Leaders Embracing Change: Managing Healthy Change Processes

The objective of the chapter is to explore how lower-level leaders, i.e., middle managers, deal with organizational change processes and to identify their behavior as in accordance with the claims of a new Work Environment Act in Norway, which defines an optimal and healthy organizational change process. The chapter builds on our own findings that healthy leader behavior in an organizational change context is characterized by the embracing of change. In this chapter, we present and discuss the context of change in Scandinavia and Norway, the impact of the change process, and the relation between change and leadership theories and perspectives. We also suggest a comprehensive model of healthy organizational change.