Introduction
At Fresno University, change is inevitable if the learning institution needs to increase its enrollment rates and enhance its competitive advantage in its industry of operations. It is expected that the desired change will take place consistently with the organizational mission, aims, and objective statements. This plan will help to keep the change in harmony with the desired strategic direction both in the short-term and long-term.
In previous discussions, the strategy of increasing student enrollment coupled with taking appropriate steps towards mitigation of negative impacts of the mechanisms of enhancing it was suggested as the main strategy that would help in bringing about change at Fresno University in the next year, and later years. This final section discusses the expected outcomes of Fresno University’s strategic choice, the risks of the selected strategy, and the plans for its implementation and evaluation.
Expected outcomes of the strategy choice
Organizations endeavoring to acquire long-term success keep on changing their ways of executing business. Most appropriate changes involve those that ensure organizations become more profitable and capable of handling increasing financial requirements. Through the implementation of the strategy of increasing enrollment rates, it is expected that Fresno University will increase its capability to raise the necessary financial resources to cater for its expansion to accommodate more degree programs and in the management of increasing diversity of students and workforce.
It is important for Fresno University to put in place appropriate measures to curb the likely misappropriation of funds. Indeed, geopolitical changes, demographic changes, technological changes, and even intense pressure on the physical environments pose a need for organizational change. Such a change also needs to be combined with various security concerns coupled with governance issues that help to generate pressures driving organizational change (Bruch & Gerber, 2005).
Development of awareness for technological needs, political, sociological, and economic characteristics of the external operating environment of organizations is crucial in the effort to drive strategic initiatives for their success. Consequently, the change adopted at the Fresno University through the suggested implementation plan of the selected strategic decision needs to achieve some expectations in terms of financial, marketing personnel, and the social position of the university.
Financial
The future of Fresno University depends on its capacity to raise more funds to cater to the costs of running additional programs and associated expenses. The university depends on the financial resources raise to finance the budgets of different departments. For example, the marketing, purchases, and procurement departments use the financial resources generated from the fees paid by the students in providing services vital for making the learning process effective. By increasing the enrollment rates, Fresno University will acquire the required additional financial resources to pay the required additional staff, construct new teaching facilities, which will aid in catering for even higher numbers of students in the future.
Cellini (2010) notes that to facilitate university-wide developments, universities need to benchmark one another. This process involves the expenditure of financial resources in the research and development of new strategic initiatives like new degree programs. By increasing the enrollment levels, it implies that more resources will be available to facilitate this process. The university will also have access to additional resources necessary for improving its reputation to the communities in which its campuses are located through increasing available kitty for social corporate responsibility.
Marketing
The marketing department of Fresno University has the responsibility for positioning it in such a manner that it attracts new enrollments and retains the confidence among the new applicants and the existing student population for the offered programs. The proposed plan has the advantage of ensuring that any marketing communication meets the needs of students so that they can consider securing admission positions at Fresno University.
The marketing plan clears any potential doubts that the quality of education offered at the university may be compromised. Indeed, activities such as internships are critical in reinforcing the position that the university offers quality educations akin to the higher probability that the students may secure jobs at the organization where they have been placed for an internship due to their proven skill base and capability to execute tasks allocated to them. The primary goal of the proposed marketing plan is to ensure that the management benefit by having a better reputation for the university’s degree programs.
Personnel
The strategic plan proposed that Fresno University should consider enrolling students and recruiting staff from across the diversity. Having a learning institution embracing diversity is advantageous since it can bring together different capabilities and talents to facilitate the production of more competitive graduates in terms of cultural integration. Diversity entails differences existing among people working in an organization with regard to parameters such as gender, race, community values, age, sexual affiliation, income levels, work experience, parental status, religious beliefs, ethnicity, religion, and physical abilities among others (Ollapally & Bhatnagar, 2009).
Embracement of diversity is crucial in availing networks, which are ideally open to all interested workforce members and students’ community. Through these networks, employees and students take part in activities such as professional development, mentoring, community service, and even education outreach among other activities that the Fresno University considers essential in fostering tolerance of differences existing among its personnel.
