University Registrar’s Organizational Development Essay

Applied Research Proposal

Introduction

The university is experiencing some challenges which are directly related to its internal processes. This project will discuss various issues that affect the performance of the university’s registrar office using different published literature sources. The project will propose different types of improvements that need to be made to strengthen its long term performance. Therefore, this project will assess the needs of the registrar’s office concerning the role it is expected to play in the institution. Besides, the project will discuss the extent to which technology can be used to streamline its operations to make it improve its long term performance in the institution. Another crucial area that will be looked at by the project will be the willingness of the registrar’s office employees to accept various changes that will be proposed to improve performance. Consequently, the project will propose strategies that can be used to address these challenges. Some of the strategies that will be proposed will include: improving employees’ skills, changing the overall organizational behavior, and setting goals that are easy to measure.

Project scope

The project will focus mainly on processes that are handled by the registrar’s office to find out how they can be improved to achieve greater efficiency. Also, the project will look at the current usage of information technology in the office to establish if it responds to the long-term needs of the institution. Important functions that are executed by the office will also be analyzed to find out how they contribute to the long term vision of the institution. The project will also look at the overall objectives of the office of the registrar to find out if they address its long term needs in the industry. Consequently, the project will assess various change management models and approaches to find out how they can be applied to improve the performance of the office.

Objectives

• To propose effective change programs to enable the institutions to attain their desired objectives.
• Analysis of needs of the registrar’s office and improvements that have to be made to streamline its processes.
• Conduct a review of change management theories to find out how they can be applied in the institution.
• Analyze technological solutions used by the registrar’s office to find out if they are well designed to enable it to attain positive outcomes.
• To evaluate the skills of employees in the office to find out if they are capable of using new work processes to attain good results.
• Propose new technological and human resource strategies that can enable the registrar’s office to achieve its objectives more effectively.

Literature Review

Change management is an important concept because it enables an organization to review its internal processes to make them more responsive to its long term objectives. One of the important effects of change management in an institution is that it enables managers to adopt more innovative work systems. Therefore, managers can inform their subordinates about various improvements that are being undertaken and how they are going to benefit their organizations in the long run. More importantly, change management allows an organization to create high-performance standards that encourage all employees to acquire new skills and competencies.¹ As a result, workers can use such skills to think creatively to enable them to attain good results in their workstations. In the long run, this enables workers to add value to a firm’s internal work processes to improve the quality of outcomes it achieves.

Internal systems of an organization have to be restructured to allow change management processes to achieve their desired effects. One of the critical components of organizational development is the ability of a firm to use high-quality processes to improve how its internal operational systems are structured. An organization must be willing to come up with an effective plan on how it can utilize its resources to attain good outcomes from its operations.² This approach allows an institution to identify specific processes that can be made more efficient using various information technology solutions to attain positive performance in the long run. Also, a manager has to put in place effective ways of measuring performance and results to ensure they respond to the standards set. Therefore, this will compel him to choose appropriate technology solutions that are responsive to the internal and external functions of his department.

Change management strategies can only be effective in an environment where a manager is willing to show good leadership to other people working under him. The manager must also understand how to motivate employees working under him. This will encourage them to be more competitive in their workstations to make it easy for them to take new responsibilities. In the long run, this approach allows an organization to develop appropriate training programs that are suitable for its long term mission.³ Also, this enables employees to acquire new technical skills that help them improve their performance. Therefore an organization needs to have effective human resource planning methods to ensure its employees are equipped with the necessary skills required to make them attain positive results. The registrar’s office needs to take note of these processes to make it more responsive to the needs of its stakeholders.

Methodology

The main methodology that will be used in the study will be a review of different types of published literature that reveal more information on the subject. The paper will focus on secondary sources that discuss how information technologies can be used to streamline important work processes in the organization. Scholarly theories that relate to change management and its importance in organizational development will be analyzed to find out how they can be applied to this case study. The methodology will also use previous bodies of knowledge published on the subject to find out specific change management processes that are suitable for the institution. Some of the published literature that will be relied on by the project will be books and peer-reviewed journal articles. This will enable the project to come up with new knowledge that is responsive to the needs of the institution.

Deliverables

The main issues that will have to be addressed by this project will include technology implementation, attracting students and retaining them, staff performance and development, and improvement of internal human resource management.⁴ All these functions are important for the success of the registrar’s office and they will influence how both short term and long term goals are set. The office will have to look at appropriate technologies that are to be used and the benefits they will bring to the work process in the long run. Also, it will have to come up with more efficient strategies that can increase the number of students admitted to the institution to boost its long-term performance. The specific capabilities of different employees in the organization will have to be assessed to find out if they can cope with proposed changes in the department. Lastly, internal workforce management systems will be analyzed to find out if they offer the organization the ability to increase its competitiveness in the educational sector.

