Week 1 Assessments
By Day 1 (Thursday), submit the
Academic Integrity Declaration.
By Day 1 (Thursday), submit your
Personal Introduction to the Collaboration Forum.
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to the Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to
your colleagues in the Collaboration Forum
Key Concept Exercise:
Facing the future
What is the key purpose of 21st-century
business management?
The material you have studied this week
is intended to provide a foundational proposition on which the remainder of the
module activities can be built, and the key concept that emerges from this
material can be usefully summarised in the following statement:
The key purpose of 21st-century
business management is to ensure that the capabilities, resources and
structures of the firm are effective in meeting and exceeding the demands
placed upon it by the contemporary operating environment.
Simultaneously, management ensures that
those capabilities, resources and structures are optimally positioned to ensure
the sustainable development and growth of the firm in a future environment that
is likely to be significantly different from that of today.
For this Key Concept Exercise, you will
reflect on the extent to which the management of your current employing firm,
or an alternative firm with which you are familiar, is effective in achieving
that purpose. In short, how well positioned is your organisation to accurately
anticipate and manage its future whilst simultaneously administering its
present?
To prepare for this Key Concept
Exercise:
Read the Required Learning Resources
for Week 1.
Reflect on the ideas presented in the
Week 1 Key Concept Overview, the explanatory video and the assigned journal
articles, in light of your own practical experiences in the workplace.
To complete this Key Concept Exercise:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
In an approximately 500-word response,
address the following issues/questions:
·
Analyse the relationship that exists
between the organisation and its operating environment.
·
Provide an assessment of the extent to
which your own employing firm, or another firm with which you are familiar, has
been able to develop and sustain the abilities mentioned below.
·
The post should include an
identification of areas in which the firm is especially effective, areas in
which an improvement would be desirable, and a brief comment on specific
actions that the firm could take that would assist in develop
In formulating your Key Concept
Exercise, consider the following abilities:
The ability to identify, interpret and
respond quickly to environmental indications that change is necessary.
The willingness to take risks by trying
new things on a frequent and regular basis, with an associated understanding
that a significant number of those experiments will prove to be unsuccessful.
A strong level of competence in the
adoption and application of new technologies
The ability to competently and
ethically manage a complex, unpredictable and behaviourally inconsistent
network of stakeholders.
The ability to enthuse and inspire all
of the people who work at all levels of the firm.
By Day 3 (Saturday),
submit your Key Concept Exercise.
Be sure to read over your Key Concept
Exercise before submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and
grammar are correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when
providing your opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
The Key Concept Exercise for this week
is not graded, but you will receive feedback from your Instructor to help you
improve your work. Please take advantage of this opportunity to learn from your
Instructor’s feedback – give the Assignment your full effort and ask for
clarification on any feedback you do not understand.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 1 Key Concept
Exercise -- Turnitin - FF.
Week 2 Assessments
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to the Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to
your colleagues in the Collaboration Forum
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your
Personal Development Portfolio
Key Concept Exercise:
The challenge of change
What will the operating environment
look like in 5-years’ time, and how do we prepare for that environment?
The material you have studied this week
can be conveniently summarised into the following overarching statement of the
principle that is presented as a basis for this week’s Key Concept Overview:
Organisations must accept that a
continuous pattern of necessary change is an integral element of sustainable
growth and development. The scope and scale of required change flows from
developments in the character of both internal capability and external
operating environment, and these developments are prefaced by change drivers
that are classifiable according to parameters of scope, timing and urgency.
A commonplace practice amongst
organisations is to react to the impact of change drivers once the full
implications of that impact are felt, but a more effective approach is to
scenario plan the future in order to more accurately anticipate the emergence
of change drivers. Organisations, and the individuals who work for those
organisations, are better able to design and implement an optimally effective
change response as a result.
This week’s Key Concept Exercise
requires you to reflect on the underlying principles of change that have been
discussed this week, and to use those principles to anticipate the possible
options that lie in wait for the recently restructured Deseret News
organisation. The key question in this Exercise is ‘what will the operating
environment look like for this organisation in 5-years’ time, and ‘what does it
need to do now to prepare for that environment?’
To prepare for this Key Concept
Exercise:
Read the Required Learning Resources
for Week 2.
Reflect upon the ideas presented in the
Week 2 Key Concept Overview and the assigned journal articles.
Review the case study example of the Deseret
News, in Gilbert, Eyring and Foster (2012).
To complete this Key
Concept Exercise:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
In an approximately 500-word response,
address the following issues/questions:
Use the scenario planning processes
described in the article by Konno, Nonaka and Ogilvy (2014a).
In formulating your Key Concept
Exercise, consider the following requirements:
·
Provide an outline description of what
you believe would be a ‘best case’ vision (the set of circumstances that would
be most favourable) of what the Deseret News operating environment might conceivably
look like 5 years from today. Include a comment on those aspects of the
operating environment that you consider to be particularly influential over the
planning decisions the organisation will make today.
·
Provide a parallel ‘worst case’ vision
(the set of circumstances that would pose the greatest threat), using the same
criteria used to develop your best-case vision.
