The overall purpose of the project is to demonstrate your understanding of how organizational structure and learning influence performance and how the principles and concepts related to organization design can provide a basis for making good business decisions. To do this, you will present interpretive findings from your interview, explain how theories, models, and paradigms about organization design apply to the interviewee’s organization, and make recommendations for your organization in today’s hyper-competitive and rapidly changing environment.
Instructions
Complete a draft of Part 1 Interview Narrative and Brief Organization Analysis.
• Interview narrative.
o Explain who you interviewed and the agreement you reached to conduct an interview. List your questions. Summarize the findings from each question, including the best stories and quotes in the interviewee’s own words.
• Organization analysis.
o Identify the organization. Describe its industry, products and services, approximate revenue (if known), number of employees, mission, strategy, business goals and objectives, core business processes, capabilities, and competencies.
o Trace the organization’s history, describing any changes to its structure over time.
o Explain the rationale for major structuring and organization design efforts and how they could (or did) enable improved performance. Discuss whether they yielded the performance hoped for. What role did these efforts play in enabling the organization to be a high-performing learning organization?
Complete the draft of Part 2: Recommendations for Your Organization.
Make recommendations for enhancing the organization’s performance through structure, learning, and organization design practices.
Be sure to:
• Develop your recommendations in a way that is practical, actionable, and based on sound rationale. Use theories, models, or paradigms that you have learned in this course. Include concepts you have learned about what types of structures, practices, and methods enable organizations to perform better. You may choose to draw upon exercises that you worked on in previous units.
• Include some of your best quotes and stories to show how your recommendations can help the organization develop a more sustainable competitive advantage.
• Incorporate additional library research about theories, models, or paradigms related to organization design to strengthen your arguments.
More details on this course project and corresponding interview:
This course project requires you to apply theories, paradigms, or models related to organizational structure, learning, and performance to a real company of your choice. These concepts are found in the document titled Background Paper you will read in Unit 1. In addition, you will learn about concepts related to designing organizations through reading the course text, Designing Organizations. Your field project will be based on an interview with an organizational leader who fits certain criteria. Your final paper will include the interview findings, an organization overview, relevant ideas from the course readings, and your analysis.
Choosing the Interviewee
Choose an organization with at least 10 (but preferably more) full-time employees. The interviewee must fit the following criteria:
• Hold the title of manager or above.
• Have at least two direct reports.
• Have a broad knowledge of the structure and processes of the organization (at either the department level or the whole organization level).
Process Steps
These are the basic steps of the project. Preparation for each step and detailed instructions are included within the assignment instructions.
• Conduct a 45-minute interview with a leader from a high-performing learning organization
Project Objectives
To successfully complete this project, you will be expected to:
5. Integrate your personal perspective and course readings into a coherent use of theory, findings, and recommendations for improving performance through structure and learning practices.
6. Relate real-world dilemmas of structure, learning, and performance to the common learning themes of the new business realities and the thinking habits of mind, heart, and imagination.
7. Examine the relationship of structure and learning to performance.
• Toggle Drawer
Project Requirements
To achieve a successful project experience and outcome, you are expected to meet the following requirements.
• Written communication: Written communication should be free of errors that detract from the overall message.
• APA format: Resources and citations should be in current APA style and format. Be sure to include title and reference pages.
• Length: 15–25 typed, double-spaced pages for final paper, not including the title and reference pages.
• Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
