Organizational ChangeBy:

Brandie Green

Organization’s Profile

• The organization’s function is an institute of learning.

• Its a rural primary public school in Hampton, Georgia.

• It serves about 700 students from kindergarten to second grade.

• The mission is to provide a quality education for all students and the goals are reading, writing, and arithmetic and modeling good citizenship (R. Adams, personal communication, September 27, 2010).

Structure

• There is a hierarchical structure starting with the Principal and the Assistant Principal.

• The school has a building leadership team, which includes the principal, assistant principal, literacy coach, math coach, counselor, and media specialist.

• They finalize all decisions that affect the school.

• They pass and collect information to and from the grade level chairs who in turn do the same with the teachers in their grade level.

Observed and Unobserved Cultural

• The observed culture of the organization is positive (R. Adams, personal communication, September 27, 2010) and professional.

• The unobserved culture is unpredictable and non-supportive.

• Four years ago the Assistant Principal at that time received a job as Principal at another school.

• A new Assistant Principal arrived with a new idea…positive discipline.

Resistance• The organization experiences

resistance because the change was not seen as something that was considered necessary.

• Teacher’s absenteeism and tardiness has increased.

• Teacher’s no longer stay late or come in early to go above and beyond the call of duty.

• The resistance has over powered the passion that was once present.

Resistance and Prevention• The change and resistance

process has gradually increased over the course of four years.

• It does not appear that this resistance was anticipated.

• There were no apparent prevention strategies put in place. If there were they were not effective because the resistance is still taking place.

• Administration only mentions that if faculty is not in agreement with the change in discipline then transfer papers are needed.

Planning

• Before the change in the discipline policy implemented fully, aspects were mentioned.

• Data regarding the School’s referrals were pointed out early on.

• Before the belief in the policy was addressed it became known that sending a student to the office was frowned upon.

Effectiveness

• The change has not been effective thus far.

• Behavioral issues have increased each year of the change and teachers have become worn out due to the increase in their role and lack of support.

Was it done well?

• Based on my observations, I have not noticed anything done well with this change and even though the change was positive discipline, nothing positive has come out of it.

• Teachers are frustrated with dealing with behavior problems, instructional time has decreased, and disruptive students are aware that if they are disruptive they will not have consequences.

What should have been done• In order to ensure success,

administration should have implemented the new discipline procedure by “testing” it on a situational basis and record the outcome.

• Conducting research on the socio economic status, along with other factors of other schools that were successful with this type of discipline procedure was necessary.

• The organization strongly believes in research and claims to be a data-driven school but failed in the discipline area.

Innovation and Change• The leaders of the organization do not have any type of

measurement in place to determine success. • They have manipulated the data, however they have

failed the faculty and the students within the building.• The organization is striving for innovation.• However, they do not have the steps in place needed to

properly engage in the learning process that innovation produces.

References

• R. Adams, personal communication, September 27, 2010.