• Demonstrate an ability to see and analyse a real-life business situation through the lens of the different perspectives covered in the course.
• Demonstrate in particular an ability to appreciate complexity and to work with uncertainty and the power of paradox in the organizational change and development process.
• Identify the need for change in an organization and assess change readiness as well as identify important contextual factors to be considered in designing change interventions.
• Develop strategy for creating readiness for change and for dealing with resistance to change and for the evaluation and institutionalisation of change interventions.

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.

Articles, Cases & Simulation: A number of articles will be assigned for pre-class preparation and in-class discussion. Students will also need to purchase some case studies and an online simulation from Harvard Business School Publishing. A special link with discounted prices will be made available to students to make this purchase towards the beginning of the course.

Indicative List of Cases and Simulation:

Honda Motorcycles and Scooters

Prudential Financial

Whitbread PLC

Children's Hospital and Clinics

Duval County Public Schools

Acer Inc

Shinsei Bank

Motivated Reasoning and Leadership

Goldman Sachs

3M

Harvard Change Management Simulation

Indicative List of Articles:

• Argyris, C. (1998). Empowerment: The Emperor's New Clothes. Harvard
  Business Review, Vol. 76 Issue 3, pp. 98-105.
• Armenakis, A.A. & Harris, S.G. (2009): Reflections: Our Journey in
  Organizational Change Research and Practice. Journal of Change
  Management, Vol. 9 (2), pp. 127-142.
• Atella, M. D. (1999). Case studies in the development of organizational
  hardiness: From theory to practice. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice
  and Research, Vol 51(2), 125-134.
• Barends, E., Janssen, B., ten Have, W., & ten Have, S. (2014). Effects of Change Interventions: What Kind of Evidence Do We Really Have? Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(1), 5–27.
• Beer, M. & Nohria, N. (2000). Cracking the Code of Change. Harvard Business Review, Vol. 78 Issue 3, pp. 133-141.
• Beer, M. and Spector, B. (1993), Organizational Diagnosis: Its Role in
  Organizational Learning. Journal of Counseling & Development, 71: 642–650.
• Beer, M., Finnström, M., & Schrader, D. (2016). Why leadership training fails—And what to do about it. Harvard Business Review, 94, 50–57.
• Boan, D.M. (2006). Cognitive-Behavior Modification and Organizational
  Culture. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice & Research, Vol. 58 Issue 1,
  p51-61.
• Brown, S.L. & Eisenhardt, K.M. (2001). The art of continuous change in M.P.E.
  Cunha & K. Kamoche (Ed) Organizational Improvisation. Taylor & Francis, UK.
  p225-256.
• Burnes, B. (2015). Understanding Resistance to Change – Building on Coch and French. Journal of Change Management, 15(2), 92–116.
• Carr, A.N. & Lapp, C.A. (2009). Organization Theory and Organization
  Behavior: Through the Lens of Psychodynamics. International Journal of
  Organization Theory and Behaviour, Vol. 12 (3), pp. 381-405.
• Clancy, A., Vince, R. & Gabriel, Y. (2012). That Unwanted Feeling: A
  Psychodynamic Study of Disappointment in Organizations. British Journal of
  Management, Vol. 23, pp. 518–531.
• Csaszar, F.A. (2012). Organizational structure as a determinant of
  performance: Evidence from mutual funds. Strategic Management Journal.
  Volume 33, Issue 6, pages 611–632.
• Drzensky, F., Egold, N., & van Dick, R. (2012). Ready for a Change? A Longitudinal Study of Antecedents, Consequences and Contingencies of Readiness for Change. Journal of Change Management, 12(1), 95–111.
• Edmondson, A.C. (1996). Three Faces of Eden: The Persistence of Competing
  Theories and Multiple Diagnoses in Organizational Intervention Research.
  Human Relations, Vol. 49 No. 5, pp. 571-595.
• Eisenhardt, K. M., & Brown, S. L. (1998). Competing on the edge: Strategy as structured chaos. Long Range Planning: International Journal of Strategic Management, 31(5), 786-789.
• Elijah X. M. Wee, Taylor, M. S., & Wee, E. X. M. (2018). Attention to change: A multilevel theory on the process of emergent continuous organizational change. Journal of Applied Psychology, 103(1), 1–13.
• Engdahl, R.A. (2005). Organization Evolution: The Natural Change Model for
  Organizational Structure in Changing Times. Organization Development
  Journal, Vol 23(2), pp. 50-61.
• Franken, A., Edwards, C. & Lambert, R. (2009). Executing Strategic Change:
  Understanding the Critical Management Elements that Lead to Success.
  California Management Review, Vol. 51 Issue 3, pp. 49-73.
• Frazier, M. & Fainshmidt, Stav & Klinger, Ryan & Pezeshkan, Amir & Vracheva, Veselina. (2016). Psychological Safety: A Meta-Analytic Review and Extension. Personnel Psychology. 10.1111/peps.12183.
• French, R. B., & Simpson, P. (2010). The ‘work group’: Redressing the balance in Bion’s Experiences in groups. Human Relations, 63(12), 1859-1878.
