MGMT 591 Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Topics for Term Papers

These are only suggestions. The best project is one focused on improving conditions in one's own organization.

· Focusing on an employee productivity problem.

· Investigating employee turnover in a department or division.

· Determining why employee job satisfaction is low.

· Applying job design theory to improving the motivating potential score in a functional or work process area.

· Evaluating reward systems and their impact on performance.

· Looking at diversity in an organization and how it affects performance.

· Appraising a manager’s motivation methods and how they influence performance.

· Review the decision-making process in organizations.

· Concentrate on the communication process and how it affects the organization to achieve its goals.

· Look at how power and politics is impacting an organizational unit in terms of achieving the firm’s goals.

· Evaluate a leader’s leadership style and implications for performance and satisfaction.

· Evaluate organizational group conflicts that inhibit achievement of important objectives.

· Analyze a change effort in the organization. What went well? What went wrong? What should they have done?

· Determine the best organizational culture-style (in the context of the OCI) to optimize corporate objectives.

· Creating High Performance Organizations

Title

MGMT 591

Leadership and Organizational Behavior Project Proposal

Prepared for

Dr. Kevin Smith

Prepared by

Your Name

WK I –Date

If submitted late, so indicate

Title

Overview of Organization

The organization that will be the topic of discussion in my final project paper is ADC Telecommunications. ADC is a publicly traded, global, manufacturing telecommunications company whose headquarters are in the Twin Cities. It We primarily sells copper and fiber products to customers like Verizon and AT&T/Cingular. Like As with many other telecommunication companies, ADC went thru through a significant down-turn around 2000. Not only did locations get shut-down and hundreds of people got (colloquial) were laid off, the morale and culture of ADC changed. ADC went from having a top benefits package to having a decent benefits package. They It used to have all types of employee incentives and appreciation activities. Now the employees are lucky if they get a caramel apple in the fall and an appreciation meal at the holidays. Rewards for employees doing well are not there anymore.

Impact. With the down-turn, ADC lost a lot of their its highly skilled, highly valuable employees. They’ve consciously tried to hire higher “the best of the best” but ADC, at the current time, is not willing to provide the salaries and benefits to get (colloquial) attract “the best of the best.” ADC has really been focusing on cost-cutting measures the last couple of years. Thusly, don’t sacrifice the adverb for the adjective – John Steinbeck) about everything that differentiated ADC from other companies has gone out the window.

Context. I am an accountant for ADC in the business unit setting. I started with ADC in January of 2006. I was not around for the major down-turn, the benefits package reduction, etc. However, I work everyday with people who were there for that and who have had a negative attitude towards ADC ever since. They constantly discuss how it used to be, so it brings everyone down because well we all think of how much better it’d be with all of those benefits.

Cost cutting. Cost-cutting activities are alive and well at ADC today too. I have been there for less than two years and have seen three locations within the US close down and at least four outside of the US close. I’ve seen employees at headquarters get walked out just because they want to reduce the workforce and have less employee expenses. It can make it a difficult place to work at when you never really know if you’ll be the next person walked out the door.

Beyond lay-offs, ADC is attempting to cut costs in a lot of other areas, such as not purchasing new computers and other new equipment that would improve efficiency, so that money can be saved right now. Even though ADC was profitable in 2006, they decided not to give out any bonuses to employees. Yearly employee events have turned into every two or three year events. Gyms were supposed to be built at the facilities but that is no longer going to occur so money can be saved. Needless to say, overall morale around the place is quite low and ADC is having a hard time in keeping people around. Even those who have worked there for 10-20+ years have been leaving recently.

ADC has a lot of great people with great ideas. That’s why I stay. I feel that ADC has the opportunity to be a great company where employees are recognized and appreciated, where turnover decreases and where (keep prepositions the same on both sides of the conjunctive) productivity increases. I feel ADC has a lot of the right people to change the company around. The difficult part is that the top-level managers have decided to go to the route of cost-cutting rather than employee-saving.

Preliminary Problem Statement

ADC has set its (not their) top company priority as cost savings. They It will offshore operations, lay-off people, reduce benefit plans, expect more output from each employee, and, overall, not value their its employees as their its asset. Further details about the atmosphere at ADC have been previously described. I feel that ADC has the creativity and personnel to turn the company around. I see that ambition in various employees, but that desire needs to be put into place for the company to change. Otherwisecomma I am afraid the company’s morale will continue to decrease and employee turnover will continue to increase. Therefore, I would like to make my paper be about what you, Professor Smith, suggested in one of the threaded discussions - how to turn ADC into an HPOspell completely first mention? I will research what is needed to turn a company into an HPO and look at examples of other companies who have made the transformations. Thruough my research and writing, my plan is create the preliminary steps and outline for ADC to become one of the companies admired by others and to work on a long-term goal of making ADC into a Fortune 500 Company.

References

List references per APA publication manual, sixth edition.