Timeline

The timeline of the project will be an estimated two to three weeks. This will enable important information that can be used to propose high-quality changes in the registrar’s office to be discussed. Moreover, during this period, the study will discuss all critical areas that are related to the project and how they can be streamlined to get positive results. Lastly, this period will allow important revisions to be made on the project to make its findings logical, accurate, and clear.

Final Report

Executive Summary

The office of the registrar needs to restructure its internal operational strategies to enable it to perform its functions more effectively. This approach will help it to be more responsive to the needs of its stakeholders to enable it to improve its long term performance. More importantly, the registrar’s office needs to adopt more efficient IT technologies to help it improve the quality of service it delivers to students and other departments of the institution. Change management processes that have been proposed will focus on improving performance standards in the institution to help it addresses various challenges it is facing. For these strategies to work, the institution will be forced to find out appropriate improvements that need to be made to help it become more responsive to the needs of its stakeholders. It will also be forced to come up with more efficient strategies that attract new students and retain existing ones to improve their image. Another critical area that has to be addressed is the excellence of its staff to ensure that they have adequate skills needed to use high-quality technological solutions proposed by the institution. Lastly, the organization will have to find out how its internal workforce management plans can be improved to sustain positive performance in the long run.

Objectives

• To apply change management models to this project and how they can be used to turn around the operations of the office.
• To propose appropriate technologies to be used to streamline the functions of the registrar’s office to make them more competitive.
• Propose appropriate ways of developing the skills of all employees working in the registrar’s office to ensure they have high levels of technical competence.
• Propose improvements in the internal operations of the office by focusing on workplace processes.
• Assessing if the organizational culture is dynamic to ensure it can adopt different types of changes in its operating environment to boost performance.
• Discuss other factors that have to be taken into consideration to ensure the changes adopted to improve the working environment in the office.
• Analyzing the effects of leadership on changes proposed to find out if they will enable the organization to move in a positive direction.
• Propose ways in which employees’ attitudes can be changed to make them have positive perceptions towards proposed change management processes.
• Communication of various changes to be implemented to students, workers, and other important stakeholders to make them change their attitudes.

Scope of the Project

The project will look at the current state of the registrar’s office about its core responsibilities in the university. The project will discuss the importance of change processes to the institution’s long term objectives and how they will help it satisfy the needs of its stakeholders. Also, the role of the change agent in enabling the department to attain its goals in the institution will be discussed using ideas from various published literature. The existing organizational culture will be analyzed to find out if it is flexible enough to enable the department to adapt to various situations it faces in its operational environment. Finally, another critical area that needs to be looked at is the overall vision of the department and if it guides people to be more responsible in their workstations to enable them to attain positive results.

The project will use all these guidelines to ensure appropriate information is reviewed and analyzed to be more responsive to the situation it currently faces. The project will also rely on information obtained through the review of various published literature. Therefore, it will be able to obtain new insights into the case study to address different issues that are related to it comprehensively. Therefore, arguments that will be obtained from various theoretical processes used will enable the project to reach factual conclusions. Conclusions adopted will be used to highlight different issues that are directly linked with the project. Consequently, this will enable the project to come up with appropriate solutions for the registrar’s office to enable it to satisfy the expectations of its stakeholders.

Methodology: Literature Review

As stated earlier, the main method to be used for this project will be the literature review. The project will rely on knowledge obtained from different published sources to come up with conclusions that address the situation described in the case more effectively. More importantly, the project will use diverse theories to find out how they relate to the case study and how they can be applied to solve problems that affect the registrar’s office. Other comparative forms of knowledge will be applied to the case study to find out how they address crucial issues. Moreover, the project will use arguments backed up by verifiable facts to come up with valid findings. Ultimately, this will ensure conclusions reached are appropriate for the situation that is being highlighted in the case study.

Justification

The justification for this project is to discuss the extent to which change management processes can be applied in educational institutions to help them attain high levels of efficiency in their operations. As a result, the project will aim at proposing actions that need to be adopted by the registrar’s office to ensure it executes its functions more appropriately. Also, the project aims at reviewing different change models and theories to find out how they can be applied to this situation to attain good outcomes. The role of the change agent will be analyzed to find out the impact he or she is likely to have in streamlining the internal and external systems of the department. Consequently, this will help to determine how the firm needs to implement the change management vision to make it attain higher standards of performance in its internal and external operations.

