Module 1 – Case
ACTION RESEARCH AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Case Assignment
For this assignment, first carefully review the required
background materials. Make sure you are highly familiar with the main steps
involved in action research and organizational development discussed in the
readings. When you are finished reviewing the background materials, take a
close look at the four scenarios below.
For each scenario below, think about the reasons why things
did not work out well for the company in question. More specifically, think
about which standard action research or organizational development step was not
taken.
Your task for this assignment is not to explain what steps
the organization should take—you would need to go into the company and do some
lengthy action research in order to do this! Instead just review the standard
action research and organizational development steps covered in the background
materials and try to assess which key step was missing in the scenarios below.
Then write a 4- to 5-page paper addressing the following for
each scenario:
What action research or organizational step was missing and
Why missing this step might have led to failure.
Make sure to discuss at least one of the required readings
in your discussion of each scenario, and to cite all three of the required
readings in your paper.
Sales have gone down at the XYZ Widget Corporation and
nobody in the organization, including the CEO, seems to know why. They decide
to hire an organizational development consultant to do some action research.
The consultant and the CEO spend a lot of time discussing how to proceed. It is
agreed that the consultant will look at many different types of data, including
sales data and interviews with most employees. After interviewing a few
employees, the consultant decides that the problem faced by this company is
almost the same as one of his previous clients who underpaid its sales staff.
The consultant writes up a report recommending a large pay increase for the
sales staff, which is immediately implemented. However, six months later sales
are still down.
HN Motors is a large manufacturer of both cars and
motorcycles. Given the new demand for high mileage vehicles, the company has
decided to develop a car/motorcycle hybrid that has three wheels and looks like
a tiny race car. However, neither the car department nor the motorcycle
department wants to take the lead and the project keeps getting stalled.
HN Motors decides to hire a consultant to mediate the
differences between the car and motorcycle departments. During interviews with
both departments, the consultant finds that the car department doesn’t want to
work on the hybrid vehicle because of safety concerns.
The consultant recommends that they “split the difference”
between the two departments and that a cross-functional team be created with an
equal number of employees from both departments working on the project.
HN Motors’ management likes this recommendation and pay the
consultant, but say that they can take it from here and don’t need the
consultant’s services anymore. A few months later the project is still stalled
and they don’t know why. They call up the consultant to try to get him to come
back, but by now he is busy working with other clients.
Dr. Joseph Hotshot is a leading management consultant who
charges huge fees for his Extra Special Action Research System®. His patented
system involves conducting a survey, using a standard set of questions, of
every employee of any company that hires him. Then he conducts a special seminar
to motivate the employees, modifying his motivational speeches for each client
slightly based on the answers to the survey.
One day the CEO of Ace Carpet Cleaning runs across Dr.
Hotshot’s website and sees that he has a special 50% discount on his consulting
services this month. Not wanting to miss out on this bargain, the CEO decides
to hire him. All of the employees become very motivated by Dr. Hotshot’s speech
and work very hard for a few weeks. But after a few months nothing has really
changed and the CEO starts to wonder if the large consulting fee was worth it
even with the 50% discount.
The Kooltrendy Internet software company has recently
purchased Hardwrk, a competing Internet software company. Kooltrendy wants the
merger to go through as smoothly as possible with minimal conflicts between
employees of the two companies, so they have hired an organizational
development consultant to look at ways to help ease this transition for all
employees.
Kooltrendy interviews several consultants, but settles on
one consultant who has a lot of experience with these types of mergers. The
consultant conducts extensive one-on-one interviews with employees as well as a
large-scale survey that assesses employee values and attitudes. After carefully
reviewing the survey and interview data, the consultant concludes that
Kooltrendy has a very fun and laid-back corporate culture, whereas Hardwrk has
a more competitive and serious corporate culture.
Satisfied that it knows how to fix the problem, Kooltrendy
immediately decides to implement “Fun Fridays” for Hardwrk employees that
involve water gun fights, costume contests, or other activities every Friday in
order to bring Hardwrk’s culture more in line with the laid-back culture of
Kooltrendy. However, they are puzzled to see that every Friday more and more
Hardwrk employees quit and they are unsure why the “Fun Friday” solution did
not work.
Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly.
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background
materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 1 – SLP
ACTION RESEARCH AND ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
For the Session Long Project in this class, you will be
applying the principles of organizational development to an organization you
currently work for or have worked for in the past. For this first SLP, think
carefully about the background readings and how they might apply to a specific
organizational situation or problem that you have experienced firsthand. Then
write a 2- to 3-page paper answering the following questions:
What do you think the biggest problem your current
organization or one of the previous organizations you worked for faces? Why do
you think management has had difficulty with this problem?
Do you think this problem could be mitigated by hiring an
organizational development consultant based on what you’ve read in the
background materials? Why or why not? Make sure to cite some of the readings in
your answer.
Of the action research and organizational development steps
listed in the required readings, which ones do you think would be the more
challenging steps that an organizational development consultant would face
coming into your organization? Explain your reasoning and cite at least one of
the required background readings.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly.
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background
materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 2 – Case
LARGE GROUP INTERVENTIONS
Case Assignment
First and foremost, remember to go very carefully through
all of the required materials before starting this assignment. There are two
short videos and two short articles, plus two in-depth book chapters to go
through. There are also some optional readings in the background materials that
you can use for your paper. It is important to make sure you understand the ins
and outs of Open Space Technology and Future Search before starting on this
assignment, so make sure to go through the readings and videos carefully before
you start on this paper.
For this assignment, you will be going through four
scenarios. For each scenario, cite at least two of the readings from the
background readings to support your answer. You need to cite at least four of
the readings total for your paper—these can include both required and optional
readings listed in the background materials. Your paper should be 4–5 pages in
length:
The XYZ Corporation has been growing rapidly for the past 10
years but recently has hit a plateau and is not growing much anymore. The CEO
wants to make some large-scale changes, and senior managers of the major
departments all agree that major changes should be made. However, there are
large differences of opinion among the senior managers of the different
departments about what changes should be made . The CEO would like to get the
top senior managers to agree on some specific changes, and there are about 50
total senior managers that she would like to involve in the process. Should the
CEO use Open Space Technology, Future Search, or neither? Explain your
reasoning and justify your answer using at least two of the readings from the
background materials.
The new CEO of a large and successful Internet company has
just been hired. This CEO is highly experienced, but being new to this company
he really wants to get everyone’s opinion about a large range of issues. The
CEO is humble and doesn’t want to make any key decisions until he’s heard a
wide range of opinions and knows what employees think. The CEO would like to
have input from all 500 employees. Should the CEO use Open Space Technology,
Future Search, or neither? Explain your reasoning and justify your answer using
at least two of the readings from the background materials.
An accounting company has three main divisions: tax,
auditing, and accounting information systems. Employees in all divisions are
hard-working but quiet. They always give thoughtful answers whenever they are
asked a question, and usually provide a lot of data to support their answers.
However, they rarely give an opinion and usually stay quiet during meetings
unless they are directly asked a question. The CEO would like employee input on
what major strategic initiatives to take and would like input from a wide range
of employees and managers, and is planning a large group intervention. There
are about 40 senior managers and 300 total employees. Should the CEO use Open
Space Technology, Future Search, or neither? Explain your reasoning and justify
your answer using at least two of the readings from the background materials.
A CEO initiates an Open Space Technology conference. At the
start of the conference, the CEO provides a list of topics he wants covered and
also gives his opinion on what kind of outcomes he wants from the conference.
He also makes attendance at the conference mandatory. When the conference
starts, participants all volunteer to give sessions on the topics proposed by the
CEO. A few participants propose to give sessions on other topics not mentioned
by the CEO, but very few employees come to these sessions and instead go to the
sessions covering topics suggested by the CEO. At the end of the conference,
the CEO is presented with a carefully worded summary of the conference and
given conclusions that the CEO wanted to hear. However, after the conference
ends and employees go back to work they are very slow at implementing the
recommendations from the conference. What do you think went wrong? Which major
principles or concepts of Open Space Technology do you think the CEO violated?
