Change Manager Job Crafting: Strategies for Successfully Managing the Process of Change

The complexity and political nature of change means that change managers may often experience feelings of inauthenticity, conflict and tension in navigating the job of driving change in their organisation. When this happens, even if a change has been financially and strategically successful, unresolved personal identity tension can leave change managers with negative feelings about their role in the change. Job crafting provides the opportunity for change managers to redesign the characteristics of their role in the change to create alignment between their own needs and those of the organisation. In this paper we examine the job crafting experiences of 17 change managers throughout the process of change at their organisations. Our findings reveal three approaches to job crafting, each aimed at resolving identity tensions and creating meaning in their work. We find that change managers job craft (i) to feel authentic in their role, (ii) to resolve identity ambiguity, and (iii) to feel that they are ‘good’ at their job. This extends research on change management by highlighting the important role of identity struggle in a more dynamic process of job crafting.