Relevant Literature and Research Models

One of the critical areas that have to be looked at in this project is the role of the change agent. The role of the change agent is important in making all stakeholders understand the importance of the change that is being undertaken. Therefore, a change management agent needs to be competent in various aspects of organizational development to be able to motivate other employees to emulate him. For instance, he needs to be knowledgeable about conflict management, effective communication, talent management, and staff recruitment processes.⁵ The registrar’s office needs a competent change agent who has adequate knowledge of the internal processes of the department to adopt effective strategies. The change agent to be chosen for the office needs to command high levels of respect from other employees working in the office, for him to attain positive results. Therefore, this will enable the organization to adopt more effective problem-solving strategies that enable it to overcome various challenges quickly.

In many organizations, leaders are the ones who are tasked with the responsibility of acting as change agents. A person who understands how to manage people that work under him needs to find out the value of the change processes proposed to the long term success of his organization.⁶ Therefore, he needs to make all employees aware of the organization’s intent to implement result oriented work processes to help it turn around its performance. This requires him to identify new skills which employees need to acquire to enable them to execute their responsibilities more effectively. Consequently, this will make the change management process to attain desired outcomes in the long run. One of the key factors that are directly related to this study is that leaders in the registrar’s office do not know how to coordinate the department’s internal and external processes. Therefore, this has made it difficult for employees to understand the overall vision that guides their operations and what they need to do to achieve it.

One of the reliable approaches that can be used to address issues that relate to change management in the institution is the systemic-multivariate view. This approach focuses on the way managers think about proposed change processes and the barriers they are likely to face during the implementation of these strategies in different organizational contexts.⁷ In effect, this approach addresses how change management processes may be inadequate in influencing managers to understand priorities that exist in an organization. Besides, the approach discusses limitations related to decisions making processes by leaders and how they guide them to allocate resources effectively. Consequently, this model allows managers to address crucial issues that affect change processes that they intend to implement in their organizations. Consequently, this equips them with the knowledge they need to restructure internal operations in their organizations more effectively. Therefore, when applied to the context of the registrar’s office, this model can be used to address a leader’s ability to drive the change management process forward effectively.

The SARA model can also be used to assess the extent to which an organization is willing to adopt different changes to help it improve its long term performance in a particular industry.⁸ The shock experienced by employees makes them disagree with their leaders over benefits to be realized from a proposed change initiative. Anger makes employees to be distressed because they may feel that the proposed change exposes them to unnecessary risks. On the other hand, resistance is used by employees to show that they also have a stake in the organization and they are not willing to compromise to accept the proposed situation. Lastly, acceptance occurs when all employees have been assured that the proposed change will improve how they execute their functions in the organization. Consequently, the SARA model can be used by the registrar’s office to change its processes by adopting more efficient technologies that improve the quality of results attained.

Another issue that has to be considered is the type of change agent that is suitable for the situation the organization is currently facing.⁹ A change agent who focuses on organization development is more interested in strengthening internal processes such as employee relations, communications, and decision making. More importantly, he is likely to encourage teamwork and greater collaborations to improve overall organizational behavior. On the other hand, a change agent that focuses more on changing people’s behavior comes up with better methods of uplifting their morale to enable them to achieve good results. This enables such a leader to set appropriate goals by allocating employees challenging tasks that allow them to develop their skills.. Consequently, this enables an organization to undertake various types of improvements in its internal functions to achieve good results in the long run. Therefore, the office of the registrar needs to choose an appropriate change agent who understands the situations it is facing and how they can be used to achieve its long term goals.

Key Research and Consulting Findings

The registrar’s office needs to come up with a new vision that can address its internal as well as external needs to help it attain good results. There are some important principles that an organization needs to be aware of before implementing any change management process. The registrar’s office needs to ensure that its internal processes are responsive to its short and long-term needs. All functions that are carried out by different workers should contribute to its overall organizational value to ensure all workers understand specific strategies they can use to attain good results.¹⁰ Besides, the proposed change should enable the office to take advantage of different opportunities that exist to help it attain good results in the long run. This approach will allow different stakeholders in the organization to understand specific contributions they are expected to make to help it attain high-quality results. Therefore, the registrar’s office will be able to offer high-quality services to students and this will make them change their perceptions about its effectiveness and ability to satisfy their needs.

