Course: Organizational Change
Week 4 Case Study
For this assignment, you will Role Play a Real-World Business Analysis where YOU are an OD Consultant!
Please download the file attached above
You are now an OD consulting applying the organizational change theories and concepts you are learning here in the class. Read the Toyota case and answer the questions in the instructions download in an APA paper.
Do not submit a Q and A style paper, but instead, weave your answers into a well-developed analysis of the case. Remember to complete the case assignment as if you were an OD Consultant and submit as a Word document by Sunday.
Case Study Analysis
Case: Week 4
Overview
You are an organizational change consultant—or “OD consultant”—and have been hired to assist with organizational diagnosis. Your analysis will be from YOUR OWN perspective role playing as the OD consultant. Put yourself in the OD CONSULTANT role. Your responses to the case questions indicated in this set of instructions will be based on your reading of your textbook and from your research on the company in the online library.
MBA673/Organizational Change
Case Study Analysis
Case: Week 4
Overview
You are an organizational change consultant—or “OD consultant”—and have been hired to assist with organizational diagnosis. Your analysis will be from YOUR OWN perspective role playing as the OD consultant. Put yourself in the OD CONSULTANT role. Your responses to the case questions indicated in this set of instructions will be based on your reading of your textbook and from your research on the company in the online library.
Guidelines
– Title page – Follow standard format for the MBA program. Go to Doc Sharing and locate the document: “Title page for student papers.”
– Format – per APA manual
n Double-spaced
n Font: Times New Roman, 12 point
n Margins: per APA
n Page numbers: upper right corner
– Length – The total of your case analysis responses should be a minimum of six (6) pages in length. Most students will require more space for in-depth responses.
– Terminology and Concepts – Note that you are expected use and define organizational change terminology. You are also expected to make frequent references to and explain concepts from the text.
– Opinions – Where appropriate, also offer and justify your opinions.
– Case References – Support generalizations with details from the case.
– Citation, Please cite and use references per APA 6th Edition. Use the Student Resources Link to obtain helpful materials. Use the Writing Center and GROWS. A minimum of 10 peer-reviewed references from the online library are required.
HEADINGS AND TOPIC SENTENCES:
For each question, include both the question number and the indicated boldface heading. Restate the question as a topic sentence at the beginning of your response.
Submission of Assignment and Evaluation
Please submit this case study analysis as a Word attachment by 11:59 on the indicated Saturday.
– You will receive a grade and feedback within 72 hours from the due date and time.
– Twenty percent (20%) of your grade is based on the quality of your writing and eighty percent (80%) is based on the quality of content.
Questions/Topics
1. Planned Change
1A. Lewin’s Planned Change Model – 10%
Explain how Lewin’s Planned Changed Model can be applied to this case.
1B. Action Research Model – 10%
Explain how the first three steps of the Action Research Model have already been implemented in this case. Note that step two—consultation with behavioral science expert—equates to the “Entering and Contracting” process associated with you as an organizational change/OD consultant described in your readings.
2. Collecting Data
2A. Method(s)
In your role playing assume you have been given data. How would you evaluate the data collection process used by the organizational change/OD consultant? For example, what are the major advantages and disadvantages of the data collection method that was used to collect data from organizational participants? What other method(s)—if any–could/should have been used? What about the sample? Would you have involved any other participants—e.g., first-line employees, customers, etc.? Explain your reasoning. This gives you an opportunity to show you understand methodology.
2B. Questions
Given your knowledge of organizational effectiveness, what questions would you ask participants in the data collection process? Identify 3-5 questions. Include an explanation of the importance of questions and how they are constructed. Remember to focus questions on diagnosis of the organizational problem—i.e., profitability.
3. Feeding Back Diagnostic Data
For questions 3A and 3B, assume the role of the organizational change/OD consultant who is assisting the organization’s leaders with the change process.
3A. Force-Field Analysis – 10%
You have decided to begin your data feedback session with top management team of the organization by presenting a force-field analysis chart that provides an overview of forces for change (“driving forces”) and forces for maintaining the status quo (“resisting forces”). Consider forces that are identified in background information in the case. Complete a two-column chart or table. Include an explanation of each element on your chart.
3B. Organizational Culture – 10%
How would you present what you discovered about the organization’s culture in your interviews? What key points would you make and what would you say about them? In preparation for this aspect of your assignment, review the Organizational Level Model for Diagnosing Organizational System. Note that one of the primary system design components that must be evaluated is “Culture.” Also consider what you learned about organizational culture in your Contemporary Management and Organizational Behavior courses.
4. Organizational Change Interventions
According to the authors of your text: The term intervention refers to a set of sequenced planned actions or events intended to help an organization increase its effectiveness. For questions 4A and 4B, assume the role of the new general manager of The organization.
4A. Action Plan – Short-term – 10%
What actions would you take on an immediate basis to respond to the diagnostic information gathered and presented by the organizational change/OD consultant? In your response, consider the “Joint Diagnosis of Problem” and “Joint Action Planning” steps of the Action Research Model. Also consider communication with company employees. With whom should the new general manager talk, in what forum (e.g., private meetings, general employee meetings, etc.), about what, and when?
