A Conceptual Framework for Assessing Development Programmes for Change Agents AUTHORS: Albert A Angehrn and Jill E M Atherton Centre for Advanced Learning Technologies, INSEAD Boulevard de Constance 77305 Fontainebleau Cedex; France Tel: 33-1-60-72-43-61 Fax: 33-1-60-74-55-00 E-mail: albert.angehrn@insead.fr and jill.atherton@insead.fr ABSTRACT Deregulation, unstable financial markets, increasing global competition, advances in information and communication technologies - these are only a few of the conditions driving the escalating pace of change evident within business communities today. Harnessing an organisation of people who thrive on the challenges of ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty and who can successfully and rapidly implement strategic and operational changes, is seen as a differentiating core competence for competitive companies. Today, technology and information systems are usually key enabling factors when organisations embrace major change strategies, but it is becoming evident that to leverage strategic opportunities from advances in information systems and enabling technologies such as the internet, intranets and e-commerce, good change management practices must be adopted. In this paper we derive a framework for assessing training programmes for change agents, based on an extensive review of the literature on change management models and the skills and competencies necessary to manage change successfully. This framework provides a basis for identifying pedagogical objectives for teaching change management to executives, IT specialists, change agents and change recipients. As an illustration, the framework is applied to evaluate the effectiveness of a computer based multimedia simulation, a training tool known as the EIS Simulation, in satisfying these pedagogical objectives.