Another key issue that needs to be addressed for the proposed change to succeed is that the organization needs to have highly skilled employees who understand how specific processes are going to be used to help it attain positive outcomes in its operations. The registrar’s office needs employees who understand how to use various technological solutions to perform their duties more effectively. This approach will enable the department to motivate its employees by encouraging them to acquire new skills through training.¹¹ As a result, employees will be more willing to take on new responsibilities to help them satisfy the expectations of the organization in the long run. Another key issue that needs to be looked at is the overall organizational behavior and how it is likely to affect how the proposed changes are adopted. Therefore, it needs to place more emphasis on issues that relate to diligence, employee discipline, and responsiveness to clients to ensure its service delivery processes satisfy the expectations of all students in the institution.

Any change initiative that is undertaken by the registrar’s office should focus on reducing various types of risks it has been experiencing in its operations.¹² Therefore, effective plans need to be put in place to ensure the organization is well prepared to deal with different types of challenges that are likely to occur in the future. Besides, the organization needs to identify other barriers that are likely to make it difficult for the changes proposed to succeed. This knowledge helps an organization to look at other alternatives that can be implemented if the proposed changes do not work. The registrar’s office needs to assess different technological solutions to determine if they are appropriate for its operations. As a result, it will be in a position to manage its records and other information functions more effectively. Besides, it needs to look for efficient communication solutions to enable its employees to stay in touch with staff in other departments in the university.

The change management model implemented should be able to measure the quality of all internal processes to find out if they satisfy high-quality standards that have been put in place by the organization. ¹³ Also, the change agent together with other important stakeholders in the organization needs to be able to measure specific results obtained from various new strategies implemented in the organization. This approach will enable a manager to compare the results achieved and objectives that had been set earlier to find out if any gaps need to be filled. More importantly, this approach will enable the organization to be ready to learn from information gathered from its stakeholders to implement positive changes in the long run. Consequently, the registrar’s office will be able to review its short term and long term strategic plans to find out if they change its overall performance.

The registrar’s office needs to adopt continual processes of organizational development to enhance the value of service it provides to students. It needs to have accurate measures that assess the validity of different performance standards that have been implemented. More importantly, the department needs to align the objectives of the change initiatives that it is going to adopt with the overall strategy of the university. A leader who is expected to initiate the change process needs to find out which important functions need to be improved to enable all participants to set priorities.¹⁴ This will enable the registrar’s office to set priorities that need to be covered by the change process to ensure it does not lose its identity in the industry in the long run. Moreover, this will help it to preserve its identity by controlling the pace at which changes are adopted to avoid confusing its employees, clients, and other important stakeholders.

The pace at which a particular change initiative should be closely monitored to ensure all stakeholders understand the value of transformative processes that are being undertaken. The registrar’s office needs to focus on implementing new technologies and developing the skills of its employees to make them capable of achieving good results in their duties.¹⁵ Besides, it needs to link these improvements to the overall quality of services it offers all students to encourage them to remain loyal to the institution. This will reduce the number of students that transfer to other universities. Therefore, the registrar’s office will be in a position to turn around the performance of the university.

Recommendations

• The registrar’s office needs to conduct a cost-benefit analysis that will guide the implementation of proposed change management strategies.
• The role of technology needs to be analyzed to find out how it will help the office to streamline its internal processes.
• Some of the internal processes the office needs to focus on include: records and data management, payroll functions, communication, and security.
• It also needs to find out the perceptions of all employees and students towards the various change management processes.
• The office needs to assess the competency levels of its employees to find out if they are able of executing functions that are envisioned in the proposed change.
• The registrar’s office needs to adopt an effective change strategy that will enable it to share information with other departments in the university.
• The office also needs to look at the viability of new processes adopted in helping it achieve a higher level of efficiency in the long term.
• The change agent to be used needs to have good human relations skills to help him deal with various forms of resistance by the department’s staff more effectively.
• Changes that will be proposed should also conform to the overall strategies of the organization to ensure they are suitable for the long term vision of the university.
• The department needs to have a clear vision that shows how the desired benefits will be achieved and the resources needed to actualize its wishes.
• The communication tools to be used should be proactive in identifying challenges that are likely to be experienced and how they are going to be addressed.

Action Plan

One of the theories the firm needs to use the benefits led approach to analyze the benefits it is going to obtain from the change it intends to initiate. This approach will enable all important stakeholders to define specific priorities that need to be addressed to streamline the functions of the registrar’s office. Besides, the change agent needs to understand appropriate tools that he can use to measure and track how different organizational functions are executed. More importantly, critical thinking strategies will determine if proposed changes will be accepted or rejected by various stakeholders in the organization.¹⁶ As a result, the benefits led approach will help the registrar’s office to forecast benefits or risks it is likely to experience in the future after implementing the new strategies. Therefore, this will enable the office to allocate adequate resources to ensure all expectations that have been set are achieved easily.