Explain your reasoning, and cite Leith (1996) and at least one other source on
Open Space Technology to support your answer.
Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly.
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background
materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 2 – SLP
LARGE GROUP INTERVENTIONS
For this assignment, continue to write about the current
organization you work for or one that you worked for in the past. Before
writing this paper, make sure to thoroughly review the background readings.
Think carefully about how Open Space Technology and Future Search could be used
at your organization. Then write a 3-page paper addressing the following
questions. Make sure to cite at least three of the required readings in your
paper:
What issue facing your organization would be most
appropriately addressed using Future Search? Explain the issue and why Future
Search could effectively address this issue.
If you organized a Future Search Conference to address the
issue identified in Question 1 above, who would you include in the initial
planning before the conference? Who you invite to the conference? How many
people would you invite, and why? Any other specifics planning details that you
would address to ensure the success of the conference?
What issue facing your organization would be most appropriately
addressed using Open Space Technology? This should be a different issue than
the one you discussion in Question 1. Explain the issue and why Open Space
Technology could effectively address this issue.
If you organized an Open Space Technology Event to address
the issue identified in Question 3 above, who would you include in the initial
planning before the conference? Who you invite to the conference? How many
total people would you invite, and why? Any other specifics planning details
that you would address to ensure the success of the event?
SLP Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly.
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 3 – Case
JOB REDESIGN
Case Assignment
In the background materials you had a chance to view some
videos and read about the traditional “top down” approach of job redesign as
well as the newer “bottom up” approach of job crafting. Before starting on this
assignment, make sure you have thoroughly reviewed the videos and readings and
understand the key job redesign and job crafting strategies. Once you have
finished reviewing the background materials, apply what you’ve learned to the
specific scenarios and questions below. Make sure to cite at least one of the
required readings for each answer, and try to cite at least four of the
readings or videos in your answer. Your paper should be 4–5 pages in length:
The ABC Corporation has a team of telemarketers. The job
description for the telemarketers is pretty basic: They call up potential
customers who have visited his company’s web page and requested information
about the product. Telemarketers’ performance evaluations depend mostly on
their monthly sales as well as customer satisfaction surveys, and they receive
monthly feedback reports. Their supervisor gives them some initial training,
but these telemarketers have a lot of freedom to choose how and when to call
customers. For example, they are free to customize their own sales pitch as
long as they don’t mislead potential customers. Also, they are not required to
fill out a time card or work at the office (they can work from home, if they
want). As long as they are making enough monthly sales they are free to set
their own schedules. While the telemarketing team is performing well, the
company is concerned about high turnover among telemarketers and wants to do
some job enrichment. Which of the five core job dimensions discussed in Bauer
and Erdogan (2012) or page 9 of Griffin (2007) do you think should be revised
the most during a job redesign intervention? Which ones do you think do not
need to be revised? Explain your reasoning and cite some of the required
readings in your answer.
At the Grand Valley Medical Clinic there are four
high-ranking employees. These include Dr. Roberts who specializes in pediatric
medicine, Dr. Wilson who specializes in heart surgery, Dr. Drake who
specializes in eye medicine, and Nurse Desser who does basic health check-ups
for patients and refers patients to specialists as needed. They have all been
working at the clinic for a long time and have strong performance records, but
management is worried they are becoming bored and dissatisfied with their jobs
and there is concern they might all leave unless their jobs change. However,
given the high degree of training required for each of their specializations
management is not sure how to go about making their jobs less monotonous and
more rewarding. In general, would you recommend management undergoes a
traditional job redesign approach or a job crafting approach? Which specific
job redesign strategy or job crafting strategy would you recommend? For
example, if you choose job redesign discuss whether you would recommend job
rotation, enlargement, enrichment, etc. If you choose job crafting, refer to
one of the specific strategies or interventions discussed in Wrzesniewski
(2014) or Dik and Duffy (2012).