·
Briefly explain whether you believe the
best- or worst-case scenarios are more likely to develop, providing a
justification for your opinion.
·
Suggest specific things that Deseret
News could do now in order to maximise its capability to cope with either
version of the future.
By
Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key Concept Exercise.
Be sure to read over your Key Concept
Exercise before submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and
grammar are correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when
providing your opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 2 Key Concept
Exercise -- Turnitin.
Personal Development
Portfolio: Change drivers for your own organisation
One of the central propositions offered
by this module is that the sustainable success of any organisation will depend
on the quality of its interactions with the competitive environment in which it
is required to operate and, in turn, on the quality of interactions between the
firm and the people who work for it.
The material studied this week provides
a strong indication that the character of those key interactions will be
subject to significant change with the passage of time. Therefore, one critical
aspect of your Professional Development Portfolio (PDP) is to ensure that your
own capability profile is constantly updated with the attitudes, skills and
abilities needed to meet organisational expectations in that regard.
For this entry in your PDP, you are
therefore required to identify the current range of change drivers that are
relevant to your own employment situation and to document the implications of
those change drivers in terms of your own professional development.
To complete for this
PDP Assignment:
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Reflect on the current status of your
employing firm and its competitive positioning in the industry with which it is
associated, and then answer the following questions. Answers need only be
brief, and using short, bulleted statements is encouraged.
·
What are the key factors for success
for firms operating in this particular industrial sector? To what extent is
your current employing firm successful in meeting the requirements of those key
success factors?
·
What do you believe are the likely
change drivers that will impact on the nature of those success factors? Will
the impact of those change drivers create opportunities or threats, or both,
for the firm?
·
What specific role in the management of
change will be assigned to you over the medium term (the next 2-5 years)? What
are the key attitudes, skills and abilities needed to successfully fill that
role?
·
In what specific attitude, skill and
ability areas do you believe you need to improve your performance? What
specific changed behaviours do you plan to instigate, between now and the
conclusion of this module, that will assist in achieving the necessary
improvements?
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your
Personal Development Portfolio.
This PDP is not graded, but you will
receive feedback from your Instructor to help you improve your work. Please
take advantage of this opportunity to learn from your Instructor’s feedback –
give the Assignment your full effort and ask for clarification on any feedback
you do not understand.
In Week 8, you will be asked to reflect
on the answers you have provided to these Week 2 questions, and comment on the
extent to which your PDP ambitions have been realised.
To submit your Personal Development
Portfolio to Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 2
Personal Development Portfolio -- Turnitin - FF.
Week 3 Assessments
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key Concept
Exercise to Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to the Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to
your colleagues in the Collaboration Forum
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your
Module Project
Key Concept Exercise:
Change management models
The material you have studied this week
is intended to provide a linkage between the change drivers that emerge either
from within the firm itself or as a result of events and activities that take
place in its operating environment, as well as a subsequent process of change
that individuals in that firm will be required to manage.
The key concept that emerges from this
material can be usefully summarised in the following statement:
The primary requirement of a successful
change management initiative is to facilitate a process of change that is
established in response to one or more internally or externally located change
drivers.
A change process of any material scale
will inevitably impact on the firm’s core business model and will be optimally
successful when it reconciles the often competing philosophies and perspectives
of multiple stakeholders. This reconciliation is best achieved through the
overlay of a guiding change management framework, as opposed to the imposition
of a staged and linear prescription.
This week’s Key Concept Exercise
requires you to reflect on the following three things:
The extent to which any specific change
process will generate implications for the organisational stakeholders most directly
affected, what the nature of those implications might be, and
How the change manager can best take
those implications into account as the change process is implemented.
In short: Who are the stakeholders that
change managers need to think about, What
are their attitudes to change likely to be, and How can those attitudes be most effectively
reconciled?
To prepare for this Key Concept
Exercise:
Read the Required Learning Resources
for Week 3.
Reflect on the ideas presented in the
Week 3 Key Concept Overview and the assigned journal articles, in the light of
your own practical experiences in the workplace.
Consider ONE of the possible change
drivers listed below, and use your chosen change driver as the basis of an
initial response to the Key Concept Exercise that follows:
Introduction of new government
legislation that imposes a ban on media advertising of your top-selling fast
food product line on the grounds that it poses a threat to public health
Failure to secure a renewal of contract
with your single most important customer, resulting in an almost overnight 30%
drop in revenue
Release of a government report that
predicts a rapid increase in the size of the immigrant community (from one
particular origin country) in your geographical target market region
Advice from your management accountants
that the repairs and maintenance costs for your existing (and aging) plant and
equipment have become such that a major investment in new technologies is now
necessary to ensure your continued survival
Recent political polls suggesting that
an upcoming general election is likely to see the ‘green’ political movement
take a much more prominent role in the formation of government policy in your
country
To complete this Key
Concept Exercise:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
In an approximately 500-word response,
address the following issues/questions:
Critically analyse the impact of
organisational change management processes that might be introduced in response
to your chosen change driver.
