ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY
Professor Steven M. Esons
PA 364: Organization Theory, Assessment & Change
Spring 2013
CONTACT INFO:
Email:
sesons@rwu.edu
Cell:
802-673-9873
Skype:
sesons1
OFFICE HOURS:
One hour before and one hour after class
Skype: By Appointment during the official semester, including weekends.
Cell: By Appointment during the official semester, including weekends.
Course Description
The objective of this course seeks to expand understanding of the historical and dominant
theories behind organizations and increase the repertoire of skills to act more effectively in
organizations. Students will learn to identify, understand, and change complex patterns of
individual and social collective actions leading to new procurement system, restructuring of a
department, closing a department, and other comprehensive changes in an organization. After
completing this course, students should have a deep understanding of organization design and
change to help minimize surprise and confusion while increasing the chance for sustainable
change.
Required Reading
Bolman, L. and Deal, T. Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice and
Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2003). Consider the title of this book. What does it
mean to “frame” -- or “reframe” -- an organization? A frame is a way of seeing
the world. A frame is a lens on experience that affects how you see organization
behavior and the meanings you construct from what you see. This book shows
you how to assess organizations through the lenses of “four frames”: structural,
human resource, political, and symbolic. A synonym for frame is “mindset” or
“paradigm.” Without knowing it, organizational actors employ mindsets to form
perceptions about “reality.” Your mindset is the filter through which, usually without awareness,
you screen what you see. Your mindset, for all practical purposes, is your assessment of an
organization.
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Course Objective
The course objective is to help you understand organizations and act more effectively in them.
We will learn to identify patterns in complex “messes” to explore why individuals and social
collectives behave as they do. Attempts to improve organizations in the absence of
understanding often make things worse instead of better. Whether you are trying to implement a
new procurement system at GSA, restructure the Department of Energy, close a Defense
Department installation, or cope with the September 11 terrorist attack, a deep understanding of
organization design and change helps minimize surprise and confusion. Valid theory,
management skills, and intuition are all helpful and needed. This course seeks to expand your
repertoire of theory and skills.
Scope of Course
The field of organization assessment includes a number of major conceptual perspectives. Each
of these contains unique assumptions and advocates different strategies of action. In many
traditional organizational assessment courses, only one or two perspectives are taught. Initially,
this approach is simpler and less demanding intellectually. In the long run, it is more confusing
and less helpful. Effective public sector leaders will find great value in examining problems
from different perspectives.
We will develop four major views of organizations (“frames”) that encompass much of the
existing theory and research on organizations. Empirical evidence supports the proposition that
executives in the public sector who can integrate and employ multiple frames will be more
successful in their careers than those who address organization problems from a single
perspective. These are the four frames:
Ø A structural frame, which emphasizes the rational side of organizations, rules, goals,
policies, technology, environment, organization charts, and formal roles. The key
question this perspective answers is: What is the most appropriate structure to accomplish
the goals of the organization?
Ø A human resource frame, which emphasizes the people side of organizations, human
needs, emotions, attitudes, skills, and interpersonal relationships. The key question this
perspective answers is: How well does the organization meet the needs of its members?
Ø A political frame, which emphasizes the competitive side of organizations, scarce
resources, power, conflict, bargaining, interest groups and coalitions. The key question
this perspective answers is: How well does the organization handle conflict and distribute
scarce resources?
Ø A symbolic frame, which emphasizes the symbolic or cultural side of organizations: how
we create meaning through emotionally packed symbols, myths, rituals, ceremonies and
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ways of behaving that may not be fully conscious to us. The key question this
perspective answers is: What are the shared values and symbols of the organization and
their meaning for its members?
The course will begin by viewing organizations through each of the four frames separately. Our
end goal is to be able to use all four simultaneously. An astute manager learns (1) how to shape
the structure of an organization, (2) how to deal with people’s needs, (3) how to use power and
manage conflict, and (4) how to create and sustain the values, myths, and rituals that give the
organization its purpose and meaning.
I hope that you leave the course with a rich flexible framework for seeing organizations
simultaneously as machines, families, jungles, and theaters.
By asking questions from all four frames, you will learn how to try out strategies for managerial
and executive behavior that may be quite different from your usual ways of thinking and acting.
Course Requirements
1. Group Project: Two-Frame Analysis of a Case. We will provide a case for your group to
analyze. Each group will receive a different case to analyze, orally and in writing. Use at
least two of the four frames in your analysis. Look at the case as deeply as possible
through the two frames. To help you do your two-frame analysis, please study closely
the case of Cindy Marshall, pp. 280-293, and the case of Robert F. Kennedy High School,
pp. 354-76. In your written report, cite exact pages from Bolman and Deal to support
your analysis. Maximum length of your report is 10 typed double-spaced pages. (The
group project will represent 30% of your grade for the course.)
