Discussion Instructions: Review the readings about the change process Then consider the following departmental change: A materials manager suspects that the quality of work within her department has been deteriorating. She wants to introduce a program of change to advance quality so she decides to take the following steps: a.benchmark externally to define the current level of in-house quality performance and pertinent metrics to assess quality performance; b.set up a quality improvement team comprised of representatives of the workers who have hands-on experience and skills in handling different materials; the team should have no management people; c.define team objectives; d.specify time and resources constraints; e.hire external consultants to offer ideas of best practices in materials handling, but only if the team makes little progress over a reasonable period of time; f.support the team recommendations and make resources available for its implementation; g.recognize and reward team achievements; and h.regularly monitor quality performance thereafter.

Discussion Questions: Afer reviewing the departmental change above, make an initial and reply posts for the following questions: 1.How do these steps compare to the steps in your readings? 2.Did the materials manager follow all the steps in your readings? 3.What do you think will be the consequences, if any, of not following those steps, if any, that you think the manager ignored? 4.Where do you agree or disagree with the manager's plan of action? 5.What would you have done differently? 6.Do you think that all of steps in your readings apply to every organizational change?