Day: October 15, 2020

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, read Chapters 4, 5, and 6 in your course textbook.

Review the following case study and select one to examine and apply the theoretical concepts and methods used during an OD intervention.
Case Study 2: City Center Hospital Case Study
Organizational Problem:

Center City Hospital is a large outpatient surgery center in a mid-size urban area of Kansas. The CEO, Director of Nursing (DON), and the HR manager are concerned with a morale issue amongst the nursing staff of the organization. During the past year, the hospital has been trying to change the culture to become more profit and patient-centered.

Organizational Design:

Full-time staffing of the hospital is operational. This includes the CEO, DON, Human Resources Management (HRM), Finance, Risk Management, and Unit Managers for each section of the surgery center. Nursing staff within the center is outsourced and nurses are hired on as conditional permanent staff. The doctors are independent contractors with the hospital and are on yearly contracts.

Challenge and Request Criteria:

The CEO, DON, and the HRM believe the morale of nurses is at an all-time low and the relationship between doctors, unit managers, and nurses is damaging to the mission of the hospital. The CEO is concerned about losing physicians due to the lack of leadership skills displayed by the unit managers. The unit managers are concerned about the stress level for the nurses and blame the arrogant behavior of the physicians as the cause of stress.

The CEO, DON, and HRM request an OD intervention for all internal managers with the intent of developing a common focus of leading a united team. The leadership team requires that this be addressed in a one-day workshop and that a visible improvement be seen over the next 12 months.

As defined by the leadership team, the intervention

is to develop stronger leadership skills within the unit manager staffing, and must result with visible improvement over the subsequent 12 months.

The paper must be four to five pages in length, and include level headings to lead the reader through the specific areas of content. Level headings also provide the reader with an outline to ensure all areas of the project are covered. You may refer to the Introduction to APA (Links to an external site.) webpage, and read the information under Level Headings for assistance on level headings. The paper must include the course textbook as a reference, as well as four additional scholarly, peer-reviewed, and/or credible sources to support the content of the paper.

The Action Research Case Study paper

Must be four to five double-spaced in length (not including title and references) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Centers APA Formatting for Microsoft Word (Links to an external site.).
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of paper
Students name
Ashford University
Course name and number
Instructors name
Date submitted
Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) as well as Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
Must use at least four scholarly, peer-reviewed, or credible sources in addition to the course text.
The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view this Ashford University Library Quick n Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the Ashford University Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Centers APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.).
Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Writing Center for specifications.

Book Reference: Bierema, L. (2020). Organizational development: An action research approach (2nd ed.). Zovio.

Unit 2 Discussion
In this course, you will be using the tools of intercultural rhetoric to identify a problem in your community that needs solving and propose a way to address that problem.

Steven Johnsons TED Talk Where Good Ideas Come From explores how people can generate ideas through conversations with others. http://www.ted.com/playlists/20/where_do_ideas_come_from

After reviewing Steven Johnsons TED Talk and this weeks reading The Rhetoric of Community Engagement, tell the class what stood out to you as the most important elements of ethical communication and collaborating with others to generate ideas.
Then, find a persuasive TED talk and tell the class about it. Be sure to provide the link to the TED talk that you watched and key identifying details like the author, title, and main argument of the speaker.
Explain why you selected this persuasive TED Talk and how it illustrated effective persuasive communication. How did the TED speaker that you watched convince the audience of his or her position?
Wrap up your post with an open-ended question for your classmates to respond to when they reply to your post.
To earn full participation credit, share your ideas in at least two well-developed paragraphs, respond substantively to at least two peers initial Discussion posts, and show active engagement in the discussion as described in the grading rubric. Responses should stay on topic and generate further discussion by asking questions, mentioning relevant examples, and if possible, referencing concepts from the units Reading and Learning Activities.

All Discussion posts and responses to peers should be written in complete sentences using Standard English. Before posting, proofread for grammar, spelling, and word-choice issues. Be sure to respond fully to every aspect of the Discussion.

When you refer to concepts from the units Reading, be sure to use a signal phrase like According to . . .[name of reading]. If you are directly quoting the Reading or another source, be sure to use quotation marks and cite the source using proper APA in-text citations and full references. See the Purdue Global Writing Center Using Sources for resources on APA citation formatting.

Discussion Board Rubric

Review the Discussion Board rubric your instructor will use to determine your Discussion grade.
Sample Discussion Post

You can review a sample Discussion post and response to a peer by clicking on the Unit 2 Sample Discussion Assignment.

ntroduce Yourself!

Throughout this course, you will have many opportunities to respond to the opinions and comments of your classmates. Take this opportunity to introduce yourself and to learn about each other. Be sure to include your name, location, and something about yourself that you would like your classmates to know.

Discussion Overview

Topic 1:

Welcome to the first Discussion Board! This week, the Reading covered the basics of writing in college and effective persuasive communication. You learned about how writers can use persuasive models like the rhetorical situation to motivate an audience to take action or change the way they think about something. Students also looked at how John, Eric, and Alice might apply persuasive communication in their future jobs as a restaurant owner, nurse, and Crime Scene Investigator. After completing the unit Reading and Learning Activities for Unit 1, respond to the following questions in at least two well-developed paragraphs:

Introduce yourself by telling the class about your background with persuasive communication. What are you studying and how do you imagine you will use persuasive writing in your career?
Describe an example of effective persuasive communication that you have encountered and identify the different parts of the rhetorical situation. Who was the speaker and who was the target audience? What was the purpose of the argument? What setting did the argument take place in and how might the communication have changed if it were in a different context? How does this example illustrate the qualities of effective persuasive communication from the Reading this week?
Wrap up your post with at least one open-ended question for your classmates to consider as they help you dig deeper into the ideas you shared this week.
To earn full participation credit, you will need to respond substantively to at least two peers initial Discussion posts and show active engagement in the Discussion as described in the grading rubric. These responses should stay on topic and generate further discussion by asking questions, mentioning relevant examples, and referencing concepts from the Reading.

All Discussion posts and responses to peers should be written in complete sentences using Standard English. Before posting, proofread for grammar, spelling, and word-choice issues. Be sure to respond fully to every aspect of the Discussion.

When you refer to concepts from the units Reading, be sure to use a signal phrase like According to . . .[name of reading]. If you are directly quoting the Reading or another source, be sure to use quotation marks and cite the source using proper APA in-text citations and full references. See the Purdue Global Writing Center Using Sources for resources on APA citation formatting.

Discussion Board Rubric

Review the Discussion Board rubric your instructor will use to determine your Discussion grade.
Sample Discussion Post

You can review a sample Discussion post and response to a peer by clicking on the Unit 1 Sample Discussion Assignment.

Answer each question in a separate post.

You need to post a link in every forum regardless of whether you have Student’s Choice or not.

Be aware that articles from “Investopedia” and “Wikipedia” do not count…you need to be more academic than that 🙂

1. What did you learn after reading the real-life case study presented in Confessions of an Average JoePreview the document?

2. Students Choice: Find an article that applies to retirement planning (could be an investment impact as well) that interests you. Post a link to the article and discuss what was meaningful to you about it.