ADMN 232 FINAL ACTUAL EXAM QUESTIONS AND
ANSWERS 2023 SOLUTIONS 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 hands-
on 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
Unfreezing Phase
- not establishing a great enough sense of urgency
- not creating a powerful enough coalition
Change Phase
- Lacking a vision
- Under-communicating the vision by a factor of ten
- Not removing obstacles to the new vision
- not systematically planning for and creating short-term wins
Refreezing Phase
ANSWERS 2023 SOLUTIONS 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 hands-
on 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
Unfreezing Phase
- not establishing a great enough sense of urgency
- not creating a powerful enough coalition
Change Phase
- Lacking a vision
- Under-communicating the vision by a factor of ten
- Not removing obstacles to the new vision
- not systematically planning for and creating short-term wins
Refreezing Phase
