Family Of Origin Influence On Workplace Dynamics: A Qualitative Study, Megan E. Malave

Theses and Dissertations

This study delves into the intricate interplay between Family of Origin influences and the professional practice of Organizational Development (OD) practitioners. Rooted in the recognition that Family of Origin experiences significantly shape individual perspectives and behaviors, this research investigates how OD practitioners leverage this understanding to navigate complex workplace dynamics. Grounded in the Use of Self framework, which emphasizes intentional utilization of one's complete being for enhanced effectiveness, this study explores the multifaceted connections between Family of Origin dynamics and common relational aspects such as leadership, influence, power, conflict, and belonging. Through qualitative analysis of OD practitioners' perspectives, the study …

An Examination Of Leading Through Change Using Snyder’S Hope Theory And Lewin’S 3-Step Model, Scott E. Sorensen

Theses and Dissertations

Never has the world experienced such rapid change, and the environment in which organizations operate necessitates increased change capability and organizational agility (Argyris, 1991). Strebel (1996) found success rates for change initiatives in Fortune 1000 companies ranged from a low of 20% to a high of 50%. Later studies would substantiate Strebel’s (1996) findings, claiming that, on average, failure rates of transformational change initiatives approach 70% (Beer & Nohria, 2000; Sirkin et al., 2005). Suppose this is so, and companies wish to thrive in such a dynamic environment. A fundamental understanding of why change efforts fail and how to drive …

Evaluating The Prevalence And Dimensions Of Poetry Interventions To Enable Change And Transformation In Organizations, Elizabeth Kathleen Mcgraw

Theses and Dissertations

Today, organizations and their employees operate in times of increased complexity, ambiguity, and constant change. Traditional methods for enabling change and transformation are no longer sufficient to generate alignment and shared understanding to create adaptive ways of working. Organizations must identify new tools when engaged in change and transformation. Poetry, a time-honored practice, is an unconventional choice for organizational interventions. Still, it may be a solution for organizations seeking to unstick, reframe, and pivot quickly toward a new and shared reality. This study evaluated the practice and dimensions of poetry interventions used by change practitioners when enabling change and transformation …

The Intersection Of Ethnic-Racial Identities And The Development Of Leadership Identity For Asian American Women Leaders And The Impact On Their Success, Nann Chan Chan Aye

Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the intersectionality of ethnic-racial identity and leadership identity in Asian American Women Leaders (AAWLs) in the United States and its potential impact on leadership success. Findings reveal that community, inclusivity, and growth are the elements that intersect the three pillars: ethnic-racial identity, leadership identity, and organizational climate/environment for AAWLs to embrace the ownership of collective leadership identity. AAWLs strongly desire to foster positive organizational cultures that value service, collaboration, trust, autonomy, diversity, and growth. Another prominent finding is the enthusiasm of AAWLs to share and pass down learnings and experiences through open dialogues and mentorship to fellow …

Strategies To Influence Meaning Creation To Address Resistance In A Change Initiative, Rebecca L. Escobar

Theses and Dissertations

Organizational change has been a constant and essential aspect of human societies for centuries, driving innovation and adaptability. However, despite the abundance of models and content on managing change, organizations still struggle to implement and sustain effective transformations. This research aims to address this challenge by exploring strategies to create meaning and address resistance during transformational change. The research will employ a qualitative approach, conducting 15 interviews to capture participants' experiences and strategies in influencing meaning creation during change initiatives. The data collected will be transcribed, coded, categorized, and analyzed for themes, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of the strategies …

Shifting Institutional Paradigms To Ignite Organizational Equity Amongst African American Professionals, Michael Fountain

Theses and Dissertations

African Americans can become discontented with their jobs and even consider resigning due to workplace anxiety. This quantitative study among African American business professionals in the U.S. highlighted the critical factors that foster positive working environments and organizational equity for African American professionals. The researcher focused on increasing an organization's effectiveness through managing diversity, allowing employees to feel inclusivity, and being part of a team. As a result, there will be happier, satisfied, and committed workers, thereby increasing the level of knowledge in the workforce while reducing expenses. This study analyzed conflict management, cultural diversity, marginalized employee emotions, teamwork, and …

Exploring Disc Attitudes Toward Organizational Change, Christie Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

This quantitative study explored how different personality styles, using the dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance (DISC) personality assessment to address the concept of change. Specifically, the attitudes the four main DISC personality styles have toward change. The study aimed to contribute to the body of knowledge. There is a significant gap in the empirical research investigating DISC and change.

