Change Management Practices and Organisational Outcomes: A Hybrid Systematic Literature Review and Constraint-Based Leadership Framework

Abstract

Change management continues to be a significant investment in organisations with inconsistent outcomes in terms of organisational outcomes across transformation programmes. This study aims to fill this gap by conducting a Hybrid Systematic Literature Review (HSLR) that combines PRISMA-based evidence retrieval and thematic synthesis of literature published between 2020 and 2026 in the banking and financial services industry. The review highlights three key change management activities that affect organisational outcomes: training and skill development, strategic communication, and employee participation. The study builds on the ideas of Dynamic Capabilities Theory and Transformational Leadership Theory and rethinks the difficulties of leadership through a translated lens of constraints, that is, change saturation, executive digital capability gaps, and middle-management relay failure as structural moderating conditions affecting change effectiveness. The proposed framework builds on organisational change theory as it provides a means to understand why similar projects of change result in varying outcomes across organisations. The framework was developed using banking evidence but has wider theoretical and practical relevance for organisations experiencing complex digital transformation and serves as a springboard to future empirical research.