Organizational Behavior and Change
prepare a 15-20-page research paper on a public organization that has undergone a fairly significant change lately or should in your opinion do so. The papers should describe the organization’s change, retrospectively or prospectively, in light of the concepts introduced in this course (or any preceding course).
The final paper will:
¢ Describe the organization’s history, purpose, size, age, geographic or other territorial mandate, target population, funding sources and other such demographics as you think would be helpful to the reader. If any of these have changed significantly, you’ll want to mention it. (2-3 pgs)
¢ Explain what caused the need for change. What results did the organization expect and why? What did they measure or observe to find out about the problem? (3-5 pages)
¢ Diagnose what probably caused the problem. Was it primarily structural, administrative, political, or something else? If you assert that it was a financial problem, you’ll need to have a good story ready, financial problems rarely come about in the absence of other problems. (3-5 pages)
¢ Prescribe what sort of change is called for, how is should be brought about, by whom and on what timetable? If this is a retrospective case, you need not agree that what was done was correct, even if it turned out okay. (6-8 pages)
¢ Describe what you will measure or observe to see whether the change is doing what is was intended to do. (1 page).