Social
By bringing together people from all diversities into Fresno University, the proposed plan will help in ensuring social cohesiveness. The students are in contract with the university to ensure it provides quality education to them in exchange for value in the form of school fees. By putting in place strategies of increasing student’s enrollments, but also ensuring that the quality of education is not compromised, the management will not breach its social contract with the students. An institution that welcomes all people irrespective of their cultural difference is beneficial to the society as it has the benefits of enhancing cultural integration.
The implementation plan brings together all the university stakeholders to make it easier to embrace change in the traditional way of doing various tasks such as selection and recruitment of staff and admission processes. This claim implies that the university management will experience fewer challenges in the future such as the resistance to accepting decisions that are made by its personnel since their different lines of thought have been incorporated into them.
The fact that the proposed strategy will ensure that the university admits more students means that the communities within Fresno will benefit through the increased experience and/or the provision of more people into the skilled job sector. This move will boost economic growth, which leads to social transformations. A bigger working population means higher household income in more families so that Fresno University acquires even higher admission requests in the future.
Risks of the strategy choice
The strategy of increasing the enrollment levels without considering the diversity differences of students and recruiting staff to deliver the learning services has some risks. Universities, which do not support diversity, are likely to plunge into expensive lawsuits and/or out-of-court settlements for cases that are largely contributed by poor management of various talent tools, for instance, stereotypes propagation, discrimination, and harassment among others.
Additionally, such learning organizations are susceptible to costs linked to the replacement of employees (Jayne & Dipboye, 2004). In case an organization is constituted by people of varying ethnicities coupled with higher proportions of women as compared to the general industry on average, an interrogative arises seeking audience on how the reconciliation of differences among employees and the students can be achieved without causing undue friction during their everyday interactions.
Implementation of the selected strategy becomes risky since managing the workforce and student fraternity’s diversity becomes a crucial endeavor since otherwise, the performance of Fresno University gets negatively impaired. Hence, its productivity and profitability may also become negatively impaired (Jayne & Dipboye, 2004). The development of plausible knowledge by Fresno University’s management professionals is crucial since many of the issues that are encountered in the work environment to the extent of promoting intolerance of the differences that characterize workers can only be solved using effective approaches of diversity management.
Plan for the evaluation of the organizational project
The project for implementation of change at Fresno University aimed at increasing the number of programs and the number of students enrolled in each program can be evaluated through analysis of numerical quantitative data against the set period in the implementation plan. For instance, within one year, the university can keep records of the students admitted into different programs.
The effectiveness of the university in the change implementation can then be evaluated by determining the difference between the changes in the number of students who are actually admitted within the year against the projected increase. However, an increase in the admission rate will not imply net positive impacts of the proposed strategy. Quality is also an important issue (Cellini, 2010). This aspect can be measured by comparing the percentage contribution of the university in filling available job opportunities when compared to other competing universities.
A higher rate of education-employment transition for Fresno University in comparison to other industry players means higher quality education. It indicates that the students from Fresno University are more preferred by employers to graduates from other universities. Other parameters for evaluation include the registered incidences of diversity-related conflicts, prevalence levels of newly created programs among the students, and whether the skills and knowledge acquired through the programs are effective in the job market.
Summary and conclusions
Fresno University needs to increase its competitive advantage by increasing its admission rates to its current and newly established programs. However, to ensure positive outcomes in terms of increasing financial capability and social integration, it must look for strategies to curtail potential risks such as the emergence of diversity-related conflicts. Marketing of the university constitutes one of the strategies of ensuring that the institution receives recognition from students from across the diversity.
Thus, it remains a unique way of positioning the university to its potential clients. The implementation of the strategic decision requires Fresno University to consider various ways of evaluating the effectiveness of the suggested plan. This plan should include both qualitative and quantitative techniques of measuring the degree of correlation between the projected or expected university position after and before the implementation of the plan.
Reference List
Bruch, H., & Gerber, P. (2005). Strategic change decisions: Doing the right change right. Journal of Change Management, 11(5), 53-99.
Cellini, R. (2010). Financial Aid and for-profit colleges: Does Aid encourage entry? Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, 29 (3), 526-552.
Jayne, A., & Dipboye, L. (2004). Leveraging Diversity to Improve Business Performance: Research Findings & Recommendations for Organizations. Human Resource Management, 43(4) 409-424.
Ollapally, A., & Bhatnagar, J. (2009). The Holistic Approach to Diversity Management: HR Implications. The Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 44 (3) 454-472.