CHANGE INITIATIVE ASSESSMENT: PAPER ASSIGNMENT INSTRUCTIONS
The project is an organizational change report that will total no more than 15 pages (not counting title or reference pages; no abstract is required). The paper must follow current APA format guidelines and will contain 2 main parts. Part 1 must be 1250–1750 words, and Part 2 must be 1500–2000 words. A minimum of 10 peer-reviewed sources must be used within the paper.
Part 1 (a maximum of 1750 words) must be written as a case and must describe vs. analyze/recommend. Part 1 must be modeled after the cases read during the course, containing similar format and content. Part 1 must contain a case description of a large organizational change (one about which you are able to obtain significant information). Types of change might include mergers, acquisitions, downsizing, new strategic direction, globalization, public image failures (BP, Toyota, Facebook, Goldman Sachs), macro-economic change, political/legal shifts, or some other type of organizational change.
The target organization may be a private, government, or non-profit organization with which you are familiar. Remember that you will need to select an organization for which you are able to collect considerable information in order to create a comprehensive case.
Part 2 (a maximum of 2000 words) must be a thorough analysis, with suggestions for change and recommendations for management interventions in the case from Part 1. This part of your Project must be modeled after your 2 Consulting Proposal assignments, each of which includes an analysis section and a recommendations section. In the analysis, apply course concepts to the case. In your recommendations, provide strategic, practical, and insightful actions for management.
Consider the following questions in Part 2:
• Based on your learning related to this course, how would you diagnose what is really going on in the organization selected?
• How well do the organizational leaders/members understand what the issues really are?
• How ready is the organization to change in terms of awareness, motivation, flexibility, and skill?
• Given the context of the change (social, political, economic, customer need, etc.), how big a change is required to move the organization to a productive and effective mode of existence?
• Analyze the company’s particular approach to change. Why did the organization take one particular approach to change (e.g., downsize) rather than other possible ones (e.g., creating a learning organization)? How effectively was the particular change attempt carried out?
• How did resistance to change manifest itself? How effectively was the resistance addressed?
• What were the objectives of the change effort? How successful was the change effort given its objectives?
• How might the organization have used some of the materials and learnings from this course to increase the success of the change effort?
• What consulting strategy would you use in working with the organization?
• What recommendations would you make to the organization on how to be more effective in implementing and/or sustaining changes going forward?