In formulating your Key Concept
Exercise, consider the following questions:
·
What impacts, if any, will those
changes have on the value creation, modus operandi and value capture elements
of the firm’s existing business model?
·
What individuals, groups or communities
of interest will be affected by the changes you plan to make?
·
What do you expect to be the nature of
the general attitudes displayed by each of those stakeholders?
·
What specific actions would you
anticipate taking in order to ensure an appropriate and ethical response to
stakeholder concerns about the proposed changes?
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise.
Be sure to read over your Key Concept
Exercise before submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and
grammar are correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when
providing your opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 3 Key Concept
Exercise -- Turnitin.
To complete this Collaboration:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
Post your Key Concept Exercise from
Week 3 to the Collaboration Forum.
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Post 3–5 responses to your fellow
students in one or more of the following ways:
Supporting, refuting or expanding upon
a classmate’s response to a change driver other than the one chosen by you
Comparing and contrasting the
stakeholder entities identified as relevant by classmates with those identified
in your own initial post
Commenting on the influence of change
driver selection in deciding who the relevant stakeholders might be offering
suggestions for ways in which a classmate’s suggested response might be
improved in terms of its capability to anticipate and respond to likely
stakeholder concerns
Ensure that you spread your
collaboration posts across at least three separate days of each week. This will
help maximise the value of your collaboration with classmates and serve to meet
the learning objectives for each activity.
To access the Collaboration Forum,
click on the "Week 3 Collaboration Forum" link.
Module Project: First submission:
proposal
The purpose of this Module Project is
to assess your ability to identify a relevant change driver impacting upon an
organisation with which you are familiar.
It will challenge you to:
Devise a suitable change process that will
appropriately respond to that change driver,
Identify the likely stakeholder
reactions to the change process you advocate and
Describe how the existing
organisational design might be amended to best accommodate the planned change.
You will complete this Module Project
in three submissions:
A draft proposal, due in Week 3 (this
week).
An expanded change management framework
to support your intended change process, due in Week 5.
A final change management project plan,
due in Week 7.
Scenario
Your role in this project is to
identify a specific change driver that you consider especially relevant to an
organisation of your choice, and to apply the theoretical principles discussed
in this module to the specification of an appropriate process that will
successfully respond to the demands of that change driver. You are encouraged
to use your own current employer, and its current operating environment, as a
base for the preparation of this project. It is, however, permissible to use an
alternative organisation with which you are sufficiently familiar.
To prepare for this Module Project:
Review the material studied during the
first 3 weeks of this module.
Review the scenario and decide what
organisation you would like to use as the basis for your report. To ensure you
can access all necessary information, use a company you know well or one for
which you can get detailed information.
To complete this Module Project:
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Prepare and submit an initial project
proposal of approximately 400-500 words that addresses the following questions:
·
What is the name of the organisation
you propose to use, where is it located, what is its primary business and
approximately how many staff does it employ? (If there are any concerns about
any aspect of commercial sensitivity, it is permissible to use an assumed name
for the organisation you select).
·
Using the value creation-modus
operandi-value capture concept, what is the business model used by this
organisation? To what extent does this business model rely on the application
of new technologies?
·
What is the one change driver that is
of particular relevance to this organisation’s current situation?
·
What significant change would you
recommend the organisation implement in order to address the identified change
driver?
·
Who are the key individuals and groups
with a legitimate stakeholder interest in the change process you recommend?
To submit your Individual Assignment to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 3 Module Project
-- Turnitin - FF.
Week 4 Assessments
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to the Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to
your colleagues in the Collaboration Forum
Key Concept Exercise:
Implications for organisations
The material you have studied this week
begins to expand on the foundational theories of organisational design and
strategic change management, and to examine the ways that those theories can be
implemented in the workplace.
The key concept that emerges from this
material can be usefully summarised in the following statement:
Organisations can best prepare
themselves for sustainable growth and development by managing according to a
cycle of environmental change-adjusted strategy-revised structure-amended
decision processes-enhanced organisational culture-environmental change.
An organisation that embraces this
model will focus its managerial strategies on its core business model, the
distribution of its resources in support of that business model and the ways in
which it engages with its workforce in pursuit of its ambitions.
This Key Concept Exercise requires you
to reflect on the degree to which your own organisation, or an alternative
organisation with which you are familiar, has adopted a structure that meets
the requirements of the philosophy expressed in the above proposition. To what
extent does the organisation’s current structure support a future in which
continuous and iterative change is a dominant feature?
To prepare for this Key Concept
Exercise:
Read the Required Learning Resources
for Week 4.
Reflect on the ideas presented in the Week
4 Key Concept Overview and the assigned journal articles, in the light of your
own practical experiences in the workplace.
To complete this Key
Concept Exercise:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
In an approximately 500-word response,
address the following issues/questions:
In the introduction to this Key Concept
Exercise, you have considered the need for organisations to continuously manage
a sustainable growth and development cycle. This Key Concept Exercise requires
you to critically analyse the extent to which your own employing organisation,
or another organisation with which you are familiar, is successfully meeting
the management challenges this growth and development cycle implies. Your
analysis should be based on answers to these questions:
·
What organisational structure has been
adopted in order to assign levels of authority and to establish reporting
lines? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this structure compared
with alternative structures that might have been chosen?
