BUSI3003 Walden Strategic Issues in Organizational Change

Week 5

  • Objectives

    Week 5: Strategic Issues in Organizational Change, Organizational Culture, and Overcoming ResistanceIntroductionOrganizational culture is a concept that describes the attitudes, experiences, beliefs, and values of an organization. As a leader, you need to ensure that any message you convey addresses the cultural differences in your team. Ignoring organizational culture may lead to failure of organizational change.This week, you will understand the impact of organizational culture on the organizational change process. You will also learn about the strategic leadership styles required for transforming an organization, and the components required for organizational change to be effective.Learning OutcomesBy the end of this week, you will be able to:

    • Evaluate the reasons for failure in organizational change
    • Synthesize the components required for effective organizational change
    • Describe the impact of organizational culture on the organizational change process

Learning Resources

Please read and review this week’s Learning Resources before you complete the Discussion.

Reading

  • Course Text: Champions of Change: How CEOs and Their Companies Are Mastering the Skills of Radical Change
    • Chapter 9, “Redesigning the Organizational “Hardware”: The Keys to Strategic Design”

      Any organization has three basic elements: Structure, processes, and systems. Chapter 9 provides an overview of the organizational architecture. The chapter also explains the different ways of grouping people and their jobs in an organization.

      Focus on the process adopted by Xerox in the early 1990s and the logic of the strategic organizational design process in order to understand how organizational change leads to changes in the organizational structure, processes, and systems.

    • Chapter 10, “When Worlds Collide: Aligning Strategy and Culture”

      Chapter 10 focuses on the three levels of the operating environment in an organization—artifacts, espoused values, and underlying assumptions—that make change difficult.

      Focus on the examples of three organizations—Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals (Kaiser Permanente), KPMG Peat Marwick, and Lucent Technologies—whose leaders fully understood how desperately they needed to adopt new strategies.

    • Chapter 11, “Finding the Right People: A Guide to Strategic Selection”

      Chapter 11 explains the importance of hiring the right people in an organization and the strategies that can be implemented to do so. The chapter also explains the three perspectives—analytical, emotional, and political—that are taken into consideration while hiring people for top posts in an organization.

      Focus on the figure “Strategic Selection Process,” which will help you understand the selection decisions, identification of data gaps, and development actions for hiring employees.

  • Course Text: The Deep Change Field Guide: A Personal Course to Discovering the Leader Within
    • Chapter 6, “Moral Power”
    • Chapter 7, “Leadership and Positivity”

Discussion – Week 5

COLLAPSE

Changing the culture of the organization can be one of the toughest tasks for a manager. Organizational culture forms over years of interaction among the employees. However, organizational culture can change. It just requires understanding, commitment, and tools.

This week’s Discussion question has two components.

In your initial posting, please address the following:

  1. How does culture affect organizational change?
  2. In the chapter “Redesigning the Organizational “Hardware”: The Keys to Strategic Design,” Nadler identifies the elements of organizational design as structure, processes, and systems. Comment on how these components are currently being used in a change initiative you are involved in, or how they were used in a change initiative you witnessed in the past.

With these thoughts in mind:

Post a brief statement
by Day 4 that expresses your thoughts. Use the following convention to name your original post:
Wk 5 DQ + Your last name.


Assignment – Week 5

COLLAPSE

Hello Everyone:

Preparing the application:

Be sure to start on preparing your application assignment as soon as possible. You will need to post your response by Day 4 and comment to at least 2 classmates by Day 6. You will use the Nadler text to prepare the response. In responding to the question, you should consider a familiar organization that needs a cultural shift to frame your response. Post a response to your classmates by Day 6. Cite your sources!

You will need to utilize Nadler’s Twelve Interventions for Operating Environmental Change to determine which intervention applies to your suggestions for cultural change. You will identify an organization that needs a cultural change and use Nadler’s interventions to frame your response (The response should be 2-4 page in length).