How do workers construct and negotiate agency in a complex organizational turnaround? Drawing on a three-year qualitative study of four chronically underperforming U.S. elementary schools participating in a district-wide turnaround initiative, we analyze 232 interviews with 116 newly recruited teachers. We reveal how teachers craft “savior narratives” that cast themselves as central agents responsible for rescuing these struggling schools. These narratives focus on personal transformation, moral urgency, and triumph over “impossible” conditions, while largely minimizing the agency of other stakeholders—including principals and local communities. In so doing, teachers generate a sense of control and purpose in a chaotic, resource-constrained setting, effectively recentering the turnaround’s “heroic” focus on frontline employees rather than formal leadership. We situate these findings within theories of organizational turnaround, the “romance of leadership,” and relational agency. Whereas research typically emphasizes top leadership as the driver of turnaround, our study illuminates how employees may construct and assert their own heroic narratives. We discuss the paradoxical benefits and pitfalls of such savior narratives, highlighting how they can reinforce motivation yet risk overshadowing broader, system-level sources of change. Our findings broaden understanding of worker agency in turnarounds, challenging leader-centric accounts and revealing the potent role of self-authored heroic narratives in driving organizational transformations.