• Furst, S. A., & Cable, D. M. (2008). Employee resistance to organizational change: Managerial influence tactics and leader-member exchange. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(2), 453–462.
• Ghoshal, S. & Gratton, L. (2002). Integrating the Enterprise. MIT Sloan
  Management Review. Vol. 44 Issue 1, pp. 31-38.
• Gilley, J.W., Morris, M.L., Waite, A.M., Coates, T. & Veliquette, A. (2010).
  Integrated Theoretical Model for Building Effective Teams. Advances in
  Developing Human Resources, Vol. 12 (1), pp. 7-28.
• Gregory, B.T., Armenakis, A. A., Moates, K.N., Albritton, M.D., Harris, S.G.
  (2007). Achieving scientific rigor in organizational diagnosis: An application of
  the diagnostic funnel. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research,
  Vol 59(2), 79-90.
• Henderson, J. & McAdam, R. (1998): A more subjective approach to business
  improvement and organizational change evaluation. Total Quality
  Management, 9:4-5, 116-120.
• Huy, Q.N. & Mintzberg, H. (2003). The Rhythm of Change. MIT Sloan
  Management Review, 44(4): 79-84.
• Kegan, R. & Lahey, L.L. (2001). The Real Reason People Won't Change.
  Harvard Business Review, Vol. 79 Issue 10, pp. 85-92.
• Kira, M. & van Eijnatten, F.M. (2008). Socially sustainable work organizations:
  a chaordic systems approach. Systems Research & Behavioral Science, Vol. 25
  (6), pp. 743-756.
• Kotter, J.P. (2007). Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard
  Business Review, Vol. 85, Issue 1, pp. 96-103.
• Kotter, J. P. (2014). Capturing the Opportunities and Avoiding the Threats of Rapid Change. Leader to Leader, 2014(74), 32–37.
• Kotter, J.P., Schlesinger, L.A. (2008). Choosing Strategies for Change. Harvard
  Business Review, Vol. 86 Issue 7/8, pp. 130-139.
• Putnam, L. L., Fairhurst, G. T., & Banghart, S. (2016). Contradictions, dialectics, and paradoxes in organizations: A constitutive approach. The Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 65–171.
• Rivkin, J.W. & Siggelkow, N. (2003). Balancing Search and Stability:
  Interdependencies among Elements of Organizational Design. Management
  Science. Vol. 49 Issue 3, p290-311.
• Ruvolo, C.M., Petersen, S.A. & LeBoeuf, J.N.G. (2004). Leaders Are Made, Not Born: The Critical Role of a Developmental Framework to Facilitate an Organizational Culture of Development. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, Vol. 56 (1), pp. 10–19.
• Ryan, R.M. & Deci, E.L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78.
• Sadeh, L. J., & Zilber, T. B. (2019). Bringing “Together”: Emotions and Power in Organizational Responses to Institutional Complexity. Academy of Management Journal, 62(5), 1413–1443.
• Salicru, S. (2019). A new model of leadership-as-practice development for consulting psychologists. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research. Advance online publication. http:/​/​dx.doi.org/​10.1037/​cpb0000142
• Schad, J., Lewis, M. W., Raisch, S., & Smith, W. K. (2016). Paradox research in management science: Looking back to move forward. The Academy of Management Annals, 10(1), 5–64.
• Schein, E. (2003). On Dialogue, Culture, and Organizational Learning.
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• Schein, E.H. (1990). Organizational culture. American Psychologist, Vol 45(2),
  pp. 109-119.
• Schweiger, S., Stouten, H., & Bleijenbergh, I. L. (2018). A System Dynamics Model of Resistance to Organizational Change: The Role of Participatory Strategies. Systems Research & Behavioral Science, 35(6), 658–674.
• Senge, P.M. & Sterman, J.D. (1992). Systems thinking and organizational learning: Acting locally and thinking globally in the organization of the future.
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  Equilibrium Model of Organizing. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 36
  (2), pp. 381–403.
• Tucker, A. L. and Edmondson, A. C. (2003). Why hospitals don't learn from
  failures: Organizational and psychological dynamics that inhibit system
  change. California Management Review, 45 (2), pp. 1-18.
• Waeger, D., & Weber, K. (2019). Institutional Complexity and Organizational Change: An Open Polity Perspective. Academy of Management Review, 44(2), 336–359.
• Weick, K.E. Quinn, R.E. (1999). Organizational change and development.
  Annual Review of Psychology, Vol 50, Issue 1, pp. 361-386.
• Weick, K.E., Sutcliffe, K.M. & Obstfeld, D. (2005). Organizing and the Process
  of Sensemaking. Organization Science, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 409–421.
• Winiecki, D. J. (2010). Rational, natural, and open: Organizational system typologies and their relevance for performance improvement professionals. Performance Improvement, 49(5), 35–41. 
• Woodman, R. W. (2014). The Science of Organizational Change and the Art of Changing Organizations. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 50(4), 463–477.
• Vos, J. F. J., & Rupert, J. (2018). Change agent’s contribution to recipients’ resistance to change: A two-sided story. European Management Journal, 36(4), 453–462.