Research two publicly traded companies and compare and contrast their methods of handling a significant change in their organizations. Analyze and write about images of change in those organizations in a Change Analysis Paper ‐ Images of Change (Milestone 1, include four references).
Topic Selection
Select your two companies that have undergone some type of fairly substantial change in the recent past. Find the company and the change information online using EBSCO or using another appropriate resource in the DeVry Library. Other ways to find information include utilizing Google, Yahoo Finance, or Reuters and looking up annual reports of companies that interest you. Often, reading the first sections of these reports (i.e., letters from CEOs) will give you ideas about changes they have gone through in the past year(s).
You will need to ensure the following.
a. Your companies are publicly traded so that their information will be easy to research and find.
b. Your change in the two companies are comparable (i.e., don’t compare a new CEO to a change in the human resources information system [HRIS]. Do compare two changes in chief information officer.
c. The changes happened in the recent past so that you will find sufficient online information about how they were handled, but not so recent that the information about the change results is still being researched and published.
The Change Analysis—Images of Change Paper (Milestone 1)
The Images section focuses on the six different images of managing change and how each approach to change affects all that follows in its implementation and continued support. Download the Project Images Grid from the Course Resources area. Select three of the images of change explained in the lesson from the grid. Then, analyze how those particular images would affect the ensuing diagnosis and implementation in your two selected companies on their change plans.
Here’s what to do.
- Review the changes in each company and describe them thoroughly in a Word document. Explain how the change impacted the companies and who it impacted. Compare some of the similarities and differences between the change in the two companies.
- Review your prepared grid, and select three images of change from your grid. Complete the empty blocks on the grid for those three images using outlines, bullet points, and rough ideas for both company's change.
- In a Word document, analyze, compare, and contrast the three images and explain how the behaviors of those images would be different or the same during your companies’ changes and how those differences could (or did) impact the success (or failure) of the change, comparing and contrasting the results at both companies.
- Explain which image (or combination of images) you feel would have best facilitated the described change, and explain why.
- Based on the information you read about the results of this change, state which image you think the leader of the change actually resembled the most. You may speculate on which image you feel best represents the change agent at either or both of the companies. This will depend on how much information you found about the internal workings of the company during the change.