4B. Action Plan – Long-term – 10%
Provide 2-3 recommendations for organizational change interventions intended to help The organization increase profitability in the long term. The list of interventions on page 157 may inspire some ideas. You are not expected to have a detailed understanding of interventions at this point in the course or in your field of study. Apply your general knowledge to this question.
In addition to the questions in the instructions above, let these question be part of your thought process. Weave the answers into your analysis. Do not simply type a Question and Answer.
1. Would you consider Toyota to be an innovative organization? Why or why not?
Answer: Most students should see Toyota as innovative because of its continuous improvement philosophy toward processes. The constant improvement of how things are done with focus on reducing expenses and improving product are an innovation technique all companies should aspire to.
2. Do you think Toyota’s potentially inbred leadership hinders, or explains, its successes?
Answer: It most likely explains the company’s successes. The internal promotion of managers ensures a strong organizational culture based on continuous improvement is basic to the organization’s operations. The longevity of managers ensures a long-history understanding of the company and who it is. These strengths ensure consistent, incremental change for the better.
3. In 2009, Toyota reported a loss for the first time in its history. Do you think that given its culture it will have more problems dealing with the loss than other automakers?
Answer: Yes, report of loss for the first time is likely a very difficult psychological effect on Toyota. But, it is positioned to respond to the situation well. See http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/may2009/gb2009058_991777.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis for insight.
4. The new president of Toyota, Akio Toyoda (grandson of the founder), has said, “Everyone says Toyota is the best company in the world, but the consumer doesn’t care about the world. They care if we are the best in town.” What do you think he means by that?
Answer: Toyoda understands his customers. The customer doesn’t care about global positioning or competitiveness, he or she cares only that the car they buy is reliable, attractive, effective, and efficient. The customer’s concern is his or her pocketbook, not Toyota’s.
Source: Based on M. Graban, “Toyota Leaders Get a Lecture from a Toyoda,” Manufacturing Business Technology (June 28, 2009), www .mbtmag.com; M. Maynard, “At Toyota, a Giant Strives to Show Agility,” New York Times (February 22, 2008), pp. B1, C4; and J. Surowiecki, “The Open Secret of Success,” The New Yorker (May 12, 2008), p. 48.
Case Details (be sure to supplement these details with research in the online library)
Innovation–and Continuity–at Toyota
If you ask experts in organizational innovation about Toyota, you’ll often see a bemused expression on their faces. Toyota is a bit hard to figure, innovation wise.
On the one hand, the company has been one of the most successful corporations in the world for a generation. It is now the world’s largest car company and shows no signs of giving up that title anytime soon. It must be doing something innovative to continue to thrive when business conditions, consumer preferences, government regulation, and global competition continue to change, sometimes rather dramatically.
Toyota also produced the first, and to date the only, successful mass-produced hybrid car, the Prius. Other companies have attempted to follow suit, only to find their entries coming up short in expert ratings, new car sales, and resale value.
On the other hand, Toyota’s products are widely thought to be more “liked than loved,” and its cars are often criticized for being imitations rather than innovations. The company is notorious for its “stodgy and bureaucratic” structure, for the fact that all its senior executives are Japanese males, and for its worshipping of the past (a bust of the company’s founder, Kiichiro Toyoda, appears in the lobby, and in its 74-year history only three individuals outside the Toyoda family have led it). These hardly seem the hallmarks of an innovative, transformational organization.
So is Toyota an innovative company, or not?
The answer depends on how you define innovation. Judged by the innovations in its products, notwithstanding the Prius (which, despite its success, still amounts to a small percentage of Toyota’s sales), we would not deem it a particularly innovative organization. However, when we defined an innovative culture elsewhere in this text, we emphasized two points. First, it is not judged only by an organization’s products. Production, service, marketing, and other business processes are less observable to the outsider but are arguably more important to sustained success. Second, innovation can be incremental. Is a company that loudly reinvents itself every 10 years really more innovative than one that makes steady, incremental changes more or less continuously?
It’s clear that on both these points—innovation as process as well as product, and lasting incremental innovation— Toyota excels. Toyota has made numerous workplace innovations, including the andon cord—whereby any worker can halt the production line when he or she sees a problem—and its focus on lean and nimble manufacturing processes that allow it to switch the vehicle being manufactured in nearly every plant within days. On the second point, kaizen manufacturing— a method of continuous improvement—is nearly synonymous with Toyota. As one expert commented, “Instead of trying to throw long touchdown passes, Toyota moves down the field by means of short and steady gains.”
Studies consistently show that most efforts at organizational transformation fail and are abandoned. Perhaps if more companies thought about innovation the Toyota way—in terms of process rather than product and of slow and continuous improvement rather than radical change—they’d be more likely to realize the innovations, and organizational success, they wish to achieve.
Additional readings are found at:
http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/13439/toyota-learning-organization
http://www.rfgen.com/supply-chain-case-study-toyota
https://solvesolution.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/toyota-case-study.pdf
http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:349746/FULLTEXT02
