The goal of this theoretical piece of research is to conceptualize the role of customers in the process of organizational change, which has not been explored in organizational research so far. In particular, we wish to shed light on the micro-processes and interactions between customers and firms’ employees in initiating, enabling and producing organizational change. Noting the absence of the customer in organizational literature, the paper adopts a transdisciplinary perspective as it analyzes and combines academic literature on organizational change on the one hand, and on services marketing and management on the other hand, to build a conceptual model of the influence of customers on organizational change dynamics. By adopting a transdisciplinary perspective to reintegrate customers as “partial employees”, this paper is apparently the first to provide insights on how customers-employees local interactions may affect organizational change dynamics. An integrative framework based on the concept of customer participation (CP) is elaborated to explain the influence of customers-employees interactional micro-processes on organizational change. Relying on this framework, we draw three research proposals that could be further used in organizational change models to refine the role of the customer in organizational changes dynamics. We deem that the model proposed reflects the current reality of companies that increasingly involve customers in their daily activities. Thus, it can help corporate players to have a better understanding of the driving forces in change processes. However, this paper is but a first attempt to explore the role of clients in organizational change. Accordingly, an empirical study would be necessary in order to validate our proposals. The results also indicate the need for further research on the role of other external stakeholders in the production of organizational change.