The university needs to regain its competitive position to reduce the number of students who are not satisfied with the quality of services offered by the office of the registrar. The change models to be used by the registrar’s office should be sustainable and well designed to ensure all important participants understand their roles.¹⁷ Therefore, the registrar’s office needs to put in place effective plans that will guide the organization to accomplish its plans. More importantly, the proposed change models must take note of various trends that are likely to affect the operations of the university in the long run. This will enable the change agent together with other stakeholders to find out effective ways in which the organization can respond to unforeseen risks that impact its operations. As a result, all improvements that are adopted should focus on developing the skills of all employees to make them anticipate the different needs of the organization more effectively.

Conclusion

The change management model adopted for the registrar’s office needs to take into account other organizational development approaches that can boost performance. Before these strategic changes are adopted, employees need to be informed about benefits that are likely to be obtained in the long run. Effective training programs need to be implemented to equip all employees with the appropriate skills they need to achieve good performance in their respective workstations. Lastly, technological solutions need to be made part of the change process to increase the quantity and quality of output realized from different work processes in the organization.

Bibliography

Bernerth, Jeremy. “Expanding our understanding of the change message.” Human Resource Development Review 3, no.1 (2004): 36-52.

Bradford, David L., and W. Warner Burke. Reinventing Organization Development: New Approaches to Change in Organizations. Hoboken: Wiley, 2012.

Chew, Mindy Man Min, Joseph S. L. Cheng, and Sonja Petrovic-Lazarevic. “Managers’ Role in Implementing Organizational Change: Case of the Restaurant Industry in Melbourne.” Journal of Global Business and Technology 2, no.1 (2006): 58-67.

Figliomeni, Carlo. Change Management Process for Information Technology. New York: Xlibiris Corporation, 2012.

Haddadj, Slimane. “Organisation change and the complexity of succession: A longitudinal case study from France.” Journal of Organisation Change Management 16, no. 2 (2003): 135-153.

Johnson, Sharon. Meeting the Challenge of Change. Sydney: Eastern House, 2001.

Letavec, Craig J. Strategic Benefits Realization: Optimizing Value through Programs, Portfolios and Organizational Change Management. New York: J Ross Publishing, 2014.

Long, Choi Sang. “Transformation of HR Professionals to be a Change Agent: Realistic Goal or Just a Dream.”Journal of Advanced Management Science 1, no.1 (2013): 50-53.

Saka, Ayse. “Internal Change Agents’ View of the Management of Change Problem.” Journal of Organizational Change Management 16, no. 5 (2003):.480-496.

Seel, Richard. “Anxiety and incompetence in the large group: A psychodynamic perspective.” Journal of Organizational Change Management 14, no.5 (2001): 493-503.

Footnotes

1. David L. Bradford and W. Warner Burke, Reinventing Organization Development: New Approaches to Change in Organizations (Hoboken: Wiley, 2012), 61.
2. Ibid., 71.
3. Sharon Johnson, Meeting the Challenge of Change (Sydney: Eastern House, 2001), 42.
4. Ibid., 49.
5. Craig J. Letavec, Strategic Benefits Realization: Optimizing Value through Programs, Portfolios, and Organizational Change Management (New York: J Ross Publishing, 2014), 33.
6. Ibid., 39.
7. Richard Seel, “Anxiety and incompetence in the large group: A psychodynamic perspective.” Journal of Organizational Change Management 14, no. 5 (2001): 496.
8. Ibid., 501.
9. Choi Sang Long, “Transformation of HR Professionals to be a Change Agent: Realistic Goal or Just a Dream.”Journal of Advanced Management Science 1, no.1 (2013): 51.
10. Ayse Saka, “Internal Change Agents’ View of the Management of Change Problem.” Journal of Organizational Change Management 16, no.5 (2003):.485.
11. Ibid., 490.
12. Mindy Man Min Chew, Joseph S. L. Cheng, and Sonja Petrovic-Lazarevic, “Managers’ Role in Implementing Organizational Change: Case of the Restaurant Industry in Melbourne.” Journal of Global Business and Technology 2, no.1 (2006): 60.
13. Ibid., 63.
14. Jeremy Bernerth, “Expanding our understanding of the change message.” Human Resource Development Review 3, no.1 (2004): 41.
15. Ibid., 47.
16. Carlo Figliomeni, Change Management Process for Information Technology (New York: Xlibiris Corporation, 2012), 71.
17. Richard Seel, “Anxiety and incompetence in the large group: A psychodynamic perspective.” Journal of Organizational Change Management 14, no.5 (2001): 494.