¾«¶«´«Ã½app

In response to ongoing social, political, economic, environmental, legal and technological disruptions and demands, contemporary organisations regardless of their size, type or sector, must be prepared to continually adapt and change in order to maintain legal compliance, sustainability and ultimately viability. To achieve such adaptability, organisations require innovative and skilled change managers. However, as once traditionally thought, this responsibility for change is no longer left to a select minority of change champions within the organisation. Moreover, it is becoming increasingly important for managers and supervisors at every level in the organisation to possess the necessary skills to analyse the organisational environment and be able to select and utilise appropriate change management processes and strategies. In this capacity, managers need to have the expertise to facilitate the people providing talent to the organisation, to accept and engage with the imperative to change, in order for the organisation to survive and thrive.

Students enrolled in this course are exposed to the theories and concepts of organisational change with an overarching objective of examining the forms change can take, why and how change occurs, and how its complexities can be managed. Students will analyse the range of different dynamics that are in play when change occurs, such as the scale of change and the type of change, which influences decisions about selecting an appropriate change intervention. To this end, students will evaluate the merits of the `planned approach' to organisational change and various management change interventions. The learning in this course extends to the processes involved in managing change, including the important task of carrying out system diagnostics and dealing with resistance and challenges to change in order to achieve meaningful and timely change.

The course is arranged on three tiers, with exploration of change conducted at the individual, group and organisation-wide levels of analysis. Personal adaptation to change features earlier in the course, before the focus shifts to the broader organisation context as the course unfolds. This latter aspect of the course considers examples of organisational change and development interventions which are included to give students skills in applying specific change programs.

On successful completion of this course students should be able to:

1. describe the context for organisational change and the complex demands that such changes impose;
2. critically evaluate different models or approaches to planned change and the systems approach to diagnosis at the three levels of organisational functioning;
3. analyse the reasons for resistance to change and examine solutions for resolving the challenges that such opposition creates for leaders of change programs;
4. critically discuss ‘interventions’ as they apply to an organisational change context, and the broader issue relating to measuring and evaluating change programs;
5. develop an artefact (such as a policy, report, account, portfolio or written advice) for an organisational stakeholder that showcases the effective application of a dimension of organisational change theory;
6. work independently to research, examine and evaluate ideas from a variety of credible sources for the purpose of creating a scholarly script to fulfil the requirements of written assessment.