·
How is this organisational structure
reflected in the decision-making processes that apply to the design and
implementation of significant organisational change?
·
What impacts do the decision-making
processes in this organisation have on the way that the key functional
activities of the organisation are performed?
·
What impacts do the decision-making
processes in this organisation have on the organisation’s relationships with
its external stakeholders?
·
In your analysis, address the extent to
which the organisation’s structure and decision-making processes are effective,
and identify any specific actions that would improve its ability to meet growth
and development cycle challenges.
By Day 3 (Saturday),
submit your Key Concept Exercise.
When writing your responses, you should
synthesise the theory with real world experience and use examples of the
theories in action in a real organisation about which you have read or one in
which you have worked.
Be sure to read over your Key Concept
Exercise before submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and
grammar are correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when
providing your opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 4 Key Concept
Exercise -- Turnitin.
Collaboration:
Implications for organisations
The discussions that were posted to the
Week 3 Collaboration Forum reflect a core interest in the ways in which
organisations can arrange their resources in a manner that best equips them
with the capabilities required to confront an extremely uncertain future.
Initial posts to this week’s Key
Concept Exercise will have highlighted the reality that there are many
different ways in which organisations can choose to respond to that challenge.
In this week’s Collaboration, your task
is therefore to compare the key features of your own organisation’s practice
with those described by your classmates in an effort to identify aspects of
that practice that could be targeted for improvement.
This week’s Collaboration will enable
you to engage with your classmates in an exploration of the important ideas and
issues related to this concept.
To prepare for this Collaboration:
Review the Required Learning Resources
your Key Concept Exercise from Week 4.
Review the Collaboration from Week 3 to
ensure that the range of views that were presented in that discussion is
adequately considered in your Week 4 submissions.
To complete this Collaboration:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
Post your Key Concept Exercise from
Week 4 to the Collaboration Forum.
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Post 3–5 replies to your classmates’
posts in the Collaboration Forum by:
Reviewing and providing justified
analysis of those aspects of classmates’ posts that appear to you to be especially
interesting
Commenting on the extent to which the
approach adopted by classmates’ organisations is likely to support an effective
decision-making environment
Analysing the extent to which the
approach adopted by classmates’ organisations is likely to assist in developing
positive relationships with external stakeholders
Evaluating the degree to which
practices adopted by classmates’ organisations are appropriate in preparing
those organisations for the future
Ensure that you spread your
collaboration posts across at least three separate days of each week. This will
help maximise the value of your collaboration with classmates and serve to meet
the learning objectives for each activity.
To access the Collaboration Forum,
click on the "Week 4 Collaboration Forum" link.
Week 5 Assessments
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to the Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to
your colleagues in the Collaboration Forum
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your
Module Project
Key Concept Exercise:
Implementing the change management plan
The material you have studied this week
is intended to provide a link between change management theory and the
implementation process, and to move your thinking to the more operational
aspects of organisational change.
The key concept that emerges from this
week’s material can be usefully summarised in the following statement:
The pattern of change most frequently
encountered in an organisational setting is one in which change is organic,
progressive and largely imperceptible; although this default position is
infrequently interrupted by single-event instances of extreme and disruptive
change.
This pattern of change generates a
complex framework of demands to be made on those entrusted with guiding the
organisation towards its desired future, and those demands are most effectively
met by the application of strategic leadership principles.
This week’s Key Concept Exercise
requires you to apply the theoretical concepts studied to date to the case
study situation contained in the article by Abdullah and Siti-Nabiha (2012).
In this context, you will review the
situation at Pemancar as it would have appeared to Danial Tareq when he took
over his new role, and then present a range of ideas on the best process to use
in implementing the required change.
To prepare for this Key Concept
Exercise:
Read the Required Learning Resources
for Week 5. Reflect on the ideas presented in the Week 5 Key Concept Overview
and the assigned journal articles, in the light of your own practical
experiences in the workplace.
To complete this Key
Concept Exercise:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
In an approximately 500-word response,
address the following issues/questions:
Read the Pemancar case study, as
presented in the article by Abdullah & Siti-Nabiha, and prepare a report
that addresses the following requirements:
·
Examine the application of the theory
of punctuated equilibrium to an assessment of the current situation at
Pemancar.
·
Analyse the change environment existing
at Pemancar in terms of the parameters suggested by Nasim and Sushil.
·
Identify the most likely problems or
conflicts that Danial Tareq may face in implementing his change initiative.
Each of those problems or conflicts should be classified as pluralities,
contradictions or paradoxes, and their potential impact on the change management
process should be assessed.
·
Evaluate the degree to which Danial’s
leadership will influence the effectiveness of the change management process.
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key Concept Exercise.
When writing your responses, you should
synthesise the theory with real world experience and use examples of the
theories in action in a real organisation about which you have read, or one in
which you have worked.
