<p>Federal healthcare reform has been a major driver for the widespread shift towards high-quality, value-based care at healthcare organizations in the United States. With increased emphasis on quality and value in healthcare, process and performance improvement have been identified and capitalized upon as methods by which to achieve higher quality clinical outcomes, increase patient safety and satisfaction and improve care coordination. For past several decades, lean management and related doctrines and principles have been widely adopted among healthcare organizations in the United States for process and performance improvement purposes. This business plan proposes a lean management consulting firm for healthcare organizations of all sizes and delivery models in the Greater Los Angeles area with a mission to deliver state-of-the-art lean education and training to management and staff of all backgrounds and roles. The aim of the proposed firm is to train, develop and empower its clients to ensure continuous quality improvement and eventually become one of the biggest lean consulting players in the market. </p>

<p> Employee volunteering and service learning programs both enable large numbers of individuals to work together to address some of the most challenging problems in our world today. A large volume of academic research exists on service learning and much less academic research has been done on employee volunteering; there is very little research that connects these two fields. Student volunteers report developing skills in areas such as problem solving and decision making, the same skills employees require to be successful on their jobs. This inquiry combines lessons from volunteer narratives, input from volunteer professionals, and existing volunteer and service learning theories to create recommendations for improving employee volunteer experiences. </p><p> Narrative method was chosen for this study to capture the lived experiences of the two types of volunteers and their impact on the nonprofits they serve. Three case studies were created from narrative interviews with selected student and employee volunteers, and triangulated by interviews with nonprofit staff. Knowledge gained was crafted into case level and then cross case recommendations. Once developed, these recommendations were validated through a process of progressive analysis. The ultimate objective is to increase participation and improve outcomes for employee volunteers. When employee volunteering is well designed and well managed, the experiences can be beneficial to volunteers, their companies, and their communities.</p>

<p> The purpose of this research was to quantify and measure the success of a culture transformation. Using the Organization Cultural Assessment Instrument (OCAI) to determine the current and desired culture state, 272 employees responded to the survey. An executive focus group provided in-depth understanding of the culture and worked to align the culture to the mission and strategy as they drove the change process throughout the organization to the preferred culture state. The study showed that bringing cultural awareness to an organization is important, and that organization design is a key component to successful organizations. The Human Capital Return on Investment (HCROI) was calculated before, during, and after the culture change. Findings concluded that financial measurements aid in gauging the transformation process of a culture change. </p>

<p> Mind mapping is a communication tool that has been around for decades though it is rarely discussed as a tool for facilitating organizational change. It is possible for this underutilized communication tool and the ever-present challenge of organizational change to work in harmony on a more consistent basis. This exploratory research asked Change Leaders and Change Participants about their current mind mapping usage or experience, and requested their input on the use of mind mapping for organizational change efforts. There were 76 Change Leaders and 11 others who self-described themselves as Change Participants who responded to a virtual data collection process. Overall change readiness levels were predominantly at the moderate level, 37% of Change Leaders and 45% of Change Participants, an encouraging statistic for organizations considering change. Respondents reported that mind mapping is mostly used as a personal tool for organization, planning events, setting goals, and writing papers. Change Leaders (n=20) who reported using mind mapping professionally, commented they used it primarily for communication and collaboration, and project and systems planning and design. Specific practices included coaching, clarifying objectives, evaluating and monitoring projects, assessing lessons learned, redesigning curriculum, realigning resources, setting expectations, objectives and goals, and establishing timelines. One study conclusion was that these change practitioners understood how change is inevitable, and indicated their willingness to actively participate. This makes it important for organizations to capitalize on change participants&rsquo; knowledge and enthusiasm to enable successful change and enhance employee well-being. Concluding that attitudes, behaviors, and feelings toward change vary based on the role one plays, Change Leaders can benefit from the efforts of Change Participants by simply respecting their role and knowledge and involving them in the entire process, from planning to implementation. It is a foregone conclusion that communication is essential for any change process regardless of what specific tool is used, but the importance of selecting an appropriate method(s) based on the situation, message, and the recipients is critical. Using mind mapping as a change management tool specifically designed for certain aspects of organizational change is highly recommended, as it allows for both linear and non-linear communication. </p><p> <i>Keywords:</i> mind mapping, organizational change, Organizational Change Readiness Assessment, OCRA, visual communication</p>

