Excellent Consulting: The Challenge of International Collaboration & Corporate Change (2235.YR.003542.1)

General information

Type:	OPT	Curs:	1	Period:	S semester
ECTS Credits:	3 ECTS

Teaching Staff:

Group	Teacher	Department	Language
Year 1	Beatriz Olvera Arias	Dirección de Personas y Organización	ENG

No specific prerequisites apply for this intensive seminar except for a positive attitude and sufficient energy. However, it is worthwhile and useful to complete some graduate modules in organizational science prior to participating in this program.

Seminar participants are expected to participate actively in the lectures and study groups by studying and presenting views found in literature, posing questions during lectures and working actively on solving organizational problems during the study groups. All participants are expected to give presentations in the study groups.

Basic knowledge in a specific field and experiences in organizations based on internships or memberships in organizations are helpful to relate concepts to own experiences and realize reflective learning.

The central issue in this seminar focuses on the question how to consult in strategic and cultural changes in organizations to achieve sustainable change and innovation with inspired leadership, motivated employees and satisfied customers.

This is an intensive course of one full week. We exchange experiences, concept, ideas and reflections in plenary sessions every day from 9.00 till 14.00. During these sessions you are invited to share your experiences and ideas and offer presentations based on literature studied. You read literature, define related questions and prepare case studies in the afternoon after classes. During classes you work in multi-cultural teams to exchange issues related to literature and case studies.

Participatory sessions: 5 sessions of 5 hours
- Teamwork during these sessions: 2 hours
- Participatory presentation during these sessions: 1.5 hours
- Interactive lectures during these sessions: 1.5 hours

Autonomous reading and case study preparation: 4 hours every day

In percentages for a full week of 9 hours a day:
Interactive lectures: 25%
Participatory sharing: 20%
Multi-cultural teamwork: 20%
Autonomous preparation: 35%

Central issue en focus
The central issue in this seminar focuses on the question how international consultants contribute to strategic and cultural changes in international organizations to achieve sustainable change and innovation with inspired leadership, motivated employees and satisfied customers. Consulting in this intensive course is primarily viewed as a method for improving management practices and international collaboration in corporations, alliances and networks.

Management consulting
Management consulting is a professional service that helps managers and employees to analyze and solve organizational problems and qualify their organization for the future. Consultants transfer successful management practice from one enterprise to another and contribute to our knowledge about successful organizational change in an international context. As consultants influence managerial decisions, of which some may be very important for the future life of organizations, it is fully justified to require consultants to possess professional knowledge and skills needed for this role. This course offers a continuous updated body of knowledge for international students who want to learn about consulting as a profession.

Consultants play a distinguished role in strategic and cultural changes in international organizations. Realization of strategic and cultural change in organizations is complex processes and many organizations do not attain the desired outcomes. The success of fundamental change is related to the design and realization of change processes that include behavior of groups and individuals within organizations. The ability of change and development in organizations can be increased by paying dedicated attention to the design of the change process and the development of learning capacities of organizations and its members.

Consultants could play a role in the success of international collaboration and organizational change by:
- Considering the uniqueness of the organization and differences in international cultures;
- Diagnosing organizational strengths and weaknesses and cultural tensions between countries;
- Assessing organizational cultures and management styles within the organization;
- Understanding and visualizing organizational dynamics and constrains in realizing change;
- Designing a change process to solve problems and guide the organization to the future;
- Choosing contributing roles in the change process and engage people to participate in change;
- Developing a coherent intervention plan that supports people to contribute to successful change;
- Execute an evaluation and building a reflective learning experience around the change process

Strategic and cultural change
During this intensive course we will engage in strategic and cultural changes within organizations and international organizational networks. Change can be something driven from within companies. It can also be the need to adjust to external pressures in a changing environment. Organizational culture is related to the identity of an organization and reflects the values and purposes of an organization. These values and purposes play an important role in shaping the future of an organization. Successful cultural change is intertwined with strategic change.