Be sure to read over your Key Concept
Exercise before submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and
grammar are correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when
providing your opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 5 Key Concept
Exercise -- Turnitin.
To complete this
Collaboration:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
Post your Key Concept Exercise from
Week 5 to the Collaboration Forum.
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Post 3-5 replies to your classmates’
posts in the Collaboration Forum by:
Extending the discussion into new areas
of interest that are relevant to the key concept of ‘Implementing the change
management plan’
Supporting, refuting or expanding upon
a classmate’s response to the Pemancar case study
Offering suggestions for ways in which
the lessons learned from the Pemancar case study could be used to the benefit
of your own and classmates’ workplace conditions
Ensure that you spread your
collaboration posts across at least three separate days of each week.
This will help maximise the value of your collaboration with classmates and
serve to meet the learning objectives for each activity.
To access the Collaboration Forum,
click on the "Week 5 Collaboration Forum" link.
Module Project: Second
submission: project outline
In this week’s activity, you will
design an expanded change management framework to support your intended change
process.
In your first submission to the Module
Project requirements of this module, you produced a proposal that would
identify a relevant change driver impacting upon an organisation with which you
are familiar. The proposal would:
Suggest a suitable change process that
would appropriately respond to that change driver
Identify likely stakeholder reactions
to the change process you advocate
Describe how an existing organisational
design might be amended to best accommodate the planned change
In this week’s activity, you will
design an expanded change management framework to support your intended change
process. This will, in turn, function as a base for the final change management
project plan, due in Week 7.
Scenario reminder
Your role in this project is to
identify a specific change driver that you consider especially relevant to an
organisation of your choice. You are challenged to apply the theoretical
principles discussed in this module to the specification of an appropriate
process that will successfully respond to the demands of that change driver.
You are encouraged to use your own
current employer, and its current operating environment, as a base for the
preparation of this project. It is, however, permissible to use an alternative
organisation with which you are sufficiently familiar.
To prepare for this Module Project: Review
the material studied during the first 5 weeks of this module.
Review the feedback received on your
project proposal submitted in Week 3, and incorporate any feedback suggestions
into the framework you present in response to this week’s requirement.
To complete this
Module Project:
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Prepare and submit a preliminary
outline version (approximately 1,000 words) of what
will eventually be your final Module Project report due in Week 7.
Your outline version this week should
contain the following sections:
Organisational
Profile: what is the name of the organisation
you propose to use, where is it located, what is its primary business and
approximately how many staff does it employ? (If there are any concerns about
any aspect of commercial sensitivity, it is permissible to use an assumed name
for the organisation you select).
Organisational
Structure: how are human and other resources
arranged within this organisation, what levels of seniority exist and how are
those levels of seniority connected through formal reporting lines? (A
structure diagram would be useful here.) To what extent is the decision process
centralised in the senior management team, and to what extent is it devolved to
lower levels in the organisation?
Change
Drivers: to what extent does this organisation
currently align with the principle of punctuated equilibrium? What are the
factors in either or both of the external or internal operating environments
that suggest a significant element of change is needed to the way in which this
organisation works? Each change driver you identify should be categorised
according to the criteria presented in relation to the Week 2 Deseret News
case.
Key
Stakeholders: who are the individuals, groups and
organisations who will be most directly affected by the type of change that is
indicated by change driver analysis? To what extent do you expect each
stakeholder’s reaction to be positive or negative? What are the primary ‘unanswered
questions’ that you expect to receive?
Change
Initiative Overview: what is the primary aim of the change
initiative that you recommend be introduced, and how could this initiative be
classified in terms of the parameters suggested by Nasim & Sushil? How will
success or failure in this initiative be measured? What ethical considerations
need to be taken into account as the initiative is designed?
By Day 7 (Wednesday),
submit your Module Project.
Be sure to read over your Module
Project before submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and
grammar are correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when
providing your opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
This assignment is graded. See the
rubric for specific grading criteria.
To submit your Individual Assignment to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 5 Module Project --
Turnitin.
Week 6 Assessments
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to the Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to
your colleagues in the Collaboration Forum
Key Concept Exercise:
Making it work
The material you have studied this week
describes the conditions necessary for the successful implementation of a
change management project.
The material proposes that those
conditions suggest the adoption of a broadly defined framework in preference to
a detailed prescription. The key concept that emerges from this material can be
usefully summarised in the following statement:
Although all change initiatives seek to
move some aspect of attitude or behaviour, from where it is today to where it
is necessary to be in the future, there is no single change management process
that will be equally functional in every case.
The idea of a change management
prescription should therefore be replaced with that of a change leadership
guideline, for that latter approach allows for the development of operational
processes that best meet the demands of the change environment concerned.
This week’s Key Concept Exercise
requires you to propose a framework for change that you could use to support a
major change initiative at your current employing firm, or an alternative firm
with which you are familiar. Your initial response should therefore be
presented in the form of a broadly defined change leadership guideline rather
than in the form of a staged change management prescription that identifies
specific actions to be taken by a designated change manager or other change
agent.
