Introduction

The Course Project is divided into three deliverables. This Course Project will assist the student in utilizing the concepts in this class, assignments, textbook, and instruction by your professor by doing a thorough analytical and in-depth review of organizational change. The first deliverable involves a comprehensive assessment of using images of change in a complete analysis. This assignment will give you the experience of working with change images, how to recommend and structure implementing a change in an organization, and how to apply human resource management competencies. The second deliverable will involve selecting a diagnostic model that can be used for the chosen organization. This part of the Course Project allows for demonstrating a strategic leadership perspective. The final deliverable will culminate in the art of communicating the change and how it aligns with the workplace environment and culture, along with how it will assist in exceeding the organization's goals. Be sure to reach each deliverable in its entirety.

Course Project deliverables are due by Sunday of Weeks 3, 5, and 7.

It is necessary to begin working on your project as quickly and as early as possible.

Guidelines

The following will be accomplished in these three deliverables for Weeks 3, 5, and 7:

• Each deliverable must have 3 to 5 pages not including title or references pages.
• Each deliverable must have at least three references (peer-reviewed).

Please note the following points related to the research component of this Course Project.

Utilize multiple references using online research, including the DeVry University on-site or online libraries. Also, consider using a public library or other area university or college library for print resources. Additional secondary research sources that would be appropriate for this project may also be used. The purpose of completing the research component for this Course Project is to include strong references to support your findings.

Week 3: Research a small to mid-size (up to 3,000 employees) publicly traded company along with their methods of handling a significant change in organization. Analyze and write about images of change in the selected organization in a Change Analysis Images of Change Paper (include four references). This deliverable due in Week 3.

Week 5: Determine the change in the company and the barriers and resistors by creating a Determining the Change Paper (include four new references). This deliverable is due in Week 5.

Week 7: Analyze and create a customer or employee-facing communication based on the change in your researched company. This is the Communicating the Change Paper (including two new references). This deliverable is due in Week 7.

Important Note!

DeVry librarians are a wealth of information and will help you find sources. Using the chat feature, you can talk to them about what you need to find, and they will teach you how to use the library!

Note: Do not use Wikipedia as a reference source. If you find helpful information from Wikipedia, triangulate your research, find other, more credible sources that provide the same (or better) information, and then utilize the information from that more credible source(s) in your paper and references page.

Here are some research examples.

• Review an organization impacted by the pandemic. Furthermore, utilizing the image grid, you can discuss how they handled these pressures (using an image) and how a different style of the leader (image) might have handled it differently.
• Organizations have needed help selecting a new chief executive officer (CEO) for their company. Review the last 10 years of CEO history, and write a paper comparing and contrasting the pressures involved and how they impacted the company's overall productivity.
• Review a company entering the airline industry, its entrance into (and possibly its completion of) bankruptcy, and how it handled the changes through management.
• Review a company that has recently been through mergers and acquisitions and how they handled the culture changes.
• Review a company that has had industry changes, how they have reacted either successfully or unsuccessfully, and how their reactions perhaps resulted in their success or failure.

These are simply illustrative. You can research and find several companies and topics of change that could work for this Course Project, and you are encouraged to do so. Please ask your professor for assistance if you have questions or need more ideas.

Topic Selection

Select an organization that has undergone substantial change in the recent past. Find the company and the change information online using EBSCO or another appropriate resource in the DeVry Library. Other ways to find information include utilizing Google, Yahoo Finance, or Reuters and looking up annual reports of companies that interest you. Often, reading the first sections of these reports (i.e., letters from CEOs) will give you ideas about changes they have gone through in the past year(s).

You will need to ensure the following:

2. Your organization is publicly traded so that information will be easy to research and find.
4. The changes happened in the recent past, so you will find sufficient online information about how they were handled, but are not so contemporary that the information about the change results still needs to be researched and published.

Paper Formatting (Use current APA formatting.)