During this seminar we discover strategies and interventions for strategic and cultural change in organizations, which deal with the following questions:
- What can consultants and managers do when an organization is confronted by a financial crisis or when the legitimacy of organizations is questioned by society?
- How are consultants and managers contributing to success of international collaboration aimed to improve the market or legitimate position of corporations?
- What initiatives may consultants and managers take to prepare organizations for the future and build a valuable societal business?
- What are possible interventions and creative ways to use diversity and conflict in organizations productively?
- How can consultants and managers strengthen creativity in organizations and stimulate breakthrough innovation with partners in organizational networks?
- What initiatives can we take in our future role as consultants or managers to create profound change in organizations and improve societal and customer value continuously?
- How do consultants and managers contribute to transformational change and what may be the future role of consultants in a global world full of contradictions?

The seminar offers an overview of different perspectives on strategic and cultural change in organizations and the role of consultants and managers in these changes. This comprehensive perspective is helpful in taking a wider perspective on strategic and cultural changes in organizations. During the project we discover how to guide strategic and cultural change in organizations. Successful strategic and cultural change requires seeing beyond the current range of vision. Strategic conversations are helpful for interpreting the present and developing scenarios for the future, using story lines and imagination. The role of consultants, leaders and managers is observed in profound changes. Leaders in cultural change are initiators who create meaning and set the pace. Consultants question existing patterns and open up new perspectives. Together they invite people to build vital coalitions and initiate change. The leading question in this intensive course is: what contributes to the success of strategic and cultural changes in international organizations and what is the role of consultants in these change processes to make change happen.

This seminar offers you a balance between modern theories on management consulting, changing organizations and current insights and methodologies from dynamic systems theory on organizing and learning. The program helps you to understand the complexity of organizational change and gives you tools and methods to act as a professional consultant in processes of strategic and cultural organizational change.

Learning objectives are:
1. Recognizing the growing importance of consulting as a profession in private and public sectors and identifying qualities and competences of strategic business consultants in a global world.
2. Learning about the nature and purpose of management consulting and the range, scope and characteristics of consulting work.
3. Understanding the complexities and ambiguities in strategic and cultural change in organizations and the daily transformation processes that consultants leaders and managers are involved in;
4. Developing practices to inquire dynamics and turbulence in the environments of organizations and in the interactions with stakeholders;
5. Diagnosing organizational dynamics from multiple perspectives and practicing different methodologies for diagnosing the functioning of organizations;
6. Exploring the state of the art in theories on strategic and cultural change in organizations, and getting known with practical insights and methodologies that may be used in strategic and cultural change;
7. Sensing the social consequences of organizing, changing and developing and understanding dilemmas in processes of strategic and cultural change in organizations;
8. Developing professional insights to choose strategies for facilitating strategic and cultural change in organizations and organizational networks;
9. Experiencing dynamics of change and getting known with interventions to manage conflicts between groups, social processes within groups and to stimulate individual learning;
10. Understanding how communication and the use of interventions are related to change strategies and how they support sustainable organizational change to realize customer value with committed employees;
11. Develop insights in styles of consulting and possibilities of personal development as consultant in strategic and cultural change in organizations;
12. Getting ideas about processes of change and learning in networks of organizations, which experiences dynamic interactions in ambiguous situations.

1. Management consulting as profession Consultants are professionals in a position to have some influence over an individual, a group or an organization, but who has no direct power to make changes or implement improvements. You are consulting any time you are trying to change or improve a situation but have no direct control over the implementation. The lack of control is what makes the tasks of consultants difficult. This course is about having leverage and impact when we don¿t have direct power to implement changes. Consulting covers many functions, like business consultants in consulting firms, independent consultants and staff professionals in businesses and international corporations. Most people do consulting work for organizations, rather than for themselves or consulting business. From a professional perspective consulting work and staff work are interchangeable and in both positions people need consulting skills to be effective. Above all we need to know what the consultant is talking about, which means expertise in a specific field is important. This is our basic training in finance, sales, marketing, engineering, accounting, counseling, social psychology, anthropology or any of the thousand ways people make a living. The foundation of consulting skills is some expertise. This course assumes you have some area of expertise. Consulting skills are an essential part of the profession. These include building an initial contact and contract with the client, exploring what the problem might be and how to get started. Consultants need to come up with their own sense of the problem by choosing who is going to be involved in analyzing and defining the problem, what methods for problem analyses will be used, what kind of data should be collected and how long will it take? The diagnoses must be reported in some fashion. In giving feedback there is always some resistance to the interpretation of the consultant. The consultant must learn to handle this resistance in a respectful manner. Choosing change strategies and designing a change process to realize changes is one of the most challenging tasks of consultants. This includes setting future perspectives, combining change strategies, choosing roles for people involved and developing an action plan with interventions. Consultants may be deeply involved in the realization of the intended changes within organizations. There are many options for ending the consulting relationship with the client and termination is an important part of consulting. If done well, it can provide an important learning experience for the client and the consultant. Consultants need interpersonal skills, like ability to put ideas into words, to listen, to give support, to disagree reasonably and to build and maintain relationships. They need personal

