The University of Adelaide Business School

Telephone: 08 83132066

patrick.dawson@adelaide.edu.au

1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the main concepts, models and frameworks of change management and innovation, and their practical application.
2. Explicate the key human dimensions and drivers of change.
3. Demonstrate the core skills of case study appraisal.
4. Explicate the complex processes associated with change and innovation. 

Details of additional readings are available via MyUni and in resource folder.

The MBA program is largely undertaken through face-to-face class sessions to facilitate interactions between the Lecture in Charge and fellow students. Accordingly there is an expectation that you will attend all of the scheduled classes. If work commitments, illness or other circumstances require you to be absent from some classes, please inform your Lecture in Charge in advance by either phone or email so that you may discuss the topic(s) to be covered in the class session and the tasks you need to complete before the next session.

It is your responsibility to make arrangements with the Lecture in Charge to catch up on any information that you might have missed.

The course runs over 6 alternative days in Summer School. There are 12 three hour sessions run on each of the six days. The course comprises lectures, seminars, team presentations, workshop activities, video and case study analyses and guest speakers (possible field visit). There will be a critical evaluative piece, group project work and an individual written assignment - see Learning Activities Summary for more details.

Critical Evaluative Piece:

Students are required to submit a critical evaluative piece (1200 words) on a change concept, model or framework. You should:

• Identify a concept, model, framework or theory in which you have an interest
• Summarize and critically evaluate, which includes:
  • Explaining concept, model or theory
  • Assessing weaknesses and strengths
  • Identifying and discussing potential areas for future development
• Conclude

Written Assignment

Students need to: Provide an assessment of the change kaleidoscope as a diagnostic tool for managing change.  Each student is expected to submit a written assignment. Each assignment must be individually prepared and consist of no more than 2000 words (the 2000 words does not include any tables, diagrams, the bibliography and any appendices). You must also include a full bibliography following the Harvard referencing style. There are a number of guidelines available (see the web). If you are using referencing software, such as EndNote choose the style Sage Harvard. Alternatively you can either use the British system (where reference at the end has the author name and initials in Capitals) or the American (where not in capitals). There has been a useful guide for Education students at the University of Aberdeen in pdf format that you may wish to refer to at URL:

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/documents/guides/edu/ugedu010.pdf

Make sure that you follow normal citation conventions in preparing your coursework by citing the ideas or data of others at the point in your coursework where these ideas and data are included. Anyone who is unsure about citation should speak to the course leader.

Project Presentation

Presentations will be made to peers during the afternoon on day 5 of scheduled activities. Each group presentation will be between 20-30 minutes excluding time for questions. A suitable electronic slide show (e.g. power-point or prezi) should be prepared in support of the presentation.

The group project work task is to: Identify and describe an innovation of your choice and then to consider whether there are any implications of this innovation for theory development.

1. Identify an innovation of your choice (any form of innovation can be chosen, for example, from those that are well known historical examples through to the more obscure and largely unknown innovations).
   1. Summarise the innovation (background information/nature of innovation)
   2. Assess the import of the innovation for society, organizations, people
2. Identify concepts, models or theories (field of organizational change/innovation) that help explain key aspects of this innovation, for example:
   1. Emergence and development
   2. Impact on society/organizations
   3. Process and outcomes
3. Discuss the extent to which concepts/models/theories align or not, that is:
   1. Do they help to explain?
   2. What areas do they fail to explain?
4. Evaluate implications for concept/model/theory development and conclude

Making the link between a practical example of an innovation and theory is the key learning and challenging part of the task. The main output from the project will be an A4 summary of key findings and a 20-30 minute presentation.

To gain a pass for this course, as student must achieve at least 50% overall with a minimum of 45% for the weighted average of all individual components. Students not achieving this requirement will have a fail (F) recorded as their final grade.