"That Was Great!": More High Impact Exercises For Teaching Or Consulting On Organizational Change
A two-hour interactive Academy of Management Annual meeting PDW workshop in Chicago, Friday, August 7, 12:40PM - 2:40PM
Swissotel Chicago Vevey Salon 2
Do you teach, research, or have an interest in organizational change? For the fifth consecutive year, we offer a PDW to provide a forum for educators, researchers and consultants to showcase high impact methods for teaching organizational change in its many contexts (undergraduate, EMBA, MBA, corporate training, consulting, etc.). The workshop covers high impact classic and contemporary exercises that receive very positive responses in change programs. Two key features underpin this workshop:
- The workshop has a "hands-on" approach where participants get to experience, in part, the actual exercise or activity being undertaken.
- The teaching philosophy underpinning the workshop is a "multiple perspectives" approach which assumes that a variety of approaches, assumptions and methodologies may be employed to explore the many areas associated with organizational change.
Presenters will introduce their exercise, provide the audience with a short, hands-on sampling of it and the method for debriefing it, and will provide more detailed take away notes.
1. Ian Palmer (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and Richard Dunford (U. Sydney) will present the Multi-frame Change Diagnosis exercise. In this exercise students are actively engaged in providing a multi-framed analysis of an organizational change. Students are formed into consulting companies and a current work problem facing one of the members of the group becomes the focus of the exercise. The problem, appropriately worded, is entered into a box in the middle of a page, with four other boxes surrounding it with arrows pointing to it. One box represents structural issues, a second human resource issues, a third political issues and a fourth symbolic/cultural issues (as aligned to the classic work of Bolman & Deal). Students identify issues and steps which each of these four boxes suggest will need to be addressed to engage in the change. An addition step to this exercise is to get students to conduct a forcefield analysis on the same problem to see if new issues also emerge which may be associated with the change. We have used this well-received exercise predominantly with MBA students who have work experience but the presenters will also outline how they have adapted it to suit younger, less-experienced students groups.
2. Tony Buono (Bentley College) will present an exercise entitled Assessing Reactions to Organizational Change. The exercise is designed to probe reactions to organizational change, drawing out perceptions about change and the change process. The exercise quickly engages participants and prompts them to share their thoughts and experiences about how change is experienced in organizational life. Participants "score" their reactions based on whether their associations are positive, neutral or negative. This assessment is then used as a basis for discussion about reactions to change and their ramifications for organizations and their management. Several variations of the exercise will also be discussed (e.g., general assessment v. specific change initiatives, personal assessment v. perceived reactions of subordinates).
3. Gary Wagenheim (Simon Fraser U.) will present the Gordian Knot. The session will focus on a fun highly interactive exercise-Gordian knot-to facilitate learning about participatory and collaborative group problem-solving. The facilitator will use the Gordian knot exercise to help participants learn the importance of considering different viewpoints, communication, flexibility, cooperation, and mistake-making to solve problems collaboratively in managing change. Participants will have the opportunity to explore the Gordian knot exercise and discuss their learning and classroom application.
4. Ram Tenkasi (Benedictine U.) will present the exercise entitled Getting 'Hooked' on Research as a Way of Managing: Introducing Evidence Based Management to Executive Doctoral Students through the "who wants to save millions from research" Game. An adaptation from the "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" quiz show, the intent of this exercise is to demonstrate the change value of evidence based management to executive doctoral students and introduce them to the counter-intuitive findings that defy popular management discourse on change and that is derived from large scale studies on change topics such as the success of mergers and acquisitions, the survival rates of companies in a industrial niche, firm turnaround rates from bankruptcy and survival post-bankruptcy, the effects of leadership on organizational performance, and the effects of goal setting on individual performance.
5. Gavin Schwarz (University of New South Wales) will lead all presenters in a discussion of outcomes for organizational change teaching and consulting.
No pre-registration is neccesary to attend the session.
For information on the session contact organizers Gavin Schwarz (g.schwarz@unsw.edu.au), Ian Palmer (Ian.Palmer@rmit.edu.au), or Richard Dunford (R.Dunford@econ.usyd.edu.au).
_____________________________________
Gavin M. Schwarz Ph.D
School of Organization & Management
Australian School of Business
University of New South Wales
Sydney NSW 2052 Australia
P. +612 9385 7278
F. +612 9882 8531
E. g.schwarz@unsw.edu.au
W. www.unsw.edu.au
CRICOS Provider Code: 00098G