Individual Organisational Problem Analysis

1. Guidelines

Context

Locally, nationally and internationally, there are many organisations whose success or failure has been determined at least in part by key organisational behaviour and people factors.

Success may not necessarily mean financial performance - it may mean that the organisation has effectively managed a "turnaround" of some sort (for example, a major change to ‘go green' following an environmental incident or to improve diversity following being labelled a biased or discriminatory employer.

Failure may not mean financial disaster - it may mean a loss of
trust with stakeholders, the presence of unethical behaviour or a damaging culture, or the loss of key talent (employees) to competitors.

There have been many examples in the media over the last five years. For example, culture, leadership, and motivation and reward systems were antecedents to Enron's failure, which had severe consequences for its stakeholders.

Tasks

1. Choose a real case of an organisation that successfully (or otherwise less than successfully) dealt with a particular problem or failure (must have occurred in the last 10 years) that has damaged the organisation in some way

2. Describe briefly what happened, the context, and the consequences for the organisation's stakeholders

3. Pick one relevant analytical framework (e.g., SWOT, PESTEL or stakeholder analysis) and provide a brief analysis of what happened

4. Building on the previous analysis, identify, analyse and discuss in more detail 2 to 3 organisational behaviour (OB) factors that contributed to the problem/failure. These may be individual, group or organisational level factors

5. After having conducted the problem analysis, (a) describe what the organisation did to achieve success or post-failure to address the problem and/or prevent a reoccurrence of the problem, and (b) evaluate the effectiveness of the organisation's response to the failure

6. After having evaluated the organisation's response to the failure encountered, make recommendations for what could have been done better and/or moving forward in response to the OB issues identified in the beginning. In making these recommendations, it is important to be pragmatic and specific (i.e. make recommendations that are viable and within the organisation's capacity to implement).

7. Referencing:

a) Include a minimum of 10 journal articles

b) Referencing has to adhere the Academy of Management referencing style (note: the guideline is available on BlackBoard in the Assessment Section)

8. Writing a Report:

a) The report has to be 2500 words (+/- 10%). Assignments below/exceeding the word limit in excess of 10% will be penalised.

b) Appendices and references are not included in the word count. However, you cannot assume that appendicised materials will be read in detail

c) Please include a word count on the front page of your assignment 

Choosing a Case:

1. The organisational failure/problem must have occurred in the last 10 years.

2. It is recommended that you choose a case where the failure was of considerable magnitude. That is, the failure caused some kind of harm to one or more of the organisation's stakeholders (e.g. employees, customers, shareholders, suppliers, the community, the organisation's board, etc.).

3. You may NOT analyse any case that has been discussed in class nor may you derive your analysis from an existing case study.

4. Beyond these requirements, the choice of case is at your discretion. You are expected to select a case that you are familiar with (e.g., from personal experience or through network).

o Note: All 'personal' case information will be treated as private and confidential. If you undertake primary research within an organisation or use material that is not publicly available you need to contact your lecturer or course-coordinator for instructions on how to adhere to the UQ Business School's ethical guidelines for data collection.

When Conducting an Analysis, Making an Evaluation, and Providing Recommendations:

1. Apply relevant models, concepts, theories and literature in the field of organisational behaviour.

2. You are expected to incorporate relevant research and theory from the broader organisational behaviour literature (e.g., journal articles and/or books), not just the text and course materials

3. Conduct desk research to obtain information and/or data and examples to illustrate and support your analysis, evaluation and recommendations (e.g., media reports, interviews, independent investigation reports, organisational reports, etc.)