Transwest Airlines has decided to hire you as a job crafting
consultant for two groups of their employees. One group consists of airline
pilots. The pilots of course have one main task that dominates their job
description—flying the airplanes safely. The second group consists of
Transwest’s online marketing team, who engage in many different tasks such as
designing the company’s webpage, handling calls from customers, and promoting
the airline through social media. Before arriving at the airline to do
interviews and make recommendations, you first need to do some reading on what
general approach you will use. As a first step, review Dik and Duffy (2012),
where they discuss task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting.
Which of these three types of job crafting do you think would be most appropriate
for pilots, and which one do you think would be most appropriate for the online
marketing team? Also, read up on “job-crafting swap meets” in Wrzesniewski
(2014). Do you think a swap meet would be appropriate for either pilots or
online marketers? Any other strategy from Wrzesniewski (2014) that you think
would be useful for either pilots or online marketers?
Conclude your paper with a discussion of A) what you think
the main similarities and differences are between job redesign and job crafting,
and B) what you think are the main advantages and disadvantages of job redesign
and job crafting.
Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly in 4 to 5 written
pages.Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go off on tangents
or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 3 – SLP
JOB REDESIGN
As with the Case Assignment, make sure you have thoroughly
reviewed the background readings and understand the key concepts of job
redesign and job crafting. Then think about your own job and workplace and how
these concepts apply to your own work life. Once you have finished reviewing
the background readings and have carefully thought about how these concepts
relate to your own job, write a 2- to 3-page paper answering the following
questions:
Of the three main types of job redesign (job enlargement,
job rotation, job enrichment), which one do you think would be the most
effective in your current workplace? Explain your reasoning, and cite Bauer and
Erdogan (2012) or Griffin (2007) as part of your answer.
Suppose your supervisor decides to use job enrichment to
redesign your job. Of the five core job characteristics discussed in Bauer and
Erdogan (2012) or page 9 of Griffin (2007), which one do you think should be
changed as part of your job redesign?
Which specific job crafting strategy or intervention do you
think would be most effective at your organization or for your specific job?
Refer to one of the specific strategies or interventions discussed in
Wrzesniewski (2014) or Dik and Duffy (2012).
SLP Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly in 3 to 4 written
pages.
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background
materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make sure
they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 4 – Case
APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY
Case Assignment
For this assignment, first carefully review the required
background materials. Make sure you remember the standard organizational
development approaches covered in Module 1. Then make sure you understand the
main principles of Appreciative Inquiry and how they compare to traditional
organizational development approaches (action research, problem solving). It is
also important to understand what is involved in each of the “4 Ds” –
Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny.
When you are finished reviewing the background materials, go
through each of the scenarios below and apply what you’ve read to these
scenarios. For each scenario, cite at least one of the required readings to
support your answer. You should cite at least three of the four required
readings in your paper. Your paper should be 4–5 pages in length:
A bank has recently been losing money. Many borrowers have
not been able to repay their loans. It is not clear why this has suddenly been
a problem. Management is not sure if this is due to poor motivation of their
loan officers who may not be doing careful credit checks on borrowers, or if it
is due to other factors. But regardless of the source of the problem, the bank
needs to fix this problem soon or otherwise they will go out of business. Time
is of the essence for the bank to fix this problem. Should this team use an
Appreciative Inquiry approach, or a more traditional Organizational Development
approach? Explain your reasoning with references to the required readings.
A team of television screenplay writers have been working
together for 10 years. For the first eight years their show had very high
ratings, but over the last two years the ratings have started to slip and the
network is thinking about canceling the show. The team used to get along with
each other very well and agreed most of the time. But now the team has been
fighting, blaming each other for the lower ratings, and having a lot of
difficulty reaching agreement on what kind of stories or plots the show should
have. Should this team use an Appreciative Inquiry approach, or a more
traditional Organizational Development approach? Explain your reasoning with references
to the required readings
A new start-up social networking company has recently
received a lot of money from investors. The top management team consists of
young but experienced employees who have worked at Facebook, Twitter, and
similar companies. They are all highly motivated and get along well with each
other. But in spite of their motivation, experience, and money from investors,
they all agree things are not working as well as they should. They have only
been working together for a few months but feel that something is missing in
how they work together. They believe their functioning as a team could be
improved but are not sure what exactly needs to be done. Should this team use
an Appreciative Inquiry approach or a more traditional organizational
development approach? Explain your reasoning with references to the required
readings.
