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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:

1. What action research or organizational step was missing and
2. 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.

1. 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 conducts interviews with all employees. In most departments, the employees simply say, “I have no idea” when asked. However, most of the employees in the sales department say it is because they are not paid enough. 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.
2. 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 decides to “split the difference” between the two departments and recommends that a cross-functional team be created—with an equal number of employees from both departments—to take the lead on the project.
   
   After this recommendation is implemented, the consultant follows up with comprehensive interviews of members of the cross-functional team to find out why the hybrid vehicle project is still stalled. The consultant finds that all members of the team (from both the car and motorcycle departments) are unmotivated to work on this project because they don’t think the vehicle will sell and that it has potential safety problems.
   The consultant makes another recommendation that involves more research into safety problems and hybrid sales projections, but HN Motors instead decides to give up on the project.
3. 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 recommendations 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.
4. 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.
   
   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 consultants concludes that Kooltrendy has a very fun and laid-back corporate culture whereas Hardwrk has a more competitive and serious corporate culture.
   
   Satisfied that they know 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.

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:

1. 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?
2. 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.
3. 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.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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 Hogan (2003) and at least one other source on Open Space Technology to support your answer.

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.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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?
3. 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.
4. 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 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.

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:

1. 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 on page 73 of Sarma (2009) or page 146 of Armstrong (2014) 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.
2. 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 Evans (2013).
3. 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, go page 178 of Evans (2013), 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?
4. 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.

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:

1. 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 Sarma (2009) or Armstrong (2014) as part of your answer.
2. Suppose your supervisor decides to use job enrichment to redesign your job. Of the five core job characteristics discussed on page 73 of Sarma (2009) or page 146 of Armstrong (2014), which one do you think should be changed as part of your job redesign?
3. 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 Evans (2013).

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.

APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY

Case Assignment

For this assignment, first carefully review the required background materials. Make sure you understand the standard organizational development approaches to team building such as process integration as discussed in the Kondalkar (2009) or the approach discussed in Rothwell (2010). Then make sure you understand the main principles of Appreciative Inquiry.

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:

1. 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.
2. 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
3. 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.
4. 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.

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:

1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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.