96158 - Organizational Change and Development

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students will know: - the main techniques on organizational change and development - in particular, the main contextual, intra-organizational, social and individual factors promoting or hindering change, - some of the main techniques used in planned change

Course contents

RELEVANT:

Please, note that this course will start IMMEDIATELY at the start of the semester; after the completion of this course, the other one (Design and evaluation of interventions) will start. 

Contents:

1. History of theories on organizational change

2. Levels of change: individual, (group), organization and system models

3. Characteristics of change agents and the consultancy process

4. Organizational diagnosis

5. Resistances and psychological reactions to change

6. Steps and components of organizational intervention design

7. Selected individual, group and organizational intervention techniques

Readings/Bibliography

Mandatory readings

- Anderson D. (2017) Organization development: The process of leading organizational change, Thousand Oaks (CA): Sage.

- an empirical paper, selected from a list of papers (students will work in couples/teams: each team will select a topic and each team member will read one article related to that topic and then a team report will have to be produced and discussed during class.).

Recommended reading:

Schein E.H. (2010). Helping: How to offer, give, and receive help. (chapters from 3 to 8) Berrett-Koehler Pub, San Francisco (italian edition: Le forme dell’aiuto. Milano: R. Cortina (only the Italian version of this book is, at present, available in the Library)

Teaching methods

The course will use the following teaching methods:

- lectures,

- case study assignments,

- small group discussions,

- students’ oral presentation,

- practitioner's report/guest lectures.

Assessment methods

Evaluation aims to assess knowledge on the topic, academic and diagnostic competencies. Thus, assessing an organization (and designing an intervention) requires a good knowledge of principles on which change is based.

Learning will be assessed using the following assignments:

1. Knowledge test on theoretical aspects related to organizational change approaches and characteristics,
2. Team paper on an intervention technique, selected by a list of intervention techniques. Students will also prepare a poster (like in conferences) and such contents will also be presented during a "poster session".

The two assignments are both necessary for the final mark.

Each one of the two assignments is marked with a score from 1 to 30; the final mark of this course/module will be the average of the two scores.

Teaching tools

The course will use one or more of the following teaching methods:

- lectures,

- audiovisual methods,

- video projector

- group case study.

Office hours

See the website of Salvatore Zappalà