To prepare for this Key Concept
Exercise:
Read the Required Learning Resources
for Week 6.
Reflect on the ideas presented in the
Week 6 Key Concept Overview and the assigned journal articles in the light of
your own practical experiences in the workplace.
To complete this Key
Concept Exercise:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
In an approximately 500-word response,
address the following issues/questions:
·
Critically analyse the key factors that
will require specific attention during the implementation stages of a
significant change initiative in your own organisation, or another organisation
with which you are familiar. Your response should address the following
requirements:
·
Identify the critical success factors
that will determine the effectiveness of a change process at the organisation
you have chosen to review, and evaluate the extent to which the quality of
performance in each factor will impact the effectiveness of the change
initiative.
·
For each of those factors, assess the
extent to which the change initiative may experience resistance of some
description, and identify the most likely symptoms of that resistance.
·
Present an overview summary of the most
appropriate strategy to be adopted in response to the potential sources of
change resistance.
·
Synthesise the responses to those
questions into a graphical model of the change process framework that would be
suitable for distribution to those organisational staff that are impacted by
the proposed change.
By Day 3 (Saturday),
submit your Key Concept Exercise.
When writing your responses, you should
synthesise the theory with real world experience. Use examples of the theories
in action in a real organisation about which you have read or one in which you
have worked.
Be sure to read over your Key Concept
Exercise before submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and
grammar are correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when
providing your opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 6 Key Concept
Exercise -- Turnitin.
Collaboration: Making
it work
The Pemancar case study suggested that
change agents will inevitably be more concerned with individual and
organisational behaviour patterns than with the mobilising of tangible
resources.
The discussions that were posted to the
Week 5 Collaboration Forum began to examine the process of implementing a major
change in the way that an organisation works. The Pemancar case study suggested
that change agents will inevitably be more concerned with individual and
organisational behaviour patterns than with the mobilising of tangible
resources. Initial posts to this week’s Key Concept Exercise will have
translated this thinking into a range of different environments with which
students are already familiar, and thus will have begun the process of applying
academic theory to practical workplace situations.
In this week’s Collaboration, your task
is to compare the key features of your own organisation’s practice with those
described by your classmates in an effort to identify aspects of that practice
that could be targeted for improvement.
To prepare for this Collaboration:
Review the Required Learning Resources,
and your initial Key Concept Exercise response, from Week 6.
Review the Collaboration Forum
discussion from Week 5 to ensure that the range of views that were presented in
that discussion are adequately considered in your Week 6 submissions.
To complete this Collaboration:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
Post your Key Concept Exercise from
Week 6 to the Collaboration Forum.
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Post 3–5 replies to your classmates’
posts in the Collaboration Forum by:
Extending the discussion into new areas
of interest that are relevant to the Week 6 Key Concept Overview of ‘Making it
Work’
Reviewing and providing justified
analysis of those aspects of classmates’ posts that appear to you to be
especially interesting
Commenting on the extent to which the
approach adopted by classmates’ organisations is likely to accommodate a change
leadership philosophy
Evaluating the degree to which the
culture that exists in classmates’ organisations is appropriate in preparing
those organisations for future change
Ensure that you spread your
collaboration posts across at least three separate days of each week. This will
help maximise the value of your collaboration with classmates and serve to meet
the learning objectives for each activity.
To access the Collaboration Forum,
click on the "Week 6 Collaboration Forum" link.
Week 7 Assessments
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key Concept Exercise to the
Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to your colleagues in the
Collaboration Forum
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your Module Project
Key Concept Exercise: Implications for
managers
The material you have studied this week is intended to
isolate and evaluate a recommended role for human resource management professionals
in the design and delivery of major change initiatives.
The key concept that emerges from this material can be
summarised in the following statement:
The essential function of 21st-century human resource
management personnel is to work in partnership with the management and staff of
the organisation to develop the collective employee capability to a point at
which it is optimally equipped to meet future environmental demands.
This objective requires the creation of a positive organisational
culture that reflects a unitary perspective on the management-staff
relationship within the firm, and in turn mandates a strategic approach to all
change initiatives of any significance.
This Key Concept Exercise requires you to reflect on the
extent to which the management of your current employing firm, or an
alternative firm with which you are familiar, is effective in progressing
towards achievement of that status. In short, how well does the organisational
culture at that firm align with the demands of a unitary perspective on the
workplace environment?
To prepare for this Key Concept Exercise:
Read the Required Learning Resources for Week 7.
Reflect on the ideas presented in the Week 7 Key Concept
Overview and the assigned journal articles in the light of your own practical
experiences in the workplace.
To complete this Key Concept Exercise:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
In formulating your Key Concept Exercise, consider the
following issues:
Recent changes in the business environment have not been
accompanied by similar changes in human resource management processes.
It is the HR department’s responsibility to correct this
failing.
This responsibility requires the HR department staff to
develop a range of new skills that will support a unitary perspective on
employment relationships.
HR department staff needs to develop a broader understanding
of the firm, its markets and its business model.
The most effective response to those demands, for any firm,
is to implement the principles of strategic human resource management (SHRM).
