Students will review theories, practice, and strategies to evaluate an organizational case study, and recommend an organizational intervention. Evaluation will involve combining theories from the literature and making broader generalizations to principles discussed. Strategies need to be justified by current, peer-reviewed, academic sources, with evidence from supporting research on why each of the chosen steps and strategies are important. The case study should be cited in the reference list, however, it cannot be included as one of the five peer-reviewed academic sources. The Organizational Development Evaluation Paper should have five sections: (a) an introduction; (b) a discussion of key elements related to the given organizational development case; (c) evaluation of organizational development theories best suited for addressing the given leadership case; (d) discussion of recommendations for organizational change based on personal experience, theory, and research as to what has been successful for other organizations; and (e) a conclusion
Barnum Electric
Barnum Electric (BE) is a 60 year old family run manufacturing company with over 300 employees. They produce small parts for the train and trucking industries. The president of BE, is Lance Scorecroft. He came to BE from a smaller company with strong recom mendations from BE board members who knew him personally. Before Lance, only Barnum family members had served as president. The organizational structure at BE was casual, coming from a long history of family members who knew all employees by name.As the new leader, Lance felt it was time for things to be different to take BE to the next level in manufacturing technology, marketing reach, and organizational formality. He wanted to prove that making these changes would have a substantial impact on business growth; making it not just a player but a recognized leader in the US in its market segment . With this in mind, Lance developed a vision statement that was distributed throughout the company. The vision statement was over one and a half pages long. The statement reminded employees of BEvalues and addressed the company’s new purpose, and direction. Though the statement spoke of having an organization where everyones voice mattersthe statement felt more like an edict than it did a launch point for discussion. While in the first four years of Lances time as president, the company went through several reorganizations all of which were thought up by Lance and a few others on his executive team. The purpose of each new change was to put into place elements of the new vision that Lance had outlined shortly after his arrival to take BE to the next level in manufacturing technology, marketing reach, and organizational formality. What was being experienced in the company, however, felt like anything but an advancement. Multiple changes made without employee interaction created feelings of frustration and instability. Since employees were not engaged in the change process, results gave departments more control where less would have been better. Other changes limited employee leeway on decision making where more freedom to make decisions would have been the better option.Implemented changes created many instances of individuals now needing to report to multiple supervisors. After the reorganizations, management oversight loads were also widely varied; some supervised only a few employees, while others supervised more than 15 people. Across the board, managers and employees alike began to feel uncertain about how their work contributed to the goals of the company. The overarching impact of the changes, environmentally speaking, was a large, very noticeable drop in both production and employee morale. Rather than putting Lance’s vision into greater focus, the stream of ongoing changes created nothing but questions about what the company was doing, it’s purpose and its direction. The stated vision was clear to all. This couldn’t be missed as it was posted in every breakroom and work area. The constant changes that led to the insecurity that employees felt , however, made it difficult for them to understand, let alone support the company’s stated vision.