2. Diagnosing organizational dynamics from multiple perspectives The second session we focus on diagnosing organizations, their problems and their inspirations. Several models and perspectives of diagnosing are presented and the principles of expert diagnoses, naturalistic inquiry and appreciative inquiry are explored. We focus specifically on diagnosing organizational cultures to understand underlying dynamics within organizations.

3. Elaborating strategies for strategic and cultural change in organizations During this day the art of designing and organizing processes of strategic and cultural change are elaborated. An overview is given of parameters for managing change processes. Monitoring and feedback systems are described as part of management of change. This day conclude with dilemmas between designing and developing, and balancing between domination, planning, negotiating, seducing, learning and dialoguing. During this session you analyze some barriers in organizations when people try to make efforts to change the organization.

4. Strategies and interventions for organizational change and development This morning strategies and interventions of organizational change are elaborated and roles of people in changing organizations are analyzed and discussed. An overview is given of interventions for strategic and cultural change in organizations. Interventions are combined in a coherent intervention plan During this session you learn to juggle with dilemmas of organizational change strategies and work with various interventions for organizational change and development.

5. Sustainable change and consulting in ambiguous situations The fifth and last day of this seminar focuses on learning and developing for sustainable change. A theoretical framework is presented on leadership and individual and organizational learning. During this session you get an idea about organizational change and learning in ambiguous situations and reflect on processes of action learning and action inquiry. You are invited to develop insights in styles of leadership and the possibilities for personal development as initiator in strategic and cultural change in organizations.

The seminar will be in the English language.

Seminar participants are expected to participate actively in the lectures and study groups by studying and presenting views found in literature, posing questions during lectures and working actively on solving organizational problems during the study groups. All participants are expected to give presentations in the study groups.

Teaching methods of this seminar will be lectures, interactive working sessions, business analyses, student presentations, video analyses and elaboration of case studies.

Students are asked to prepare the seminar by reading literature of organizational change and development, and to prepare a case study of a change process in an organization. During the seminar more literature will be studied.

Students are expected to work with three books:
- Boonstra, Jaap (2018) Organizational change as collaborative play. A practical guide for change professionals in organizational change and development. (Obligatory - Available online)
- Kubr, Milan (2002) Management Consulting. A guide to the profession. Geneva: International Labor Office (Obligatory - Available on e-Campus)
- Boonstra, Jaap (2013) Cultural Change and Leadership in Organizations. A Practical Guide to Successful Organizational Change. (Recommended - Available on e-Campus)

During this seminar you will work with theories, practical insights and methodologies, which are presented in:

Boonstra, Jaap (2019) Organizational change as collaborative play. A positive view on changing and innovating organizations. Amsterdam: Boom | Management Impact.
(Obligatory - available as e-book or soft cover via webshops like Amazon.

Kubr, M. (2002) Management Consulting. A guide to the profession. Geneva: International Labor Office
(Obligatory - available on e-Campus)

Boonstra, Jaap (2013) Cultural Change and Leadership in Organizations. A Practical Guide to Successful Organizational Change. Chichester, UK: Wiley.
(Recommended - available on e-Campus)

Morgan, Gareth (2006) Images of Organization. 3rd Edition. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.
(Recommended - available on e-Campus)


Additional ideas and publications are available on e-Campus from selected resources, which might be valuable during your professional career:

Boonstra, Jaap (ed.) (2004) Dynamics of Organizational Change and Learning. Chichester, UK: Wiley.

Mintzberg, Henry, Bruce Ahlstrand & Joseph Lampel (2008) Strategy Safari: The Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management. New York: Prentice Hall.

Quinn, Robert (1996) Deep Change. Discovering the leader within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

Several articles from Harvard Business Review and other journals

Group	Teacher	Department
Year 1	Beatriz Olvera Arias	Dirección de Personas y Organización