Scenario: You are a department head and you just learned that your small, start-up, privately-owned company has been bought out by another publicly held company. You are told that everyone in the small private company will need to go back through interviewing with the new company, and that everyone will need to compete for and rejustify their employment in their current position. You have been told that YOUR job will remain intact if you are able to smoothly guide your flock through the change, help your people in creating resumes and preparing for interviews, and also in creating job descriptions for each of the positions in your department, justifying while doing so the existence of those positions. You will need to bring on board immediately all of your direct reports to assist you in this project. You are not to let anyone under that level know about this situation for at least a month, at which time you will be setting things in place for the new structure. You will be judged on the smoothness of the implementation of these new processes, meeting timelines and deadlines, ensuring confidentiality until the time stated, and also on the number of employees (%) who remain as viable candidates for their old jobs.

The question: This term, we studied organizational development theory versus the more systematic nStep method of conducting a change process. What would be the pros/cons of using OD theory for this change project? What would be the pros/cons of using nStep? Which nStep method would you use for this change scenario and why? Of the two methods (nStep and OD), which would you recommend we use for this particular change program? Why?