Now that you have learned more about organizational theories, organizational development perspectives, and strategies to manage challenges within the organization; you will play the role of management consultant.
Analysis of a Real Organization
You will conduct an analysis of a real organization of your choosing or an organization you are presently involved with or have been involved with in the past; exploring an aspect of organizational behavior that interests you. Your role is to analyze the issue (study the organization) with relevance to the organization you are studying and propose actions that solve the organization’s issue/ problem. It is important that your project be issue-oriented and analytical and not merely descriptive. The project is a significant portion of your grade, so you should begin thinking about possible organizations to study now so that you are able to begin the project by Week 2. The following activities are involved in the final project:
- Select an organization to study. The organization can be public or private. The most important consideration factor in choosing your organization is access: you need to be able to have a contact person who can participate in your study of the organization and give you access to the information you require and people.
- Establish a contact person. Find someone in the organization who can grant you access to organizational information and members. Explain how you wish to study their organization for class and obtain written permission to do so. I suggest you write a letter that the contact person will sign stating that you are allowed access to the organization to collect information for your project. Please give me a copy of the letter with your proposal. If you have a problem or issue in mind, see if your contact person is comfortable letting you study it.
- Select an issue. The range of options is large. It needs to involve organizational behavior topics that are relevant to the organization you select. You can choose among topics discussed in our course and/or in the textbook. For example, you may be interested in worker motivation and job satisfaction, goal commitment and job performance, the effectiveness of teams and real estate worker performance, the personality trait of extroversion and sales performance. It is very important that you focus your analysis on one core issue. Papers that attempt to do too much typically lose their focus and receive low marks. I encourage you to contact me or the course graduate assistant to discuss your ideas for topics.
- Write a proposal. The organizational assessment and proposal involve diagnosing the causes of an organizational behavior problem within a real organization. The diagnostic report should cover a) the problem; b) alternative explanations/theories explaining why the problem exists; c) qualitative and/or quantitative data collected that would help understand the problem; d) the factors in the organization or environment that contribute to the problem but are not changeable; e) the specific action steps that should be implemented to remedy the problem.
