Professor DiGiammarino will teach PSYCH 348 Organization Change at Golden Gate University School of Business in the 2016 Fall semester.

Course Description 

This course expands knowledge of organization operations, executive roles, and the centrality of strategy in organization operations, development, and change. Using readings, class exercises, fieldwork, guest speakers, analysis, work problems, and cases the course focuses on using tools, principles, and methods in strategy development and implementation to move a system toward its desired future.

Course Overview and Goals

The ORGANIZATION CHANGE course premise is that any organization is far likelier to achieve its potential to perform and grow when its leaders are clear about their organization today, where it is headed next, and when they know how it will get there. ORGANIZATION CHANGE presents a straightforward yet rigorous way to describe and assess any organization as it exists and as its leaders would like it next to be in light of external and internal threats and opportunities.  It then presents a way to lay out, launch, drive, and govern initiatives that transform the organization from its current state to its targeted next state.

ORGANIZATION CHANGE content is presented in interactive units using real examples and problems worked individually and in small groups. The course gives students the opportunity to synthesize tools, principles and methods with organization operations, and then challenges them to apply what they have learned to real-world scenarios.

Financial and operating basics for organizations that aim to grow in scale and impact are introduced and coursework teaches students to think, plan, and act strategically. Further, we explore how, once leaders are clear about what they seek to accomplish, proven tools, principles, and methods can be used to purposefully help an organization progress from their current to a future, targeted, next state.

Students are required to select and examine a real organization to understand its strategy, how it works, and how well it is performing, and then to develop strategic initiatives and a plan of Organization Development to progress towards a target state.