Organizational Development for Hightowers Petroleum Company Case Study

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City of Carlsbad has a population of 75,000 people that was just rising from the recession. The recession had been the worst in the city's history. The city decided to reorganize and adopt an organizational structure similar to those of businesses (Cummings & Worley, 2014). They decided to adopt functional organization. The department of public works was brought to a structure represented by the exhibit below after consolidating 6 departments that had been previously autonomous.

Results of interviews of employees reveal that job satisfaction has increased. However, 'fear' has risen, given the fact that employees were not adequately involved in the reorganization. Many of the employees say that their opinion was not sought during the reorganization. Other problems that could arise include the City Engineer preferentially treating workers, lack of teamwork due to high cohesion in the individual teams, and performance problems because the roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined.

Despite these potential challenges, the various stakeholders took the changes positively as the view was that they were done in the best interest of the city.

Question 2

Because of the suspicions of the employees concerning what might have motivated the changes, their participation should be sought. They should be empowered. Feedback should be sought from them and the reasons for any changes made should be made clear to them. They should be encouraged to expand the cohesiveness shown within the department across the board.

Ways of assisting employees to feel appreciated should also be sought. The employees should also be provided information so that they may appreciate the roles played by the various departments in the city to ensure a stronger workforce. Because the public works department plays a huge role in the city, I will seek to determine how service delivery in the department can be made better. To eliminate redundancies in the various departments, I will utilize the Matrix Structure (Cummings & Worley, 2014).

Question 3

Because of the lack of cohesiveness, trust, and teamwork among the individual teams, one has to find interventions that emphasize the significance of teamwork.

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Commitment and trust has to be built in the teams for the entire department. Some of the interventions that will be sought are discussed below.

Process Consultation and Team Building

The focus of this intervention is social dynamics and interpersonal relations taking place in various work groups. In such an intervention, the practitioner assists the members of the group to diagnose the functioning of the groups, and thus determine what solutions can be applied to improve the work environment. This helps avoid future conflict. It is internally generated and so it has a better chance of being effective and accepted.

Because of the recent formation of the teams, the practitioner has to strive to better the cohesiveness of the teams through having them engage in team building activities. By doing this, the members of the various teams shall know one another; this will lead to better cooperation among the teams as they strive to accomplish the tasks assigned to them. This ought to involve outlining of roles of team members, as well as the strategies to be applied in carrying out the tasks (Cummings & Worley, 2014).

Third Party Intervention

In solving the problems of interpersonal relations existent in the organization, a third party intervention would be highly useful. Third party intervention brings fresh eyes and allows those who feel aggrieved or misrepresented to air their problems freely. This will ensure that the motive of the merger is explained by a neutral party in a non-biased manner, as the third party stands to gain nothing from the reorganization (Cummings & Worley, 2014).

Goal Setting in Large-Group Interventions

The Public Works Department, it has been communicated, lacked clear strategies. Specifically, they were deficient in objectives, goals and policies.

It is therefore necessary that clear goals are set so that the effectiveness of the organization is improved. This allows for a better balance between organization….....

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