Benchmark - West Chester Private School Case Study

West Chester Private School Case Study

Grand Canyon University

MGT-420: Organizational Behavior and Management

December 11th, 2022

West Chester Private School

Your introduction should be typed here. It should be at least four sentences and include a thesis statement that introduces all the key points of the paper. Please note that you should follow all APA writing rules within your essay. This means avoid first and second person, do not use contractions, and use citations throughout your paper. The final sentence in your introduction must be a strong thesis statement that introduces every key topic that will be introduced in the paper. Remember that a thesis should be one sentence. Here is an example: In the pages to follow, West Chester Private School (WCPS) will be discussed in the context of open systems, organizational culture, the decision to close and the closure process, the impact of technology and innovation on stakeholders, administration closure options, the plans for future direction of WCPS, along with the four functions of management.

External Environment and Open Systems

There are certain ways in which organizations interact with their external environment (as open systems). These ways rely on the Systems Approach to Management Theory, which perceives an organization as an open system that consists of interdependent and interrelated parts interacting as sub-systems (Jackson, 2017). Generally, organizations rely on the exchange of resources and information with their environments. More so, they cannot hold complete control over their behavior and actions, which are significantly impacted by external forces. For example, an organization may be impacted by various environmental conditions such as government regulations, client demands, and raw material availability. As an open system, an organization can interact with the external environment in the context of inputs, transformations, and outputs. Inputs refer to both human and non-human resources like materials, energy, and information. Transformations refer to the conversion of inputs into outputs. For example, a school can transform a student into an educated individual. Finally, outputs refer to what an organization is giving to the environment.

Internal Environment and Organizational Culture

At the time of the closure, the effectiveness of West Chester Private School (WCPS) as an open system was inadequate. One important factor that impacts the effectiveness of an open system is feedback. Feedback refers to the information that an open system receives from the external environment, which can be used to maintain a system at optimal working conditions or a steady state (Jung & Vakharia, 2019). In the case of WCPS, feedback could be received from parents, teachers, and students. At the time of the closure, none of these stakeholders was consulted. Instead, WCPS made a unilateral decision to close down two campuses without considering the input of parents, teachers, and students. In turn, this resulted in negative consequences for all parties involved, including WCPS itself. By sidelining the parents, teachers, and students, WCPS cultivated distrust from these stakeholders leading to the organization losing students to other learning institutions.

Closure Decision and Process

The internal environment of an organization is comprised of various elements within the entity, which can either impact or be impacted by the decisions, activities, and choices made by the organization. The internal environment is made up of things like employees, management, management practices, work processes, resources/equipment, climate, and organizational culture. It is vital to note that there are certain factors, which are controlled by an organization and can have a huge impact on its decisions and overall business strategy. These factors influence the organization’s internal environment and can determine the success and failure of an organization with regard to meeting goals and objectives.

First, there is the value system, which refers to the things that make up the regulatory frameworks, for instance, management practices, work processes, culture, and climate. Second, there are the vision, mission, and objective statements, which define an organization’s ultimate aim and how it intends to attain it. Third, there is the organizational structure, which determines how an organization directs its activities to achieve its goals. Fourth, there is the corporate culture, which points to the organization’s behavior, beliefs, and values. These are important in shaping the relationship between employees and the management, in addition to how the organization manages external affairs. Fifth, there are human resources, which refer to all employees and the management (Kuratko, Hornsby, & Covin, 2018). Finally, there are the technological capabilities and physical resources, which ascertain the organization’s competitive capability.

Technology and Innovation Challenge

The organizational culture at the time the decision to close two campuses was made was poor. For starters, the leadership was ineffective. Under the stewardship of Dr. Murphy and the Education Management Services (EMS), the leadership was autocratic. The authoritarian tendencies meant that the decision to close down the campuses was reached without consulting the teachers. The teachers were not engaged in discussing the problems the organization faced and how the challenges could be mitigated, alleviated, or eradicated. Additionally, the organizational culture was toxic. According to Guest (2017), employees often want to feel that they belong to a great organizational culture. They desire to be treated like family rather than just people who get paid to get things done. At WCPS, the teachers were not considered important by the management. Apart from being sidelined during the making of major decisions, they were not trained and given the resources necessary to transition into a virtual learning environment (Grand Canyon University, n.d.). In turn, this negatively affected their performance and overall job satisfaction. Finally, the organizational culture at WCPS was characterized by ineffective communication. The organization closed down campuses without notice and failed to offer a clear explanation behind the action.

