Man­aging Or­gan­iz­a­tion­al Change and De­vel­op­ment

Course content

To remain relevant, effective and achieve higher standards of development, organizations must adapt to increasingly complex and uncertain technological, economic, political and cultural changes. In addition, organizations need to have the ability to continuously monitor their own internal functioning and identify changes required to enhance this functioning. However, organizational change is a complex process that depends on numerous factors and research reveals that as many as 70% of change initiatives are not successful, with the failure rate going up to 90% in the case of Mergers and Acquisitions. This course explores the behavioural side of change and how changes in organizational structure, culture, systems, and processes can facilitate organizational effectiveness. Change often involves resistance and this resistance is mainly psychological.  Therefore, it is imperative for managers to understand the behavioural dynamics of change and the important situational and motivational factors that need to be considered in any organizational change intervention, so that they may effectively implement and manage a change process. An important theme throughout the course would be managing complexity and harnessing the power of paradox and opposing forces in organising to create flexible, robust, and socially sustainable organisations.

The course will include the following topics:

• Closed systems thinking, open systems thinking, planned change and its critique
• Organizations as rational and natural systems - chaordic systems thinking
• Managing uncertainty, opposites, paradoxes and complexity in the change process
• Diagnosing organizations and change readiness
• Assessing contextual factors in organizational change
• Psychological safety, human motivation and change
• Designing and implementing interventions
• Managing readiness for change and resistance to change
• Evaluating and institutionalising interventions
• Change in organizational structure, culture, human process and strategy
• Designing organizations for continuous change and dealing with rapid change

The course’s development of personal competences:

The course is designed to equip participants with the basic knowledge and skills required for working in the area of organizational change and development. In this course, participants will:

• Learn to apply knowledge of behavioural sciences in the change process.
• Understand the process of diagnosing an organization and its readiness for change.
• Gain insight into important contextual factors to be considered when designing a change process.
• Practice designing and implementing organizational interventions in simulated contexts.

The Course and the Nordic Nine:

The course specifically aims to help students navigate ambiguity and ethical dilemmas in the change process as well as approach the process of organisational change through the lens of development, i.e., developing capacities of people engaged in and impacted by the change. As such, the course considers a human, compassionate approach towards change whilst appreciating the competitive and strategic pressures that sometimes compell organisations to initiate different kinds of changes. The course also has a broad, international focus and consists of case studies of organisations from across the world to help students appreciate the often socioculturally complex context of change.