This paper examines the role of leadership in managing organizational change at the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), America's largest civil rights organization focused on LGBT equality. As the HRC moves to expand its advocacy efforts globally — reaching countries where LGBT identities remain criminalized — leaders must guide employees through significant structural and operational shifts. Drawing on Brager and Holloway's four-phase change model, the paper outlines the distinct leadership responsibilities at each stage: promoting awareness in pre-initiation, building commitment during initiation, maintaining direction through implementation, and embedding new practices during institutionalization. The analysis highlights how effective leadership, communication, and flexibility are essential to overcoming resistance and ensuring lasting change.
The paper demonstrates applied theoretical analysis: it takes an established academic framework (Brager and Holloway's four-phase change model) and systematically maps it onto a specific organizational case. Rather than summarizing the theory in the abstract, the author uses it as an analytical lens, showing what each phase means in practice for the HRC's leadership. This technique is particularly effective in management and organizational behavior writing.
The paper opens with background on the HRC and the rationale for global expansion, then introduces the four-phase change framework and the overarching leadership role. The body is organized into four sections — one per phase — each explaining the leader's specific responsibilities at that stage. The paper closes with the institutionalization phase, emphasizing rewards, training, and cultural embedding. This structure mirrors the chronological logic of the change process itself.
As America's largest civil rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is primarily concerned with improving the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons "by advocating for equal rights and benefits in the workplace, ensuring families are treated equally under the law and increasing public support among all Americans" (HRC, 2014). Capitalist structures have facilitated the campaign's operations — there has been a substantial rise in lesbian and gay identity in America, and corporations have been increasingly progressive in their practices toward such individuals (Githens, 2009). However, the same is not the case in many other countries. The HRC acknowledges that millions of LGBT persons across the world still live in isolation and fear, under the rule of administrations that criminalize their identities and sexual orientations. To this end, the campaign is seeking to expand its operations onto the global front, reaching out to the public in countries that have yet to show acceptance of LGBT identities through research, partnerships, fellowships, advocacy, and education.
This is a large-scale change that is likely to call for a complete overhaul of some of the structures currently in place. There will be more informal discussions, education campaigns, training programs, and travel abroad — all of which are likely to affect the normal working lives of employees and create uncertainty regarding, among other things, job security and the reception or resistance the organization may encounter in target countries. This change is therefore likely to attract substantial resistance from employees, and ultimate success will depend heavily on the leader's effectiveness in managing that resistance (Brager & Holloway, 2002). The overriding role of the campaign's leaders will be to provide guidance, direction, and a listening ear to employees; to create an atmosphere conducive to the adoption of change; and to make available the resources — both physical and emotional — necessary for a smooth transition.
Like any other organizational change, this expansion will be executed through four action phases: pre-initiation, initiation, implementation, and institutionalization (Brager & Holloway, 2002). As demonstrated in the sections below, the leader has a distinct role to play in each phase to ensure that the change is executed effectively.
In the pre-initiation phase, the leader sets "the stage for the introduction of the change" (Brager & Holloway, 2002, p. 154). The primary role at this stage is to make members of the organization aware of the intended change and to demonstrate the losses and costs that could result from maintaining the status quo (Cameron & Green, 2004). In other words, the leader promotes the change by showing how it would benefit the organization as well as its relevant stakeholders (Brager & Holloway, 2002). In the HRC's case, the campaign's leader can illustrate why the change is necessary by drawing on the numerous real-life cases of LGBT persons who fled their home countries due to fear of persecution and sought refuge in the United States. The overriding aim of this phase is to get employees to welcome the idea of change.
In the initiation phase, the leader's main role is to secure employee commitment to the change idea. This is achieved by bringing the "change goal into conformity with the influence necessary to move its adoption" (Brager & Holloway, 2002, p. 154). The leader listens to employees' views, responds to their concerns, and establishes coalitions or forums to neutralize opposition (Brager & Holloway, 2002). Effective change management at this stage requires the leader to demonstrate genuine responsiveness, ensuring that employees feel heard and that their reservations are taken seriously before the change moves into active implementation.
Brager, G. & Holloway, S. (2002). Changing Human Service Organizations. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Cameron, E. & Green, M. (2004). Making Sense of Change Management: A Complete Guide to the Models, Tools & Techniques of Organizational Change. Sterling, VA: Kogan Page Publishers.
Githens, R. P. (2009). Capitalism, identity politics and queerness converge: LGBT employee resource groups. New Horizons in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 23(3), 18–31.
HRC. (2014). The Human Rights Campaign. Retrieved 24 July 2014 from http://www.hrc.org/
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