Organizational readiness analysis

Enable you, the mentoring champion, to evaluate the risks to your reputation associated with pressing ahead with the scheme. For instance, an organizational readiness analysis that reveals that your culture is not conducive to a mentoring program will prompt you to stop your efforts and rethink. This may save you from great potential embarrassment ... 

Company support is vital without it, no mentoring scheme will work. In summary, your organizational readiness analysis must provide answers to the questions in Table 7.2. 

An alternative assessment approach for determining organizational readiness is suggested by Cooper. This approach is based on a Praxis Six Cell Analysis Model thax allows companies to conduct their readiness assessment at minimal cost. 

Computerized Information System. The Project SEARCH Criminalistics Laboratory Information System (CLIS) Committee is another LEAA funded project. Approximately fifteen criminalists are serving on the CLIS Committee which is conducting a requirements analysis for a nationwide computerized crime laboratory information system. With the assistance of a technical subcontractor, PRC Public Management Services, Inc., the committee has determined the "user needs" for such a data system, a conceptual design of a computer system to meet these requirements, and an assessment of different organizational and equipment alternatives for the system. The most recent task reports and implementation plan have been completed and submitted to the advisory committee for final review. Copies of the final reports should be ready for dissemination in the very near future. 

Both interview and questionnaire techniques were used in this survey. Fifty, semi-structured interviews were conducted on-site with a randomly selected, representative, stratified sample of employees. (See Appendix B for an example of some of the prompt questions used in the interview note that this can only be developed after some open interviews/discussion sessions are completed.) A questiormaire was generated from the interview data and distributed to 520 staff to be completed anonymously. This produced a 45 per cent usable response rate for analysis. The objectives were to gain an understanding of the perceptions of quality within the company and readiness for change to provide baseline data for evaluation purposes to identify quality improvement opportunities and potential barriers to change and to help management develop a sense of awareness about quality and quality improvement needs in the plant. The questionnaire included measures of job satisfaction (Warr et aL, 1979), organizational commitment (Porter et al., 1974), perceptions of cooperation and morale in the plant and measures of certain job characteristics associated with quality work performance, such as skill variety, autonomy and feedback (Hackman and Oldham, 1975). 

Finding 2. The vocabulary of organizing views safety as a bureaucratic constraint within NASA s space shuttle program, embodied in formalized organizational practices, primarily, its Flight Readiness Review, Mission Management Team, and Failure Mode and Effects Analysis systems. 

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