2. Final Exam: Four-Frame Analysis of a Case. Describe a personal incident from your
own work experience and analyze it using all four frames: structural, HR, political and
symbolic. Please cite exact pages from Bolman and Deal to justify your analysis.
Maximum length is 18 typed double-spaced pages, plus an Appendix of no more than
two pages (see section below entitled “Process for Improving the Quality of Your Final
Exam Paper” for explanation of what the Appendix should contain). Do not use any
cases you submitted or prepared for earlier courses. (The final exam will represent 60%
of your grade for the course.)
3. Course Participation. Developing creative strategies for learning has been a central
emphasis in my work as a teacher. In the right educational environment, participants are
often able to unlock the wisdom they already have and reconfigure it with the concepts,
theories, and applications built into the course. This contributes to their personal and
professional empowerment. Our challenge as educators is to bring the most powerful
forms of experiential learning into the learning course in a way that is customized to the
needs and preferences of every single participant. See section below on “Participation”
for more details. Participation will represent 10% of your grade for the course. You will
be asked to self-assess your own level of participation in a short memo.
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Special Reading Guideline for Final Exam
Before finishing the writing of the final exam, you should have read all of Bolman and Deal at
least once and those parts not first understood, twice. If you have not done so, you will find it
virtually impossible to complete the exam successfully. You may need to read some chapters
three or four times to absorb their meaning fully!
Approach to Case Writing
Begin drafting your personal case as soon as possible during the third week of the semester. Do
not wait until the end of the course! Prepare the descriptive section first. Case writing is very
much like telling a good story. When writing about a case in which you were involved, please
write in the first person. Describe what happened as you saw it, including your own thoughts
and feelings (but make sure that your thoughts and feelings are labeled as such).
Focus the paper on a particular experience or series of experiences, rather than trying to cover
many months or years. A single critical event (or sequence of events) usually works best.
Examples include the early stages of a challenging project, a critical meeting, a tough decision,
or a major conflict.
Like a good drama, a good case rarely arises from a situation in which everything was smooth
and easy. Obstacles, conflict, or dilemmas are likely to be the ingredients that make a case
interesting and a learning experience. The best cases are based on professional or personal
predicaments. Use this as an opportunity for deep learning rather than an opportunity to show a
shining example of your best work, which might leave little room or motivation for exploring
what you might do differently.
Organization of the Final Exam Paper
The following are suggestions that have often been helpful to students in the past:
1. Set the stage with a brief description of the organizational setting and your role in it.
Provide the information that you think will help me understand the most important
elements in the situation. (This will require selectivity: part of the art of case writing is
separating the essential facts from the mass of information that might be included.
2. In your descriptive section, use a story format. Provide a logical flow and realistic details
for authenticity. You may choose to disguise the identity of individuals. Use fictitious
names wherever you feel necessary.
3. Write vividly. Avoid the passive voice. Appeal to the reader’s senses – eyes, ears, touch,
and smell. Consider statements such as:
“Terry sank into his office chair. It was new and still smelled of fine leather.”
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“ Mary entered the parking garage. She saw a large, pool of thick dark liquid. It
couldn’t be oil because …”
4. Add dialogue to your story. If there was a significant meeting, provide a description of
what people actually said and did in it. A script representing part of the conversation is
very helpful in such cases. (Reconstruct the conversation as best as you can recall it.)
Examples of scripts can be found in Bolman and Deal. Read these carefully!
5. The end of your case description might pose a set of questions or unsolved problems.
(For example: What should I do now? What questions should I ask that may help solve
these problems?)
6. Prepare the analytical section of your paper later in the semester, as you begin to become
more comfortable with applying each of the four frames. The analytical section of your
paper asks you to do a four-frame analysis of your personal case situation. The purposes
of this analysis are to (1) provide opportunities for you to work with and integrate the
four frames as a useful tool for assessment and action, (2) integrate your learning from
the course and apply them to a real-life situation from your real-life, as-lived experience,
and (3) reflect on your own professional practice.