• Use a title page.
• Font: 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode, or a serif font such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or 10-point Computer Modern
• Running Head is not required.
• The paper is to be double-spaced with one-inch margins.
• Each section of your paper should have headings (per the sections you are developing) that will guide the reader.
• Indent paragraphs.
• Insert page numbers at the top right.
• Use current APA for the in-text citations throughout the paper. If you need to become more familiar with APA formatting, refer to the Library and tutoring for assistance.
• Include a separate reference page at the end of the paper. All references per APA are to be in alphabetical order.
• Save your paper in the following format: Your last name, the initials of your first company discussed in the case study and the week of the deliverable.
• Review a template with APA title and reference page examples Download Review a template with APA title and reference page examplesOpen this document with ReadSpeaker docReader.

Deliverables

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Change AnalysisImages of Change Paper (Due Week 3)

The Images section focuses on the six different images of managing change and how each approach to change affects all that follows in its implementation and continued support. Analyze how all six images would affect the ensuing diagnosis and implementation in your selected organization on their change plans.

Here's what to do.

2. Please review the change and describe the change in a Word document. Please explain how the change impacted the company and who it impacted.
4. Review your prepared grid Download Review your prepared gridOpen this document with ReadSpeaker docReader: Complete the empty blocks on the grid for all images using outlines, bullet points, and rough ideas for both companies' changes.
6. Analyze, compare, and contrast the images and explain how the behaviors of those images would be different or the same during your company's changes and how those differences could (or did) impact the change's success (or failure).
8. Explain which image (or combination of images) you feel would have best facilitated the described change, and explain why.
10. Based on the information you read about the results of this change, state which image you think the leader resembled the most. You may speculate on which image best represents the change. This will depend on how much information you found about the company's internal workings during the shift.
12. This paper should focus on evidence demonstrating how the organization's management integrated one or more of the six images of managing change, how effective the change was, and what management could have done differently to increase the probability of successfully implementing the strategic change initiative. Again, this is a compare and contrast paper, so include information about all images in your report.

Determining the Change Paper (Due Week 5)

Select a diagnostic model you can utilize to review aspects of change activities and actions that have been taken by the company chosen. You are looking at the company's parts and strategies for this analysis, as surmised by your earlier research. It is acknowledged that this information will need to be completed as you are looking at these companies as an outsider. Still, a thoroughly researched paper will give enough data to allow some well-defended assumptions on your part.

Here's what to do:

2. Select one diagnostic model (i.e., 6-box, 7S, congruence, or one of the others) to apply to the chosen company. Choose the model that best identifies and measures the relevant aspects of the organization's performance.
4. Apply the data obtained in your research by analyzing the appropriate chosen model. This will allow you to create a diagnosis of where the company is today (as per the criteria of the model).
6. Identify potential areas of resistance that may occur and at least one strategy to respond to each.
8. Make recommendations for further actions within the organizations and the rationale chosen for these recommendations.
10. Write the paper, including each of the previous sections and analyses.

Communicating the Change Paper (Due Week 7)

An essential part of any change project is how the change is communicated to the organization, the change agents, the line workers, the customers, and the public. Along with media relations issues, communicating change (especially in a publicly traded company) can involve multiple legal and regulatory aspects and personnel and management concerns. Perhaps the most challenging part of handling Kotter's "establish a sense of urgency" is that too many inexperienced or immature change agents read this to mean "panic the troops." Never do this.

This project piece has two parts.

2. Select one of the communication components the organization would have distributed due to the change, and write the communication in a Word document (either the text or the script if the communication would have been oral). You may select to complete an interoffice memo, press release, employee or customer newsletter, corporate email update, or even record a business update using the voiceover feature in PowerPoint. Use your creativity to communicate the message. Consider the form of media you use based on the appropriateness of the message. Your instructor will grade this based on how well it relates to the audience and stakeholder group to which it is intended. Ensure you create your original communication document, not one previously used by an organization.
4. The real-world aspect of this project is that you will write an analysis of the company's communication of the changes by the company. For this section of the project, please analyze any media, news, or other communications that explain the change in the organization. Explain in your paper how the company handled communicating the change to its stakeholders.