BA 712: Organizational Development

Overview

This course addresses the need for planned change focused on an organization’s ability to compete over the long term. It addresses individual, team, and organization-wide interventions that can raise productivity/quality, improve competitiveness, increase skills, improve morale, and renew commitment to employee involvement. It will incorporate both the scientific and systems perspective in the use of behavioral science knowledge. In addition, students will compare and appreciate inquiry with the standard problem-solving approach as they learn about a variety of models, methods, and tools.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Develop both a historical and current perspective of organization development theory: the evolution of organization development, seminal works of theory and research, how theoretical perspectives have or continue to impact organization development practice, and to understand the application of theoretical findings in a business enterprise.
• Review, analyze, and integrate the major theoretical underpinnings of organization development to help understand how these theories contribute to managerial strategies necessary for meeting the needs of the organization, the shareholders, customers and the business community.
• Analyze the current body of knowledge of organization development research pertaining to technology, globalization and application of such findings in the current business environment.
• Apply research theories and identify methodological insights in beginning to build individual annotated bibliographic citations for use in the doctoral program.
• Identify applicable seminal research, theory, and/or methods, particularly action research, from this course relevant to individual research question(s); and contribute to the field of study by extending previous knowledge.

Required Texts
BA 712 texts are available from the JIU/MBS bookstore