Organizational Study Analysis Paper and Presentation
The final paper asks you to do a four-frame analysis of your organization and present your findings to the class. The purpose of the paper is to:
(1)Â Â Provide opportunities to work with and integrate the four frames as a useful tool for diagnosis and action in your work environment.
(2)Â Â Apply your learnings from the course materials and apply them to a real-life situation and organization.
(3)Â Â Reflect on your own professional area of practice within the organization.
(4)Â Â Present it to the class (no longer than 20 minute presentation)
The Organization Study project is the final for this course.Â Each student will write and present a paper on their organization.Â This is a professional presentation, and should include PowerPoint or some other form of media (handouts, photos, posters are all acceptable).Â Presentation should be 15 to 20 minutes and contain the following:
- An Introduction: Describe your organization.Describe your role within the organization.Â Provide the organizations â€œMission Statementâ€.
- Organizational challenge: Describe how you saw the purpose of your organization at the beginning of class.Â Has that view changed and why or why not?Â Â Describe the challenge you wanted to confront.Make sure that the issue(s)are bounded and manageable so that they can be described within your paper.
- Paper Length: Suggested length for the final paper is 8 to 10 pages.Â Provide enough information to enable someone unfamiliar with your organization, or the situation, the ability to understand the issues.Â You may disguise the case if you wish (â€œthe names have been changed to protect the innocentâ€) .
- Integration of class materials: Define the resources or insights you have gained from the class.Â How have you [or can] you integrate them into your organizational study?
- Four-Frame: After applying the Structure, Human Resources, Political and Symbolic model, how did [or could] the case have changed?Â Devote about a page for each of the four frames.
- Summary: In the last paragraph describe how useful the four frames were in helping you to clarify alternative courses of action for your situation.
Â Criteria for Grading
Papers will be graded on the following:
- Quality and thoroughness of analysis
- Clear focus, organization, writing, and presentation
- Internal consistency of the arguments
- Effective use of four-frame theory to reflect on and provide new insights into personal case experiences
Student final papers often included the following errors:
- Rambling – Remember to write about something you know. Be selective and write thoroughly about a few well-defined issue(s) than superficially about many.
- Providing extravagant descriptions of the organization and not what the issue actually is/was.Briefly describe how and why things happened at your organization, and the situation that got you there.
- Papers lack examples and theory to support the analysis. Avoid simply offering opinions, good papers take a set of theoretical ideas and show how those ideas can be applied to specific aspects of the case.
- Restating material from the readings without linking it to oneâ€™s own analysis. Good papers use theory to support insights and to cast a new light on personal experiences and observations.