The character of the individual firm, its markets and its
business model will influence the applicability of a strategic HRM approach.
In an approximately 500-word response, address
the following issues/questions:
·
Use those six propositions as the basis
for an assessment of the organisational culture in place at your own employing
firm, or another firm with which you are familiar. The post should include:
·
An identification of areas in which the
firm is especially effective,
·
Areas in which an improvement would be
desirable, and
·
A brief comment on specific actions
that the firm could take that would assist in improving its alignment with the
six propositions above.
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key Concept Exercise.
When writing your responses you should synthesise the theory
with real world experience and use examples of the theories in action in a real
organisation about which you have read or one in which you have worked.
Be sure to read over your Key Concept Exercise before
submitting it to your Instructor. Make sure the spelling and grammar are
correct and the language, citing and referencing you use when providing your
opinion are appropriate for academic writing.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to Turnitin, click the
"View/Complete" link for Week 7 Key Concept Exercise -- Turnitin.
Collaboration: Implications for managers
Previous modules have made reference to important themes
that permeate multiple aspects of modern management practice. Prominent amongst
those themes are the emergence of a more inclusive concept of what is meant by
organisational stakeholders, an increased emphasis on ethical and socially
responsible corporate behaviour, and a growing recognition of both the benefits
and the costs of adopting rapidly developing technology.
Your collaboration activity over the remaining 2 weeks of
the module should consider the impact of new approaches to the implementation
of change on the attitudes of firms to those themes.
To prepare for this Collaboration:
Review the Required Learning Resources and your Key Concept
Exercise from Week 7.
Compare your own initial response to the Week 7 Key Concept
Exercise with the reviews of organisational culture submitted by classmates.
To complete this Collaboration:
By Day 3 (Saturday)
Post your Key Concept Exercise from Week 7 to the
Collaboration Forum.
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Post 3–5 replies to your classmates’ posts in the
Collaboration Forum by:
Commenting on the extent to which a firm’s organisational
culture, as described by a classmate, will support or detract from a positive
evaluation of firm performance in the three themes mentioned in the
introduction to this collaboration
Supporting, refuting or expanding upon a classmate’s
response to your own initial response
Offering suggestions for ways in which the Human Resource
Management professionals may effectively lead and manage an organisational
change initiative
Ensure that you spread your collaboration posts across at
least three separate days of each week. This will help maximise the
value of your collaboration with classmates and serve to meet the learning
objectives for each activity.
To access the Collaboration Forum, click on the "Week 7
Collaboration Forum" link.
Module Project: Final submission - report
For this final submission, you will prepare a final project
plan in support of the implementation of the change initiative introduced in
the previous two submissions.
In your first submission to the Module Project report
requirements of this module, you produced a proposal that did four things:
·
Identified a relevant change driver
impacting upon an organisation,
·
Suggested a suitable change process
that would appropriately respond to that change driver,
·
Predicted likely stakeholder reactions
to the change process you advocate, and
·
Described how an existing
organisational design might be amended to best accommodate the planned change.
·
In the second submission, you designed
an expanded change management framework to support your intended change
process.
For this final submission, you will prepare a final project
plan in support of the implementation of the change initiative introduced in
the previous two submissions.
Scenario Reminder
Your role in this project is to identify a specific change
driver that you consider especially relevant to an organisation of your choice,
and to apply the theoretical principles discussed in this module to the
specification of an appropriate process that will successfully respond to the
demands of that change driver.
You are encouraged to use your own current employer, and its
current operating environment, as a base for the preparation of this project.
It is however permissible to use an alternative organisation with which you are
sufficiently familiar.
To prepare for this Module Project:
Review the material studied during the seven weeks of this
module.
Review the feedback received on your Module Project proposal
submitted in Week 3, and your Module Project outline submitted in Week 5.
Ensure you incorporate any feedback suggestions into the final Module Project
report you present in response to this week’s requirement.
To complete this Module Project:
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Prepare and submit a final version of your project report
that contains the following sections:
Organisational Profile:
what is the name of the organisation you propose to use, where is it located,
what is its primary business and approximately how many staff does it employ?
Organisational Structure:
how are human and other resources arranged within this organisation, what
levels of seniority exist and how are those levels of seniority connected
through formal reporting lines? (A structure diagram would be useful here.) To
what extent is the decision process centralised in the senior management team,
and to what extent is it devolved to lower levels in the organisation?
Change Drivers: What are the factors
in either or both of the external or internal operating environments, which
suggest a significant element of change, are needed to the way in which this
organisation works?
Key Stakeholders:
who are the individuals, groups and organisations who will be most directly
affected by the type of change that is indicated by change driver analysis?
Change Initiative Overview:
what is the primary aim of the change initiative that you recommend be
introduced, and how should this initiative be classified?
Key Success Factors:
what specific factors and/or influences will you need to take into account in
order to ensure maximum chances of a successful implementation, and what are
the principal implications of those factors on the way that your change
initiative is designed?