This study’s significance was to fill a gap in the literature in an area that has limited empirical research conducted. European and Asian countries do far more work on the front-side of change to ensure people are prepared for the change …

An Application Of Lewin In A Trans-Pandemic World: A Narrative Inquiry In A Case Study With A Suggested Model For The Future, Chandler Barksdale Ewell Caldwell

Theses and Dissertations

Change is constant in today’s post-pandemic world. This is truly evident in online business success with entrepreneurs that defy past limitations and rely on future vision. This study purposely attempts to identify and qualify the impact of stylized change focused leadership in response to workplace changes during the variant challenges of the corona virus pandemic. The relevancy of Lewin’s organizational change model in today’s new normal provides the foundation for this research. Data were gathered through interview with a purposive sample of 12 managers executives and team members from a public sector organization. Evolving through an iterative process of evaluation …

Autonomy And Coordination: A Field Study, Jessica Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations

With an emerging remote and dispersed workforce that is consequently more autonomous, OD professionals will need to understand how autonomy relates to coordination to help organizations adapt and be effective. The purpose of this study was to understand the relationship between team member autonomy and inter-team coordination in organizations. The manager-team participants in this study spanned eleven industries, including 22 teams from 15 companies. The researcher took a mixed-method approach using interviews and surveys to assess autonomy and coordination. The research resulted in five variables: three variables measured coordination and two variables measured autonomy. Autonomy and coordination were significantly and …

Overcoming The Space Between Us: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach To Bridge Building, Kate Hanisian

Theses and Dissertations

Facilitators in organization and community contexts (and other practitioners whose job it is to move groups of people forward together) are faced with the undercurrent of human conflict every day in meetings and gatherings around the world; often with limited access to an overarching tool to help prevent and manage conflict in most settings. The purpose of this paper was to uncover patterns in bridge building practices so that anyone who finds themselves in the role of facilitating conversations between people who are very different or do not like each other might lean into a set of practices that can …

Tracking The Legacy Of "Inner-City" Catholic Schools: An Analysis Of U.S. Elementary Catholic School Organizational And Demographic Data, Andrew F. Miller, Annie Smith, Kierstin M. Giunco, Audrey A. Friedman, Myra Rosen-Reynoso, Charles T. Cownie Iii

Journal of Catholic Education

Over the past twenty years, Catholic elementary schools that self identify as “inner-city” have closed at a higher rate than Catholic schools in other locations. These schools have also long been associated with a legacy of effectively serving low-income students, students of color, and recent immigrant students, suggesting that the persistent closure of these schools may have a negative impact on these communities. In this paper, we set out to assess the extent to which there have been demographic or organizational changes over the past twenty years in these “inner-city” schools. We found that while these schools do still serve …

Navigating Conflict During Periods Of Change In Higher Education: Deconstructing Academic Leaders’ Construction Of Meaning, Tyler Guy Olson

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Navigating departmental and organizational conflict is an essential function and responsibility of an academic unit leader (dean, associate dean, director, or chair) in higher education institutions (HEIs). During periods of organizational change, conflict tends to increase in complexity and difficulty—in part due to resistance to change—making it more difficult to manage in a constructive manner (Marcus, 2014). Much of the literature that looks at the academic unit leader and conflict focuses on personal conflict styles (or modes), types of conflicts encountered, and training on techniques and skills for conflict resolution and management. Missing from the literature is research that examines …

Review: Implementing Excellence In Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion: A Handbook For Academic Libraries, Lalitha Nataraj

Communications in Information Literacy

Review of Lee, C., & Lym, B. (Eds.). (2022). Implementing excellence in diversity, equity, and inclusion: A handbook for academic libraries. Association of College and Research Libraries.

Strategic Changes In Nonprofit Service Delivery Arising From The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Mixed-Methods Study, Gregory A. Smith

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

The organizational environment that emerged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic was essentially a new phenomenon. The extent to which public charities were transformed for the long term, and the nature of enduring changes that they adopted, were not immediately clear. This study employed mixed methods—specifically, an explanatory sequential design—to assess and describe service delivery changes that occurred among nonprofits with offices in Virginia’s piedmont region. An online survey was administered to 175 nonprofit leaders (mostly chief executives and service/program officers). Specific kinds of change were grouped into 8 dependent variables, with some being defined a priori and others …

Organizational Change In The Workplace During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Takeisha Shante Miles

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Failed change initiatives continuously plagued organizations throughout time, mainly because of the complexities involving the response to change. Researchers studied to understand the cause and effect of failed change efforts. The type of change often notes as a precursor to the kind of response, while the resistance to change was a catalyst to the 70% rate of failed change initiatives (Burnes & Jackson, 2011; Maheshwari & Vohra, 2015). Organizational change initiatives become further complicated, involving a crisis. This qualitative multiple case study included the phenomenon of unsuccessful change proposals during a crisis, its implications on job satisfaction and employee resistance, …

Moderated Mediation Research - The Impact Of Organizational Change Capability On Organizational Engagement - The Role Of Organizational Trust And Leadership Style, Jin Liang

Fordham Dissertations and Theses

With the rapid development of emerging technologies, representative by *ABCDMIX, disruption brought by the innovation is rampant across industries: competition boundaries have become blurred, cross-border penetration between industries is ubiquitous, and many established enterprises’ business models have been shaken. Despite the adaptive adjustments made by organizations, most corporations are still struggling to get out of this predicament.