Theories from the Classical, Behavioral, and Modern Management Approaches

The decision made by Dr. Murphy and the EMS in terms of the process of going about the closure was ill-advised. The decision was made without the input of major stakeholders and with no regard for their welfare. Parents, teachers, and students only received word of the closure one day before the students were set to return to school after the winter break. Due to the poor timing of the closure, the students could not get timely placement in other schools. The teachers could also not get employment in other institutions at such short notice. Dr. Murphy and the EMS did not engage the stakeholders in any meaningful resolution to the issue. For instance, some parents suggested that they pay more money to keep the campuses open while others requested that the school run for an additional academic year to give them time to transition their children. However, Dr. Murphy and the EMS rejected these solutions.

The behavioral decision-making model was applied in the WCPS’s decision to shut down its campuses. This model entails taking advantage of the social, cognitive, and affective processes employed by humans in the identification and selection of alternatives (Sahu et al., 2020). In this regard, the closure of the campuses was guided by the preferences, beliefs, and values of the WCPS management, which produced a final decision and swayed the behavior of other stakeholders. This means that the input of other stakeholders was not considered. All aspects of the decisions were guided by what the WCPS management perceived to be right regardless of the consequences to the other stakeholders.

Plans for the Future

A major technology and innovation challenge that WCPS faced was its unpreparedness to facilitate remote learning. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, US-based K012 school districts temporarily closed down all schools and mandated that students continue with their coursework remotely. However, this presented significant challenges for WCPS. For starters, there were many students who had no access to WIFI, high-speed internet, or computers. More so, many teachers had limited or no experience with online learning. They found it difficult to adjust to the new program; this revealed significant skill gaps regarding the preparedness of the teachers to facilitate effective remote learning.

A solution that would make WCPS more competitive in meeting the needs of the three primary stakeholders affected entails a comprehensive training exercise for all teachers to educate them on the best practices needed to facilitate virtual learning. Such a program would introduce teachers to all the relevant platforms such as Zoom and Google Classroom to ensure they can navigate them easily. More so, the teachers can be taught how to troubleshoot common challenges associated with the relevant technologies. It may also be crucial for WCPS to collaborate with parents to ensure all students have access to computers and high-speed internet at their places of residence to facilitate remote learning.

A long-term solution for the future direction of WCPS is to restructure the leadership of the organization and bring in people who are better suited for the job. It is clear that the problems faced by WCPS originated from its poor leadership. Even if it was absolutely necessary for the two campuses to be closed, the leadership would have handled the situation better to ensure the organization did not lose the trust it had cultivated over the year in teachers, parents, students, and the wider community. By totally disregarding the needs of other stakeholders and not engaging them in the decision-making process, the leadership failed to facilitate a better closure of the campuses. More so, the leadership failed to prepare the school for the tough economic times and the new academic environment characterized by virtual learning. Regarding a short-term solution for the future direction of WCPS, the organization should hold an urgent meeting with all stakeholders. The meeting should be used to offer an apology, in addition to actively engaging them in ways to repair the broken relationship. This gesture would initiate the process of the community gaining trust in the organization once more while helping WCPS repair its brand.

Concluding Statement

The four functions of management can be integrated as a means to revamp management at WCPS and meet the recommended goals. Through the planning functions, the organization will identify current challenges and initiate long-term solutions to alleviate them. Through organizing functions, the administration can distribute resources, set staffing levels, structure departments, and delegate tasks to attain the set goals. Through leading functions, the organization can incorporate better leadership strategies to get the buy-in of other stakeholders, which will facilitate better achievement of common goals. Through controlling functions, the organization can use an iterative analysis that works to monitor its operations and constantly improve them for desirable outcomes.

References

Guest, D. E. (2017). Human resource management and employee well‐being: Towards a new analytic framework. Human Resource Management Journal, 27(1), 22-38.

Jackson, M. C. (2017). Systems approaches to management. Springer Science & Business Media.

Jung, Y., & Vakharia, N. (2019). Open systems theory for arts and cultural organizations: Linking structure and performance. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 49(4), 257-273.

Kuratko, D. F., Hornsby, J. S., & Covin, J. G. (2018). Diagnosing a firm's internal environment for corporate entrepreneurship. Business Horizons, 57(1), 37-47.

Mouzelis, N. P. (2017). Organization and bureaucracy: An analysis of modern theories. Routledge.

Oke, M. (n.d.). West Chester Private School case study. Grand Canyon University. Retrieved from Course Materials: https://lc.gcu.edu/learningPlatform/user/users.html

Sahu, A. K., Padhy, R. K., & Dhir, A. (2020). Envisioning the future of behavioral decision-making: A systematic literature review of behavioral reasoning theory. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ), 28(4), 145-159.

Uhl-Bien, M., Piccolo, R.F., Schermerhorn, J. R. & Bachrach, D.G. (2021). MGT-420 organizational behavior and management with WileyPLUS. Wiley & Sons.