Organizational Design, Change, HR, and Motivation Theories
This paper responds to four management concepts drawn from an organizational behavior course. It analyzes an organizational chart to evaluate mechanistic versus organic structures and propose structural improvements. It then explores personality traits — particularly the Big Five model's openness dimension — in relation to resistance to change, illustrated with a personal example involving a logo redesign. The paper examines how one company's human resources practices, including onboarding, e-training, mentoring, and executive coaching, contribute to sustainable competitive advantage. Finally, it applies Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to three contexts: the author's personal situation, the average American, and the average Liberian citizen during the Ebola crisis, highlighting disparities in opportunity and basic needs fulfillment.
- Organizational Structure and Chart Analysis: Evaluating mechanistic structure and proposing organic improvements
- Personality, Change Resistance, and the Big Five Model: Big Five openness and personal logo redesign resistance example
- Human Resources Practices and Competitive Advantage: HR training, mentoring, and coaching for competitive advantage
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: Personal, American, and Liberian Perspectives: Comparing hierarchy placement across three population contexts
- Conclusion: Opportunity gaps and foundational needs across contexts
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper consistently grounds abstract management theories in concrete, personal examples — such as resistance to a logo redesign and career disruption from new executive leadership — making the analysis credible and specific.
- The Maslow section effectively scales from the individual to the national and international level, creating a compelling comparative framework that illustrates how structural inequality affects hierarchy placement.
- The Big Five personality analysis is applied thoughtfully to workplace contexts, contrasting an accountant and a client relationship manager to show how personality-job fit shapes tolerance for organizational change.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied theory — taking established frameworks (Big Five, Maslow's Hierarchy, HR competitive advantage models) and using them as analytical lenses for personal observation and real-world situations. This technique shows the writer's ability to move between theoretical abstraction and concrete evidence, which is a hallmark of strong undergraduate management writing.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized around four discrete chapter-prompt responses, each functioning as a mini-essay. Each section introduces a theoretical framework, applies it to a specific context (organizational, personal, professional, or comparative), and draws evaluative conclusions. The Maslow section is the longest and most developed, moving through three distinct population comparisons before returning to personal reflection.
Organizational Structure and Chart Analysis
The organizational chart example considered here illustrates a formal structure based on job function. The structure of the chart suggests a mechanistic approach to conducting business, as the lines of reporting are clearly demarcated and indicate functional relationships between positions. A dotted line drawn between the Construction Group and the Project Manager would be a change that might encourage more organic functioning between the engineering group and the construction group. This change could signal to the two groups of employees that they are expected to communicate and coordinate in a timely and adequately detailed fashion, without necessarily routing everything through the technical advisor.
If the role of the Technical Advisor is precisely advisory, then it does not make sense for that position to hold a key place in the hierarchy for these two groups of workers. Reviewing the organizational chart in this way suggests that the designer of the chart may have conflated process flow charts with organizational charts. It is logical for the technical advisor to conduct work associated with that role at a point in a flow chart that precedes the handoff to the Construction Group and the Production Manager. It also seems desirable to articulate direct connections between the structural engineer, the surveyors, the site supervisors, and the site inspectors, rather than always routing communication through the technical advisor.
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