The failure of a mature enterprise’s adjustments is often attributed to the belief that the corporation's strategy was wrongly formulated, or that the strategy’s positive direction was undermined due to the rigid nature of the organization. It is important to consider what exactly …

The Effect Of Organizational Change On Organizational Commitment, Ali Sukru Cetinkaya, Shafiq Habibi

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

Change is an ongoing process of renewing the structures, directions, and capabilities of the organizations to adapt to the variable needs of customers, employees, and the marketplace. Thus, organization needs to change in order to stay in the market. Change process will be smoothed by employee’s commitment. There is a strong need to examine the effects of organizational change on organizational commitment. In this quantitative research, survey technique was used as a data collection tool. It employs the scale developed by Meyer and Allen (2004) for organizational commitment. Items used for organizational change have been adapted from scales created by …

Competency-Based Social Work Education: 25 Years Of Innovation & Leadership, Zoë Breen Wood, Marjorie N. Edguer, David L. Hussey, Mark Chupp, Grover C. Gilmore, Paul M. Kubek

Faculty Scholarship

The white paper chronicles the 25-year history of one graduate school of social work’s efforts in competency-based curriculum innovation. The authors argue that curriculum change is organizational change and share their experiences with a variety of curriculum assessment, design, and delivery efforts. Beginning with the development of the first social work competencies (labeled Abilities), pioneering efforts in assessment and holistic curricular design and delivery are reviewed. A new, one-semester, social work generalist curriculum is introduced. Emphasis is placed on the importance of developing a competency-based curriculum that is integrated both horizontally and vertically and that engages the social work student …

The Yin And Yang Of Equity-Centered Philanthropy, Douglas Easterling, Laura Mcduffee, Sabina Gesell

The Foundation Review

Foundations face two competing imperatives when they commit to advancing equity. On the one hand, they are counseled to support and follow the lead of community-based groups that are on the front lines of social change. On the other hand, they are also being challenged to use their power and influence to act boldly to change inequitable structures, policies, and institutions. These two orientations, yin and yang, can take a foundation in different directions and thus cause confusion and internal conflict.

The challenge for a foundation is to balance and integrate the two orientations into a comprehensive and effective approach …

Meaning-Mating And Hyphenated Actualizing In Individual-Organization Units: Lived Experiences Of Organization Development Practitioners Learning And Carrying Out The Philosophy Of Organization Development, Brian Lee Chapman

Business Administration Dissertations - Archive

Individuals have been organizing for millennia. The purpose of this study was to investigate what it means for individuals and organizations to each experience how an exposure to the instrumentalized philosophies of one impacts the internalized philosophies of the other. This phenomenological investigation focused on the lived experiences of Organization Development (OD) practitioners with learning and carrying out the philosophy of OD. Individual conversations with six participants during fourteen separate interview sessions were phenomenologically carried out, analyzed, and interpreted. The experiences articulated during these conversations elucidate two concepts not found during the literature review – meaning-mating and hyphenated actualization. These …

Meaning-Mating And Hyphenated Actualizing In Individual-Organization Units: Lived Experiences Of Organization Development Practitioners Learning And Carrying Out The Philosophy Of Organization Development, Brian Lee Chapman

Public Affairs Dissertations - Archive

Individuals have been organizing for millennia. The purpose of this study was to investigate what it means for individuals and organizations to each experience how an exposure to the instrumentalized philosophies of one impacts the internalized philosophies of the other. This phenomenological investigation focused on the lived experiences of Organization Development (OD) practitioners with learning and carrying out the philosophy of OD. Individual conversations with six participants during fourteen separate interview sessions were phenomenologically carried out, analyzed, and interpreted. The experiences articulated during these conversations elucidate two concepts not found during the literature review – meaning-mating and hyphenated actualization. These …

Improving Sexual Violence Reporting In Higher Education Institutions, Karen D. Kennedy Ms

The Dissertation in Practice at Western University

Abstract

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) addresses the lack of sexual violence (SV) reporting at an undergraduate university (Coastal U; a pseudonym) where values of equity, diversity, and inclusion are espoused. Nonetheless, students from diverse cultures at Coastal U report a lack of visibility, unclear pathways for reporting, poor student and staff education, and numerous reporting fears, culminating in a lack of SV reporting. A critical and intersectional feminist lens frames this issue as one of social injustice, wherein inequity and lack of inclusion are problematic. Institutional context, capacity, and readiness, together with consideration of external factors, led to three …

Design Strategies For Resilient Organization, Ida Telalbasic, Sotiris Lalaounis, Sylvia Xihui Liu

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The chairs' introductory editorial for the theme track 'Design Strategies for Resilient Organization'.