Change Initiative Process:
what process will you follow to ensure that the planned change initiative is
successfully implemented within the allocated time span? What steps will you
include in this process in order to enhance the chances of success in this
project? To what extent will technology be used in the implementation of this
process?
Stakeholder Reactions:
to what extent do you expect each stakeholder’s reaction to be positive or
negative? How do you plan to deal with those reactions? What ethical
considerations will need to be taken into account during this process?
Evaluation and Assessment:
how will you measure the extent to which the project is deemed to be
successful, and when will this evaluation be carried out?
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your Module
Project.
Your final Module Project report should be approximately
2,000-2,500 words in length. This Module Project is formally graded, and
therefore makes a contribution to the overall grade awarded at the conclusion
of the module.
To submit your Individual Assignment to Turnitin, click the
"View/Complete" link for Week 7 Module Project -- Turnitin.
Week 8 Assessments
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to Turnitin
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise to the Collaboration Forum
Until Day 7 (Wednesday), respond to
your colleagues in the Collaboration Forum
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your
Personal Development Portfolio
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your UoL
Satisfaction Survey
Key Concept Exercise:
Back to the future
The material you have studied in this
final week is intended as a summary of the materials introduced and discussed
over the past 8 weeks.
It also provides a synthesis of those
ideas into a set of principles that change agents may wish to consider as they
implement any change initiatives required by their own organisations. This
synthesis has been presented, in the final section of the Week 8 Key Concept
Overview, as seven key principles upon which strategic change projects might
usefully be based, and those seven principles are further refined into the
following summary statement:
The requirement for ongoing, continuous
and reciprocal processes of change in the organisation must be embraced as a
core component of corporate philosophy, and therefore enshrined as a
non-negotiable element of organisational culture.
When this ambition is realised, there
will be a joint and individual commitment amongst stakeholders to a constant
adjustment of their ways of doing things, in pursuit of an improved value
proposition for the customer.
This is achieved by a combination of
effective communication and disciplined implementation, and is therefore
followed by the generation of quantifiable benefits for all stakeholders
involved in the process.
The final Key Concept Exercise requires
you to reflect on this summary statement, and to offer your own opinion on its
validity, relevance and feasibility in the context of your own employment
environment. In short, to what extent can this theoretical view translate into
effective action in the context of conditions experienced in the practical
workplace?
To prepare for this Key Concept
Exercise: Read the Required Learning Resources for Week 8.
Reflect on the ideas presented in the
Week 8 Key Concept Overview and the assigned journal articles in the light of
your own practical experiences in the workplace.
To complete this Key Concept Exercise
By Day 3 (Saturday)
Answer the following
question:
With reference to the summarised
statement above, to what extent do you believe the propositions contained in
this statement are important, valid, relevant and achievable in practice, given
the real-world conditions that have been encountered in your own experience?
By Day 3 (Saturday), submit your Key
Concept Exercise.
When writing your responses, you should
synthesise the theory with real world experience and use the examples of the
theories in action in a real organisation about which you have read or one in
which you have worked.
To submit your Key Concept Exercise to
Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 8 Key Concept
Exercise -- Turnitin.
Personal Development
Portfolio: Reflecting on your Personal Development Plan
Throughout this module, you have been
working towards the creation of your Personal Development Portfolio, a document
which will stay with you throughout this programme and empower you to identify
and achieve goals.
In Week 2 of this Module, you were
asked to make an initial entry in your Personal Development Portfolio. In that
entry, you were required to think about the potential for change being required
in your own employment environment, the extent to which those changes will
impact on established ways of doing things and the possible nature of your own
personal involvement in the change process.
Now, with the benefit of the
intervening weeks of discussion, we invite you to revisit those questions again
in a slightly more detailed fashion.
This week, you will complete the final
phase of your Personal Development Portfolio.
Your PDP will be a document you will
regularly revisit throughout your programme. Be sure to keep it in an
accessible place so you can update it with new goals; reflections on your
learning; and plans for further study, development and research.
To prepare for this PDP Assignment:
Review your PDP from Week 2.
To complete this PDP
Assignment:
By Day 7 (Wednesday)
Complete the last part of your PDP -
Reflecting on your Personal Development Portfolio.
In formulating your PDP Assignment,
consider the following questions:
·
What do you now see as the most likely
drivers for change in your own employment environment over the next 3-5 years?
What type of opportunity and threat will be created by those change drivers?
·
In what areas of the organisation’s
operating practice do you believe that the most significant changes will be
required? Who will be the main (external and internal) stakeholders whose views
will need to be taken into account during the process of change?
·
What are the core skills required of
the change agent who is ultimately entrusted with the primary responsibility
for achieving successful change? To what extent do you believe that you currently
possess each of those core skills?
·
What will you do over that 3-5 year
period to remedy any perceived shortcomings in your current skills profile?
By Day 7 (Wednesday), submit your final
Personal Development Portfolio.
This Assignment is graded. See the
rubric for specific grading criteria.
To submit your Personal Development
Portfolio to Turnitin, click the "View/Complete" link for Week 8
Personal Development Portfolio -- Turnitin.
No comments:
Post a Comment