Fluent Essays

1. Question Imagine you are the leader of the design department in a growing organization in a high-tech industry. Over the past three months, the sales in the organization have declined due to poor designs and software malfunctions and your department has been identified as part of the problem. As the department leader, you want to involve your team in identifying and solving any problems within your department. Using the module required readings, videos, and your personal experience, prepare a two-page memo to your team. Provide a problem-solving process the organization can establish for such situations to properly identify such problems.  Justify why you believe the approaches are best for the department. 2. Question  You are a leader of a large healthcare organization. Your organization is acquiring another hospital group which may involve major changes in policies and procedures including human resources as you merge the two organizations. You have scheduled a planning session with your top managers. Your assignment is to develop a planning document for the meeting. The document should be in standard APA paper formatting and include: Describe the types of change the organization could experience and how to create procedures for dealing with each. An analysis of potential change approaches to implement these changes in both organizations. Recommendations for dealing with resistance to change. You must support your plan with a minimum of four scholarly sources. Your well-written document must adhere to the following parameters: Be 4-5 pages in length. Be supported by six references, with at least four scholarly references. Remember, you must support your thinking and prior knowledge with references; all facts must be supported; in-text references used throughout the assignment must be included in an APA-formatted reference list.SHORT PAPER RESISTING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE Resisting Organizational Change http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijac.v8i1.4432 G. Andersson Østfold University College, Fredrikstad, Norway Abstract—We are continuously reminded of how change induces controversy and resistance, regardless of support. We repeatedly experience resistance in difficulties of im- plementation, little progress, and poor results, rather than increased productivity as anticipated. In a detailed account of how change plays out, a mosaic of what resistance looks like emerges. The picture is both familiar and absolutely concrete, and challenges the structural assumptions and dichotomies on support and resistance in an organization. The findings invite technologies, people, actions, practices and materiality to the discussions on support and resistance. Index Terms—Change Management, Lean Operations, Actor-Network Theory, Resistance. I. INTRODUCTION Lean literature emphasizes the importance of top man- agement support [1]–[3], but we are continuously remind- ed how change, like introducing Lean operations into an organization, induces controversy and resistance regard- less of initial support. We repeatedly experience resistance in difficulties of implementation, little progress, and poor results rather than increased productivity as anticipated [4]. Literature has introduced concepts like force and fric- tion [5] to account for resistance. Concepts borrowed from physics to illustrate interactions between related objects, given both positive and negative influence on change. Other approaches include attention and awareness to con- troversies and alliances, and concepts like the sociology of translation [6], [7]. These, and related concepts, do have extended impact in academic discourse, but fail to be noticed within the field of Lean Operations. They fail, I will argue, because the generic and abstract concepts and metaphors disconnect theory from people, materiality, practices, and processes on the Gemba (the real place), and in the workplaces. They fail to prove to be relevant. This simple line of arguments challenges our under- standing of what is going on, and motivates the question: What does resistance look like in a change project? The renewed focus on events and processes in the workplaces is important, because it invites technologies, people, actions, practices and materiality to the discussion. II. METHOD AND MATERIAL The problem statement suggests a more concrete ap- proach to change; not looking at change as a structural or ideological issue, but looking at concrete events and con- tributions to change in the making. The methodological approach in this study draws on the perspectives on construction of facts, and assembly of technologies and practices found in the works of Bruno Latour, John Law, Michel Callon and others - part of what is known as Actor-Network Theory (ANT) [8]–[14]. This descriptive, but anaReproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.sustainability Editorial Advances in Multiple Criteria Decision Making for Sustainability: Modeling and Applications Kao-Yi Shen 1,* ID and Gwo-Hshiung Tzeng 2 1 Department of Banking and Finance, Chinese Culture University (SCE), Taipei 11114, Taiwan 2 Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Taipei University, New Taipei City 23741, Taiwan; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +886-(2)2700-5858 (ext. 8676) Received: 10 May 2018; Accepted: 11 May 2018; Published: 16 May 2018 ���������� ������� Abstract: With the surging complexity of