7. Use the structural, human resource, political, and symbolic frames to analyze what
alternative courses of action were suggested for you by each of the four frames. Look at
your case as deeply as possible through each of the four frames. Devote equal attention
to each of the four frames. In other words, do not spend, say, 8 pages on the HR frame
and 2 pages each on the structural, political and symbolic frames. This shows an
overbalance toward the HR frame. I will not measure your pages to calculate whether
you spent exactly the same number of words on each frame. I only ask that your
treatment of the case show equal attention to each frame. If you find yourself “running
out words” for one or another of the frames, then this may signal where your “blind spots”
are located. Your deepest learning about your own mindset will come from reflecting
more on these “blinds pots.”
8. Rethink your role in the case in light of the four-frame analysis. In other words, what, if
anything, would you now do differently if you could relive your personal case? Why?
How useful were the four frames in helping you to clarify alternative courses of action
for yourself in this case situation? Are there any issues in your case that are not covered
by the four frames?
Two cases in Bolman and Deal provide excellent examples of a detailed four-frame analysis.
Please study these two cases closely for clues on how to do your own analysis:
Chapter 16
Case of Cindy Marshall, pp. 280-93
Chapter 20
Case of Robert F. Kennedy High School, pp. 354-76
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In addition, there are many other cases in Bolman and Deal that cover one or more of the
frames. Read these as well, before doing your own case analysis:
Chapter 2
Korean Airlines Flight 007
Helen Demarco and the Osborne Plan
Chapter 3
McDonald’s and Harvard
Saturn
Asea Brown Boveri (ABB)
Microsoft and development of Windows NT
Citibank
Chapter 4
Michael Porter’s restructuring efforts at McGraw-Hill
Restructuring of Citibank’s “Back Room”
Kodak’s Black-and-White division
Beth Israel Hospital
Chapter 5
High-Performing Commando Unit
Saturn Corporation
Chapter 6
David Swanson and Proctor & Gamble
Ben Hamper – GM autoworker
Ewing Kauffman – Marion Labs
GM – Lordstown, Ohio plant
Chapter 7
David Owen – knitting mill in New Lanark, Scotland
Women painting dolls at the toy factory
T-groups
NUMMI
Chapter 8
Anne Barreta
Chapter 9
Challenger
Chapter 10
Microsoft – Paul Maritz and Dave Cutlet
The space shuttle Challenger revisited
Thomas Wyman lobbying in Washington, DC
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Chapter 11
Ross Johnson and Nabisco
Labor unions
The U.S. civil rights movement
School districts receiving grants for experimental programs
Apple and IBM
FedEx
Chapter 12
Carstedt and Volvo France
Rites of passage in the U.S. Congress
Chapter 13
The Polaris missile system
Project Redesign
Chapter 14
Data General Eagle Group
U.S. Air Force
Chapter 15
Dr. O’Keefe and the National Health Service Corporation
Chapter 17
Alfred Sloan and Roger Smith
Patricia Carrigan
Lee Iacocca
Martin Luther King
Ronald Reagan
Chapter 18
DDB Bank
Chapter 19
Southwest Airlines and Herb Kelleher
Aaron Feuerstein and Malden Mills
Criteria for Grading Final Paper
Your final exam paper will be graded on the following six criteria:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Thoroughness of assessment
Equal attention to all four frames
Clarity of organization
Precision in writing
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5. Effective use of readings to provide new insights
6. Depth of reflection into your own mindset and “ladder of inference.” For
example, you need to address questions such as:
ü ”How does my mindset or “ladder of inference” influence my
decisions, actions and results?”
ü “What aspects of my mindset or “ladder of inference” contribute to my
ability to lead transformation and what aspects of my mindset limit my
success?”
ü “How might I expand my ‘vision’ of what I can see in the
organization?”
Criterion number 6, “depth of reflection into your own mindset,” is the most important of the six
criteria and will be weighted most heavily in my assessment. Please weave self-reflection
throughout your paper rather than leave it for one section. The final exam will represent 60% of
your grade for the course.
Cautions
Five common errors in the past have included the following:
1. Trying to discuss every single aspect of the case. It is better to write thoroughly about a
few well-defined topics than superficially about many.
2. Making inferences and generalizations without providing data from the case to support
the generalizations, examples to help define them, or theory references to ground them.
For example, you might say that everyone in the case wanted "involvement" and
"participation" but how do you know that? What evidence do you have? What do you
mean by “involvement” and “participation”?
3. Ignoring the theorists presented in Bolman and Deal and writing only about your own
opinions. Good analytical papers take a set of theoretical ideas and show how those ideas
can be applied to your real-life case.
4. Ignoring your own interpretations and merely restating theories from Bolman and Deal.
Good papers use theory to support insights and cast a new light on personal experiences
and observations. Be sure to cite passages and theorists in Bolman and Deal that support
your own insights.
