These notes are to help with your revision so that you are prepared to answer the assessment questions. They reflect contributions from students in the revision sessions held last week.
As we established in those revision sessions, in relation to the case study, the key themes that the OTA will ask you to address are:
• Change management and how HR policy & practice can contribute to improved organisational performance
• Leadership and management development
• Engagement and motivation.
Although these are the specific areas the OTA questions deal with, a broad knowledge of all the subjects covered by the module will put you in a better position to perform well, particularly other themes that emerged from the class discussion and that may be relevant to the case study such as the role of line management and employee relations.
So if you haven’t already done so, you should read through all the lecture slides (and, ideally, all the recommended reading) and your notes on them.
When you have done this, it is essential that you read through the lecture slides, your notes and the recommended reading (text book chapter and post-lecture reading at least) for the lectures on change management and leadership and management development and engagement. You should also review the materials provided on motivation and the reward lecture that addressed motivation theory. It is also important that you learn the concepts, models, theories and perspectives associated with these areas. You should also consider contextual issues such as HR strategy and line management input.
When you have done this, look at the case study and try to identify where, how and why any of the theories, etc. you have learned on the course could be applied to the case. Here, you should be asking yourself the following questions:
• Which models and theories of change management may be relevant to the case? How can they be applied?
• How could a leadership and management development intervention address some of the issues identified? Which development methods might be appropriate and why? What, specifically, would be achieved by the intervention? How would you know that the intervention had been successful?
• What does the case tell me about levels of engagement across the stores?
• What engagement and motivation theory may be relevant to the case? How could my knowledge of these be applied?
Finally, whilst it is essential to apply the theory learned on the course (you do not have to give full Harvard-style references, just cite authors and dates), it is equally important to answer the question set. You should also include any examples of practice in the relevant sector that you have come across, either from your reading or from news items. Please note that good answers apply theory, references and examples to the case study and answer the question set; simply repeating theory/models but not applying them is not appropriate. What is also not appropriate is discussing examples at length, without explaining how they relate to your answer to the question set.
Below are references to training evaluation sources that were omitted from the “References” slide in the relevant lecture.
Anderson, V 2007, The value of learning: from return on investment to return on expectation. Research into practice, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, London
Kirkpatrick, D. L. (1959). Techniques for Evaluation Training Programs. Journal of the American Society of Training Directors, 13, 21-26.
Kirkpatrick, D.L., 1979. Techniques for evaluating training programs. Training and development journal. Jun79, Vol. 33 Issue 6, p78. 15p.
Kirkpatrick, D., 2007. The four levels of evaluation (Vol. 701). American Society for Training and Development.
(You will see that Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model dates from 1959, but the original paper is not available via library search.)