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility of implementing an MBA Oath in a South African context for Business Professionals to utilise in their Professional careers, across industries within the economy. The idea of formulating and implementing an MBA Oath to shape the ethical outlook of Business Professionals graduating with MBA degrees was brought into existence at Harvard in 2009. This movement quickly spread throughout internationally acclaimed Universities garnering both widespread support and criticism. This paper will examine the topics relating to Business Ethics, the implementation of Codes of Ethics and other Professional Codes of Ethics in a detailed literature review in order to better understand the context and relevance of the study in the South African setting. Through abstraction of what the Top 40 listed entities on the JSE by market capitalising prescribe to be the most fundamental values and core guiding principles, combined with insight assembled from numerous interviews with subject matter experts in the field, a survey will be tabulated. The survey will look broadly at ethics within the South African economy and industry context to frame the current issues. It will then navigate down to a company compliance level to discover how people perceive the ethical structures within their organisations. It will look to explore the possibility of implementing an MBA Oath through Business Schools within South Africa and investigate the associated challenges. Finally, it will seek to identify a road forward; promoting ethical behaviour in local companies for generations to come. The final phase will look to analyse and synthesise all of the data that has been collected to form meaningful conclusions. The research paper provides a solid starting point for further investigation into initiating and implementing meaningful ethical frameworks aimed at increasing awareness, influencing people’s decision making processes and for promoting more ethically sound organisations in the South African economy.

published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

<p> This research examines the relationship of leadership styles to career success using the Multi-Factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ). The objective of this research was to identify how the selection and practice of appropriate project leadership styles benefited the leader based on five assessed success criteria. Participants include 159 students from a Midwestern University in leadership programs with leadership experience. Transformational leaders were identified as being more beneficial to leaders as supported through the comparison of MLQ results to career success factors. Statistical significance in transformational leaders found a stronger preference to each of the five assessed success factors when compared to transactional or passive-avoidant leaders. Of worthy discussion is the instrument&rsquo;s standard utilization of parametric data treatment in the presentation of medians and p-values. Results using medians verses means to determine data relationships found a stronger preference when comparing transactional leadership to each success factor when compared to transformational or passive-avoidant leaders. </p>

In this paper we explore what role business schools play when it comes to shifting the paradigm towards sustainability and generating responsible decision-makers. It has been suggested that certain mainstream management models and theories has had some significant and negative influence on the conduct of business or even at times contradict sustainable development. Thus the aim of the paper is to explore the views and experiences of academics as well as the challenges they face when working with integrating sustainability into the education. Seven business schools and universities in Sweden have recently signed the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) initiative and therefore made a commitment to implement sustainability into their education as well as engage in a platform for responsible management education. This study is based on semi- structured interviews with people responsible for working with the schools’ commitment. Our main findings are that signing PRME is a logic of legitimacy and that most schools are in the beginning of implementing sustainability. The main challenges that the schools face in the process are related to the complexity of bringing a new concept into an academic organisation initially from the top management in a bottom up environment. In addition to this, there seem to be a detachment of how the respondents express the role of business education and the more general role of business in society, in relation to responsibility.

<p> Small business owners face challenges associated with leading change, and many times lack the necessary resources to manage it properly. The purpose of this descriptive qualitative study was to determine what challenges leaders of small businesses face in managing change, what strategies and practices those leaders employ, and how the leaders of small businesses measure success in managing change. This study also determined what advice leaders of small businesses would suggest for managing change. Four research questions were created to assist with this process, and 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted in various cities throughout the state of Michigan. The participants were small business owners of privately held American companies that had been in business for a minimum of 5 years. Twelve interview questions were asked to answer the 4 research questions. Many themes emerged. Some of the challenges that participants face while managing change are resistance to change, communication issues, lack of confidence, lack of resources, lack of knowledge/experience, absence of strategy, conflicts of interest, and lack of emotional intelligence. The participants shared many different strategies for successful management of change and also offered their lessons learned over the years. The main overall theme presented by all of the participants in this study was the importance of knowledge and experience for management of change in small businesses.</p>

<p> Lean manufacturing was first introduced in the United States in Womack&rsquo;s 1990 book, <i>The machine that changed the world</i>. This 10-year study was published in response to an increase in global manufacturing competition and the demand for American manufacturing companies to increase efficiency and quality while removing process wastes as seen in sustainable continuous improvement environments. Despite widespread interest and research supporting the obstacles senior managers face when implementing lean processes, there is little understanding of how organization development (OD) and change theories relate directly to lean implementation. This qualitative case study mapped out key organizational players&rsquo; conceptions of lean manufacturing and how they implemented the lean management system into an organization by comparing their mental models to OD change management models and Lean management models. The researcher interviewed and observed senior managers and production employees involved with implementing lean management system within one manufacturing organization. The primary purpose was to identify if and how senior managers&rsquo;, lean consultants&rsquo;, and other designated change agents&rsquo; inherent mental models align with existing OD theories and determine if an understanding in organizational development (OD) theory is necessary for the success of lean implementation. Data collected from interviews, production documentation review, and personal observations revealed senior management did not fully understand OD principles and as a result the lean implementation was short lived. These findings will help future organizations who choose to pursue such implementations to understand the importance of OD and change models prior to executing a lean cultural transformation.</p>