Course: Assignment: Due Date: PSY 2600 – I-O Psychology Group HW 4 – Organizational Change November 1, 2020 READ THIS FIRST This is the team assignment for PSYC 2600 chapter 8. Thorough instructions are provided for each question. Also, all the information you need to respond to the questions or prompts in this assignment are provided either in the scenario below or in the course materials (textbook and lecture notes). Note that each question also has a suggestion for how much time you should spend crafting your response. These are only suggestions meant to help you manage your time and effort. You might spend more or less time than suggested on any given question. I suggest about 2 hours to complete this assignment. Scenario (READ THIS SECOND) 10 min O.K. Boomer Consulting is a mid-sized consulting firm currently organized in terms of the different industries it serves. That means there are work-groups dedicated to the following industries: insurance, healthcare, energy, manufacturing, and technology. There are also some departments that are more functional in nature: finance, marketing, operations, and human resources. Usually, consulting teams include about 7 analysts that report to a lead consultant. Each industry sector has about 10 lead consultants that report to an industry lead. The industry leads report to the chief of operations, who reports to the CEO, along with 10 other executives. Karen McManager, the CEO, has noticed some worrying trends. With shifting marketplaces, she worries the current structure of the firm won’t allow for flexible deployment of consulting teams. Consultants and analysts are not cross-trained in different industries and the different groups engage in political games to secure the best consulting talent. In a recent company meeting, Karen shared her concerns and charismatically sold employees on the need for change. She also laid out her strategic vision to re-align the organization according to the services it provides (management consulting, data analytics, HR consulting, etc.) instead of along industries served. Anticipating funding issues, Karen made certain to get board approval for sufficient budget for the change initiative. She also polled internal leadership to get a sense of the obstacles she might face and made plans to overcome them. Soon after the company-wide meeting, Karen released the new team rosters, office assignments, and new team leads. She also released new stationary for each of the teams and marketing materials for them. Despite everything being planned out and Karen’s efforts to both overcome obstacles and put new institutional language in place to support the change, it has been a massive failure. O.K. Boomer Consulting is facing the possibility of losing a great deal of its top talent, including people who were meant to be new team leads, to rival consulting firms. That’s when she reached out to your team, experts in I/O Psychology. For this assignment, you will submit this planning document and a short professional e-mail about 1 to 1.5 single-spaces page in length summarizing your assessment and recommendations. Remember, the email is a professional communication, just explain your analysis and recommendations. You don’t need to teach Karen what the Kotter change model is. Organizational Structure 40 min A good place to start when facing a new consulting project is to understand the system in which you’ll be working. Briefly summarize the organizational structure of O.K. Boomer using classical and structural theory as appropriate. Pay particular attention to the challenges that structure places in terms of the demands coming from market in which O.K. Boomer Consulting is competing and in terms of the change McManager wants to put in place. Finally, make some recommendations for what O.K. Boomer Consulting’s new structure should look like. [This should take about half of a page, single-spaced.] [Write your answers here] Assessing Change Efforts 40 min Go back and review McManager’s work in trying to lead the organizational change herself, using either Lewin’s or Kotter’s change model as appropriate. What did she do well? What aspects of change management did she not do well? How would those explain the lack of success in her change efforts (make sure you suggest actual mechanisms; e.g., failing to enlist a volunteer army likely limits the communication necessary to lead a change effort and overly concentrates the management efforts in only a few people). [This should take about half of a page, single-spaced.] [Write your answers here] Recommendations Ultimately, your job is not just to assess what has gone wrong. You’re getting paid to make recommendations. Use Kotter’s approach to change management to suggest improvements to McManager’s plans. [This should take about half of a page, single-spaced.] [Write your answers here] 40 min …