B3087 - Organizational Change & Evaluation of Interventions

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course, students will know: - the main approaches to intervention design and evaluation tools in organizational settings, - the main techniques on organizational change and development, - the main contextual, intra-organizational, social and individual factors promoting or hindering change, - some of the main techniques used in planned change.

Course contents

Considering the advanced nature of the contents of this course (and students’ previous experiences), the selection and attendance of this course is NOT RECOMMENDED to Bachelor students of the Erasmus + program. Alternatively, the “Organizational change and development” course may be more affordable for such students.

This course concerns two main topics: 1) how to design organizational interventions and evaluation interventions; 2) how to conduct research within organizations in order to monitor development and effectiveness of interventions, at individual, group and organization level.

 

Contents

1. Design of interventions and design of intervention evaluation

2. Evaluation processes and principles (main aspects, basic models, formative and summative evaluations, realistic evaluation)

3. Research designs for the evaluation of WOP interventions (quasi experimental and longitudinal designs, within subjects and single case design).

Readings/Bibliography

a) Komaki J., Goltz S. (2001) Within-group research designs: going beyond program evaluation questions, in Merle Johnson, Redmon, Mawhinney, Handbook of organizational performance, New York: Haworth Press (pp. 81-86, 92-106).

b) Pawson R. & Tilley N. (2004) Realist evaluation (article available on moodle platform)

c) an empirical article based on the evaluation of an intervention.

Teaching methods

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

- lectures,

- a case simulation.

- small group discussions,

- students’ oral presentation.

Assessment methods

Learning will be evaluated with the following two tasks/assignments:

1) Knowledge test on the topics presented in the book, in classroom and on the empirical article;

2) design of an intervention and draft of an evaluation intervention.

Each task will be assessed on a scale from 0 to 30; thus total score will range between 0 and 60; this total score will be averaged from 0 to 30 and that will be the final score for this course/module.

For task 2, the “design of an intervention and draft of an evaluation intervention”, a simulation will be run, and teams of students will have to design an intervention project (and present it in the classroom) and the evaluation project (submitted in a written text).

Teaching tools

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

- lectures,

- simulation,

- group case study.

Office hours

See the website of Salvatore Zappalà