ADMN 232 FINAL ACTUAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 2023 SOLUTIONS ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY

ADMN 232 ACTUAL FINAL EXAM

ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY

Organizational Innovation

the successful implementation of creative ideas in organizations

Intrapreneurship

when entrepreneurial ideas are created inside an existing company

Creativity

the production of novel and useful ideas

Organizational Change

a difference in the form, quality, or condition of an organization over time

Technology Cycle

begins with the birth of a new technology and ends when that technology reaches its

limits and is replaced by a newer substantially better technology. ie. when Henry Ford's

Model T replaced horse-drawn carriages or when airplanes replaced trains as a means

of crossing Canada

S-Curve Pattern of Innovation

a pattern of technological innovation characterized by slow initial progress, then rapid

progress, and then slow progress again as a technology matures and reaches its limits

Innovation Streams

patterns of innovation over time that can create sustainable competitive advantage

Technological Discontinuity

a scientific advance or a unique combination of existing technologies creates a

significant breakthrough in performance or function (the start of an innovation stream)

Discontinuous Change

the phase of a technology cycle characterized by technological substitution and design

competition (follows technological discontinuity)

Technological Substitution

the purchase of new technologies to replace older ones

Design Competition

competition between old and new technologies to establish a new technological

standard or dominant design

Dominant Design

a new technological design or process that becomes the accepted market standard

(follows discontinuous change)

Technological Lockout

when a new dominant design (ie. a significantly better technology) prevents a company

from competitively selling its products or makes it difficult to do so

Incremental Change

the phase of a technology cycle in which companies innovate by lowering costs and

improving the functioning and performance of the dominant technological design

Creative Work Environments

workplace cultures in which workers perceive that new ideas are welcomed, valued, and

encouraged

Components of Creative Work Environments

1) Challenging work

2) organizational encouragement

3) supervisory encouragement

4) work group encouragement

5) freedom

6) lack of organizational impediments

challenging work

requires effort, demands attention & focus, and is perceived as important to others in

the organization

Flow

a psychological state of effortlessness, in which you become completely absorbed in

what you're doing and time seems to pass quickly

Organizational encouragement

when management encourages risk taking and new ideas, supports and fairly evaluates

new ideas, rewards & recognizes creativity, and encourages the sharing of new ideas

throughout the company

BYOD

Bring Your Own Device

Supervisory Encouragement

occurs when supervisors provide clear goals, encourage open interaction with

subordinates, and actively support development teams' work and ideas.

Work group encouragement

when group members have diverse experience, educations, and backgrounds and

when the group fosters mutual openness to ideas; positive, constructive challenges to

ideas; and shared commitment to ideas

Freedom

having autonomy over one's day-to-day work and a sense of ownership and control over

one's ideas

Remove Impediments

internal conflict, power struggles, rigid management structures, and a conservative bias

toward the status quo can all discourage creativity.

Experiential approach to innovation

assumes a highly uncertain environment and uses intuition, flexible options, and handson experience to reduce uncertainty and accelerate learning and understanding

Aspects of experiential approach to innovation

1) Design iterations

2) testing

3) milestones

4) multifunctional teams

5) powerful leaders

design iteration

a cycle of repetition in which a company tests a prototype of a new product or service,

improves on that design, and then builds and tests the improved prototype

Product prototype

a full-scale working model that is being tested for design, function, and reliability

Testing

a systematic comparison of different product designs or design iterations

Advantages of testing

- speeds up and improves the innovation process

- product design strengths & weaknesses become very apparent

- uncovers errors early in the design process

- accelerates learning and understanding by forcing engineers and product designers to

examine hard data about product performance

Milestones

formal project review points used to assess progress and performance

Multifunctional teams

work teams composed of people from different departments

Powerful leaders

are typically more experienced, have high status in the company, and are held directly

responsible for the product's success or failure

Compression approach to innovation

assumes that incremental innovation can be planned using a series of steps and that

compressing those steps can speed innovation

Aspects of the compression approach

1) planning for incremental innovation

2) involving suppliers

3) shortening the time of individual steps

4) using overlapping steps

5) creating multifunctional teams

Planning for incremental innovation

to squeeze or compress development time as much as possible and the general

strategy is to create a series of planned steps to accomplish that goal.

Generational Change

change based on incremental improvements to a dominant technological design such

that the improved technology is fully backward compatible with the older technology

Involving suppliers

delegating some of the preplanned steps in the innovation process to outside suppliers

reduces the amount of work that internal development teams must do

Using Overlapping steps

shortens the development process by reducing delays and waiting times between steps

Organizational decline

a large decrease in organizational performance that occurs when companies don't

anticipate, recognize, neutralize, or adapt to the internal or external pressures that

threaten their survival

Stages of organizational decline

1) Blinded (key managers fail to recognize the internal or external changes that will

harm their organization)

2) Inaction (management may recognize the need to change, but still take no action)

3) Faulty action (rather than recognizing the need for fundamental changes, managers

assume that if they just run it more strictly, company performance will return to previous

levels)

4) crisis (bankruptcy or dissolution is likely to occur unless the company completely

reorganizes the way it does business)

5) dissolution (the company is dissolved thru bankruptcy proceedings or by selling

assets in order to pay suppliers, banks, and creditors)

Change forces

forces that produce differences in the form, quality, or condition of an organization over

time

- new strategic requirements, which are closely tied to competitor actions

- competitor actions

- changes in government regulation

- new technologies

"The Kiss of Yes"

some of the strongest resisters may support the changes in public but then ignore them

in private

Resistance forces

support the existing state of conditions in organizations

Resistance to change

opposition to change resulting from self-interest, misunderstanding and distrust, a low

tolerance for change, and time and cost factors

Managing organizational change

- Unfreezing (getting the people affected by change to believe that change is needed)

- change intervention (workers & managers change their behaviour & work practices)

- refreezing (supporting & reinforcing the new changes so that they stick)

Managing resistance to change

- education & communication (educate and communicate to employees about the

change)

- participation (have those affected by the change participate in planning &

implementing)

- negotiation

- top management support (must provide training, resources, and autonomy needed)

- coercion (formal power & authority)

Common Errors when Leading change