5. Presenting only superficial reflections on your own mindset.
Of the five common errors, number 5 is the one that will hurt you the most and, therefore, the
one that you should most strive to avoid!
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Process for Improving the Quality of Your Final Exam
Before you submit your final exam paper, please submit your paper to two of your cohort
colleagues for comments regarding clarity and content. Ask them to assess how well you meet
the following criteria:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Thoroughness of assessment
Equal attention to all four frames
Clarity of organization
Precision in writing
Effective use of readings to provide new insights
Depth of reflection into your own mindset and “ladder of inference.”
In an appendix, briefly (limit to two pages) describe the process, stating who read it, what they
said and how you responded. Including the appendix, therefore, the maximum number of pages
for your paper is 20. Do not exceed 20 pages. If the Appendix is not included, I will deduct onehalf letter grade from your final grade for the course.
Learning approach of this course
This course balances group dialogue, experiencing, and conceptualizing -- which are interrelated
processes. All three contribute to reinforcing each other; none should be slighted.
This course treats the cohort/class itself as an organization and uses what happens within the
cohort/class as important data whose analysis can enlighten and teach us.
This is a course on understanding and performing in complex organizations -- practice is a
central focus. This is not a course on memorizing organization theory or concepts.
Cohort/Class Participation
Cohort participation is critical because experiential work takes place during our regularly
scheduled sessions together. "Participation" and "attendance," however, are not synonymous. In
this course, participating is key to learning. The underlying principle of our educational
approach is simple: To profoundly understand something, one must experience it for oneself.
A corollary is that until one has tried to change something, one does not understand it. This
goes for one's mindset, too.
The social psychologist Kurt Lewis once said, “You cannot understand an organization unless
you try to change it. Lewin’s principle holds, we believe, for human systems as well. In other
words, “I cannot understand myself unless I try to change my own mindset.” My philosophy of
education is founded on creating a climate of psychological safety to meet this objective.
Together, our goal is to build the awareness and skills of participants through first-hand, highly
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challenging learning experiences. To the extent that this happens, it leaves participants feeling
that they have learned more deeply about themselves, their own mindsets, and those of others,
than ever before.
Regarding cohort/class dialogue, five characteristics of effective class participation are as
follows:
•
Do your comments show evidence of a thorough reading and analysis of Bolman and
Deal?
•
Do your comments take into consideration the ideas offered by others earlier in the
cohort? (The best cohort contributions following the leadoff tend to be those that reflect
not only excellent preparation, but also good listening, and interpretative and integrative
skills as well.)
•
Do you show a willingness to test new ideas or are all comments cautious and "safe"?
•
Are you willing to interact with other participants by asking questions or challenging
their conclusions in a respectful way?
Using these four criteria (and any others that you feel are relevant) submit a memo proposing and
justifying your final participation grade. List each of your criteria and provide a self-assessment
of how you did on each one. Maximum length is three typed double-spaced pages. I will
schedule a private feedback session with you at the end of the semester.
Grading
Grades will be determined as follows:
•
•
•
Group Project 30%
Class participation
Final Exam
10%
60%
Draft Outline of Course
Week 1
Introductions and Questions
Weeks 2-3
Readings: Preface; pp. 3-34; and pp. 377-380. (Read twice)
What is a “Mindset”?
Framing and Reframing Organizations
Your Frame Preferences
Relationship of Frames to Your Career
Chris Argyrols and the “Ladder of Inference”
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Weeks 4-6
Readings: pp. 37-211 (Read twice.)
The Human Resource Frame
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Meg Wheatley: “It’s All Relationship”
Experiential Exercise: Who is in My Network?
Weeks 7-8
Reading: pp. 265-380 (Read twice)
The Political Frame
Experiencing a “Power Lab”: Top, Middle, and Bottom
The Structural Frame
“Modern Times” and Scientific Management
Week 9
Presenting your Group’s Two-Frame Analysis
Week 10-11
The Symbolic Frame
The Language of Symbolic Leadership: M. L. King
Understanding the Culture of Your Organization
Weeks 12-13 A Four-Frame Analysis of the Challenger Disaster
Leading Organization Change in the Public Sector
Stovepipes vs. Networks
Week 14-15
Summary and Review
Individual Participation Evaluation Meetings
NOTE: To help you do your two-frame analysis, please study closely the case of Cindy Marshall,
pp. 280-293 and the case of Robert F. Kennedy High School, pp. 354-76.
Self-assessment of class participation is due …….
Final Exam is due on, by 5 p.m. Do not forget the Appendix. If the Appendix is not
included, one-half letter grade will be deducted from your final grade.