An organization hires an Appreciative Inquiry consultant to
help the company get back on track and improve the performance of its product
design team. The consultant starts by asking members of the team how they would
like the team to perform and what their ideal vision of the team would be. The
consultant collects all of this input and puts together a vision of how the
team should perform and function. However, once this vision is presented to the
team they are unable to come up with a plan to implement it. They all agree it
would be great if they could achieve this vision, but they also are in
consensus that this vision presented by the consultant is highly unrealistic.
What do you think went wrong? What steps do you think the Appreciative Inquiry
consultant could have taken to make the consulting process go better? Refer to
the specific “4 Ds” of Appreciative Inquiry in your answer.
Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly.
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background
materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 4 – SLP
APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY
For this assignment, think about a team you currently work
with or have worked with in the past and how well this team has functioned.
Think about both the positives and the negatives, and how the material from the
background readings applies to what you’ve experienced. Then write a 2- to
3-page paper answering the following three questions below. Make sure to cite
at least one of the required readings for each of your answers, and to cite at
least two of the required readings in your paper:
What are some of the key positive aspects of this team?
Discuss some specific positives and include some stories of times when the team
functioned especially well. Do you think these stories could work in an
Appreciative Inquiry approach to come up with a plan to improve the performance
of the team?
How is the effectiveness or performance of this team usually
measured? Could a traditional organizational development approach help identify
problems in this team as well as find ways in which team performance could be
improved?
Overall, do you think an Appreciative Inquiry or a
traditional organizational development would be better for this team? If your
team was to hire a consultant, what type of approach would you want the
consultant to take?
SLP Assignment Expectations
Answer the assignment questions directly.
Stay focused on the precise assignment questions; don’t go
off on tangents or devote a lot of space to summarizing general background
materials.
Make sure to use reliable and credible sources as your
references. Articles published in established newspapers or business
journals/magazines are preferred. If you use articles from the Internet, make
sure they are from credible sources.
Reference your sources of information with both a
bibliography and in-text citations. See the Student Guide to Writing a
High-Quality Academic Paper, including pages 13 and 14 on in-text citations.
Another resource is the “Writing Style Guide,” which is found under My
Resources in the TLC portal.
Module 1 discussion
Action Research and Organizational Development Videos
There are a huge number of individuals and firms who are out
there selling their organizational development services. Take a look at videos
and/or webpages of OD consultants and find a company or individual that really
stands out in a good or bad way. Share the link to the video or webpage, and
explain what made this particular consultant or consulting firm stand out to
you. Also, discuss whether or not the material presented in the video or
webpage seems to be consistent with what you read about in the background
readings. For example, does this consultant seem to practice a form of action
research or do they do something entirely different?
One consultant whose videos or webpage you may want to check
out is Dr. Jeremy Lurey, as he is the author of one of your readings for this
module and the CEO of Plus Delta Consulting.
Module 2 discussion
Gurus of Large Group Interventions
Sandra Janoff and Marvin Weisbord are the original
developers of the Future Search method and are the founders of the Future
Search Network. Corporations pay a lot of money for their services, but
fortunately they have a few videos up on YouTube so you can get a taste of what
kind of material they go through when giving a seminar. Find some videos from
one or both of them and share the link to the video that you find the most
useful.
Harrison Owen is the developer of Open Space Technology. He
also has a few videos up on YouTube as well. Take a look at some of his videos
and share the link to one that you found to be the most useful.
Answer the following questions concenring the videos on
Future Search and Open Space:
Did the videos help you understand any of the concepts from
the background readings? Be specific as to what concepts were covere