Systemic Design's Guidelines To Implement Organizational Change, Caterina Rosini, Silvia Barbero

DRS Biennial Conference Series

: In the future, organisations must face sudden changes and increase competitiveness. Firms need to have resources and competencies to set a strategic advantage in the business context to survive. This paper describes two management models used to define strategy and implement benefits for the firm and compares them with a systemic framework and the Systemic Design Approach. The comparison highlights the necessity to analyse organisations considering their complexity in terms of resources and interactions between spheres and roles. This evidence led us to sustain that Systemic Design can provide a better approach to organisational complexity and could be able …

Exploring Restorative Justice As An Adaptable Resolution For Gender-Based Misconduct, Jessica D. Naidu

M.A. in Higher Education Leadership: Action Research Projects

Restorative justice, an approach to harm rooted in Indigenous culture, asks three central questions: 1) What is the harm? 2) Who is impacted? 3) How can we repair it? This is a vastly different approach to most criminal justice procedures that instead seek to determine who broke what rule and how they should be punished. Although a modern resurgence of restorative justice has exploded across college campuses, higher education has been slow to adopt the approach for relationship violence and sexual harm. In this study, victim advocates, conduct professionals, and university administrators at the University of San Diego participated in …

Accelerating Onboarding, Koheun Lee

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project involved the research and development of an onboarding revision action plan for a multinational company based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia that’s been operating globally since 2011. The purpose of the project was to conduct research on how to optimize and accelerate the onboarding process for a company that’s had to pivot to working with consultants and working remotely in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic in the past couple years. The project aimed to create an onboarding “kit” of sorts to be handed over to a People & Culture hire to implement, but ended up taking the form …

The Adaptation And Innovation Model Of Organizational Resilience, Daniel Desa

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

The present study was designed to broaden the way researchers and practitioners of the organizational sciences conceptualize, measure, and ultimately work to improve the adaptability, innovativeness, and resilience of organizations. This involved identifying how to measure and delineate the relationships between the interlinked multilevel psychosocial constructs of organizational adaptability, innovativeness, and resilience and the individual and organizational level resources of personal resources, human capital, social capital, and job-related resources as components to a conceptual model of organizational effectiveness coined The Adaptation and Innovation Model of Organizational Resilience, or AIR model. A survey was developed and administered to operationalize worker perceptions …

Toward Institutionalizing Successful Innovations In The Academy, Sarah B. Wise, Courtney Ngai, Joel Christopher Corbo, Mark A. Gammon, Jaclyn K. Rivard, Clara E. Smith

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Due to the “wicked problem” of the Academy’s resistance to innovation, new teaching and learning programs struggle to become integrated into the fabric of the Academy, which slows the uptake of evidence-based practices. This wicked problem is rooted in the lack of slow, intentional mechanisms for cultural change in the Academy. In this article, we analyze the institutionalization journey of the Departmental Action Team (DAT) project, which is a model for slow, intentional change. Over the last four years, partnering with two campus centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) allowed the DAT project to make institutionalization progress.

This analysis is …

The Flowerings Project: A Library In Transformation, Jody Condit Fagan, Joanne V. Gabbin, Bethany Nowviskie, Lauren K. Alleyne, Aaron Noland

Libraries

This final report from the JMU Libraries and Furious Flower Poetry Center to the Mellon Foundation describes in detail the activities undertaken as part of a 2020-2021 planning grant, “Furious Flowerings: Developing a Partnership Model for Digital Library Support of a Living Center for Black Poetry,” funded by the Mellon Foundation. The grant explored and developed a partnership model for integrated library support of a living, academic center for the arts with archival, scholarly, digital, educational, and performance components. Nine key areas were addressed, including three overarching areas: development of cultural competencies, exploring how an exemplar project can be used …

Frequent Top Leadership Transitions And Their Effect On Followers: The Moderating Roles Of Followership Characteristics And Organizational Culture, William Butler

Dissertations

Modern for-profit, large businesses are often organized as a collection of business units, with each unit having a top leader responsible for the unit’s results. While there is much literature about CEO transitions, there is scant literature about leadership transitions at an individual business unit level. Moreover, there is no literature concerning frequent leadership transitions at this level. This study developed and validated a new measure to assess employee perceptions of top leadership transition frequency. To measure employee reactions to perceived top leadership transition frequency, the EVLN scale was utilized. This study identified that employee Exit or Neglect are likely …