specialists in this field would be employed) or through internal change agent, working or being hired in order to change the culture of the company. Lack of previous researches on this matter has made this research highly original and being both socially and academically important. First of all extensive literature review was developed covering organisational culture, its importance, types of organisational culture, way of organisational culture change as well as difficulties and barriers to change. Analysis of the previous literature enabled researcher to identify two approaches to organisational culture change (change agent and consultancy). This was found to be gap in the literature and researcher decided to investigate this problem. Research consisted of secondary data collection using phenomenological research philosophy, inductive research approach and case study research strategy. Analysis of 20 companies was made being equally split between culture change projects completed by consultancy and by change agents. The companies were: IBM; US Postal Services; General Electric; University of Technology; American Express; Bupa; British Airways; NHS; Siemens; GlaxoSmithKline; Hewlett-Packard; BP; British Petroleum; General Mills; General Motors; Xerox; Safeway; Samsung; Sears, Roebuck & Co; United Technologies; NUMMI. Findings of the research indicate that companies, which change their organisational culture through the external consultancy, are usually experiencing less negative post effects and the organisational culture change is accomplished quicker. This finding was also supported by findings by Smith (2003). Based on the research findings researcher was unable to identify which is the best method of change in terms of achievement of the target organisational culture due to small sample size and similar results for both groups of companies.