Developing roles in change processes – A case study from a public sector organisation

Even though change is recognized to be of utmost importance in today´s organisations, there exists no common understanding of change roles. The relationship between change roles and program and project roles seems not to be clear, although many changes are organized by projects. The paper presents a case study of a transformation of a public organisation. In an action research approach together with representatives of the case study company relevant roles for the change were developed and established.The paper analyzes different change roles and project and program roles in literature and identifies shortcomings, presents the change roles developed in the case study, reflects the necessity for an explicit definition and differentiation of change, program and project roles for the fulfilment of a transformation, and it analyzes the benefits and disadvantages of the application of multi-role assignments in changes.