real-world problems in important domains such as sustainability, there is a need to leverage advanced modern computational methods or intelligent techniques to support decisions or policy-making. In this Special Issue, 15 selected and formally peer-reviewed papers contribute their novelty and findings, by applying various advanced decision methods or computational techniques to resolve different sustainability problems. Despite the innovations of the proposed models, most of the selected papers involve domain expert’s opinions and knowledge with in-depth discussions. These case studies enrich the practical contributions of this Special Issue. Keywords: sustainable development; multiple criteria decision making (MCDM); problem-solving; optimization; decision aid; computational intelligence; machine learning (ML); artificial intelligence (AI); soft computing; fuzzy sets; rough set theory (RST) 1. Introduction Sustainability-related issues address environment, ecology, energy, management, marketing, economics, finance, healthcare, research and development (R&D), transportation, and many other vital topics. At the conceptual level, there are many approaches to observe, explain, analyze, and tackle these not only influential but also complicated issues [1]. In fact, nearly everyone would agree that the sustainability issues mentioned above involve multiple aspects, also termed as criteria; thus, how to devise a suitable model or method considering those associated aspects matters. In social science research, statistical approaches might be the most prevailing ones. Nevertheless, statistical models are usually constrained by various presumptions or limitations. Examples are the linearity and the independence relationship among the included variables, which might yield unwanted biases while those factors are interdependent [2,3]—a common practice in most real-world problems. To overcome the limitations of the conventional approach in social science, this Special Issue emphasizes advanced modeling or resolving practical sustainability issues by embracing various single, combined, or integrated methods/techniques to overcome the mentioned limitations above. Broadly speaking, since multiple variables often exist in a well-defined sustainability problem, it is reasonable to adopt the multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) approach [4]. In addition, with the surging amount of availableThe relationship between burnout and risk-taking in workplace decision-making and decision-making style Evie Michailidis and Adrian P. Banks School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Surrey, UK ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate what decision-making styles might be exhibited by employees who experience burnout. Using a Work Risk Inventory (WRI), developed for this study, which included generic workplace scenarios, it was also explored whether such employees take relatively more risky decisions. Risk was conceptualised as the adoption of decisions that threaten one’s reputation at work, job performance and job security. The mediating effect of the likelihood and seriousness of the consequences of the worst that could happen in each given scenario on the relationships between dimensions of burnout and risk-taking was also tested. A total of 262 employees in various occupations completed an online survey, including measures on burnout, decision-making styles and the WRI. As predicted, dimensions of burnout – exhaustion, cynicism and professional inefficacy – correlated significantly with avoidant decision-making and negatively with rational decision-making. The seriousness of the consequences of the worst-case scenario occurring mediated the relationship between professional inefficacy and risk-taking. In the context of identifying mechanisms by which burnout leads to risky decision-making, the findings suggest that employees’ sense of professional inefficacy determines their risky decision- making. The contribution to theory and implications for practice are discussed. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 7 April 2015 Accepted 2 May 2016 KEYWORDS Burnout; decision-making styles; risky decision-making; risk Introduction The question of how acute stress influences peoples’ decision-making has been addressed by several studies from various lines of research (e.g. Porcelli & Delgado, 2009; Van den Bos, Harteveld, & Stoop, 2009), indicating that under acute stress decision-makers fall back on automatic processes. However, there has been little research on the process by which the consequences of exposure to chronic stress, such as burnout, affect decision- making. Drawing on findings that burnout is associated with impaired cognitive function- ing including impairment in cognitive ability, memory and attention (e.g. Sandström, Rhodin, Lundberg, Olsson, & Nyberg, 2005), it is reasonable to expect that burnout also interferes with individuals’ decision-making processes. Specifically, McGee (1989) found that burned-out child protection service workers avoid making decisions. Burnout is described by feelings of exhaustion, cynicism and professional inefficacy, © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group CONTACT Evie Michailidis [email protected] WORK & STRESS, 2016 VOL. 30, NO. 3, 278–292 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02678373.2016.1213773 mailto:[email protected] http://www.tandfonline.com originally operationalised as efficacy an