1. ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES
ECON200W - CRN 11297
Western Oregon University
Professor Fred Oerther
November 19, 2014
address all email to: [email protected]
ASSIGNMENT PROMPT FOR
SECOND MAIN STUDY REPORT
Please follow the directions to the prompt questions.
Creative thinking is encouraged as long as you are thoroughly
covering the core questions. Use your understanding of
economic thinking and economic behavior. This paper should
be approximately a 10 page typed work. My personal
preference is for 1.15-paced lines in a 12-font, with 1-inch
margins. Use appropriate citation of outside sources as
necessary, gathered in a bibliography at the end of the report,
but these can be broadly referential, since this is a work of
exposition, not a research paper as such. This report is due in
my office (210 West House) or via email, no later than 7 AM
December 4, 2014. Please do not turn anything in to the
MOODLE site. No late work will be accepted. Thank you.
Enjoy!
THE ECONOMICS OF LIFE
Directions: Write an informative essay in response to the
following prompt question: What part does economic thinking
play in life? While you may utilize some direct reference to
your own personal life, your work must also speak in general
terms. Besides the answer to the broad abstract question above,
please also provide a focused answer to at least two of the more
specific prompts provided below:

2. 1. To what extent can the economic perspective be applied when
deciding between (1) your needs and desires regarding family
and (2) the socially-imposed requirements and demands of
building a successful career and/or business?
2. How will you reconcile your own personal dreams, hopes,
and preferences with those of the others in your family unit
(your spouse and your children)?
3. How does economic thinking apply to the “social contract” of
the family unit, or can “economics” be disregarded when it
comes to decisions inside the family?
4. How important is money in the successful accomplishment of
your life goals?
5. How important is it to take an economically rational view in
regards towards thinking about and planning towards the future?
6. How does economic thinking apply to considerations of
living and working in the city/urban environment versus the
country/rural environment? Explain how economics applies to
questions surrounding whether to stay near where you originally
grew up as opposed to moving far away and/or to moving to a
culture that is very different to the one you were raised in.
7. Use economic thinking to describe your efforts to build
elements of your human capital, e.g. the attainments of
educational credentials, workplace skills and experiences, and
social and cultural knowledge. How are these important?
8. Describe the applicability of economic thinking to decisions
regarding romance, courtship, and marriage. Does economic
thinking come into play in considerations of the relationship
between people inside of the institution of marriage? to
questions of trust, of faithfulness, and of divorce? Explain.

3. 9. Consider the economics of your career. Will you work in the
same productive field your whole life, or will you have to make
a major change in professional orientation at some point? How
will you prepare for and make such a transition?
10. What are the economics of planning for life difficulties such
as unemployment, indebtedness, bankruptcy, and business
failure? What about the economics of possible personal
challenges of psychological dysfunction such as depression,
potential addictions, crime victimization, or chronic physical
illness?
Running Head: MANAGEMENT PLAN 1
MANAGEMENT PLAN 8
Management Plan: Transformational Change Management Plan
Student’s Name:
Institutional affiliation:

4. Management Plan: Transformational Change Management Plan
Introduction.
The designed transformational management plan below serves a
small-and-medium-sized public company that has lost business
to its rival, therefore choosing to outsource much of its
production operations. Based in a Midwestern town, the
company is one of the largest employers with an above average
reputation for employee welfare. To recover from its prevailing
form of crisis, the Company ought to invest in developing a
plan that will cause alterations in its business model needed for
its corporate survival. Proactive adjustments should be made to
the company’s vision accompanied by subsequent management
of the alterations.
Some examples of transformational management techniques
include “introduction of new technology in the organisation to
offset any existing obsolete technology, product restructuring as
well as implementing fundamental changes in the company’s
leadership model, also known as transformational leadership.”
(Anderson & Anderson, 2010) Transformational managers must
not only guide the changes taking place in the organization, but
also manage the employees’ morale, which is often a
challenging issue when it comes to implementing the change
(Umble, Haft & Umble, 2003)
For successive change to occur, the leaders in question ought to
be well prepared as change can at times prove difficult to
accomplish. The best approach would be one that optimizes the
company’s available resources while yielding the expected
results as the whole procedure can be incredibly expensive.

5. The Need for Transformational Change
Transformational change defines the shift in an organisation’s
culture resulting from a change in its underlying state and
process previously used. This change is meant to be
0rganization-wide and implemented over a period.
(http://businessdictionary.com). The primary objective of a
transformational change management plan is to enable an
organisation’s stakeholders adapt to a new mission, vision and
system as well as identifying sources of resistance to them. As
stated above, many organisations will develop a
transformational plan in an effort to respond effectively to a
crisis or repositioning of its market position.
The company in question chose to outsource most of its
operations as well as large laying-offs of its long-term
employees in an effort to recover from its business crisis. A
company cannot afford to ignore essential radical alterations in
its business model and culture due to the loss brought about by
its competitor. Changes are clearly critical for the firm’s
recovery. Managers play a big role in transformational change.
They are obliged to recognize areas of improvement and
implement necessary changes to enable the company perform to
its maximum ability. They should also bridge any gap between
departments and maintain reliable communication across all
aspects of the company.
When implemented immediately, transformational change
management plans can be an essential source of competitive
advantage. However, it is expensive, disruptive and difficult to
implement them. Thus, an organisation can adapt other much
easier ways of remaining competitive such as introducing
innovative applications to systematize manual processes quickly
and effectively.
Theories of Change Management
1. Kurt Lewin’s Model.
This model requires 3 actions: unfreezing, changing and
refreezing. In the unfreezing stage, the organisation is prepared
for change by creating motivation to change. The changing

6. stage involves promoting communication among people and
empowering them to embrace new ways of working. Finally,
when the changes are taking shape, and people have embraced
new ways of working, the company is ready to refreeze, which
is characterized by a stable organization chart and job
description among others.
The model is simple to comprehend and provides a very high-
level approach to change management that covers both simple
and complex issues. However, the change process can be
daunting as people leave the security and comfort of how things
have always been done to adapt new ways of doing things.
2. John Kotter’s Theory
Kotter proposes that for a change to be effective, 75 % of the
company’s executives need to “buy into” the change. The model
involves eight crucial steps; creating urgency:
· Forming a powerful coalition
· Convincing people that change is necessary,
· Creating a vision for change
· Communicating the vision to other members of the
organisation
· Removing obstacles to change so as to empower the people
needed to execute the vision
· Creating short-term wins
· Building up on the change
· Anchoring the changes in the corporate culture
This theory has proved to be successive and logical. However,
if the steps are not followed subsequently, change is paralysed.
It also requires a long time to implement which the company
may not have.
3. Action- Research Model.
This theory advocates active participation in a change situation,
often via an existing organisation while simultaneously
conducting research. It can be undertaken by larger
organisations assisted by expert researchers, with the aim of

7. improving their strategies, knowledge and practises of the
environment in which they operate.
The model can be used in education by practitioners who want
to explore their own practise. However, the model is associated
with high levels of risk and uncertainty. The organisation has to
analyse critically and evaluate practises in order to facilitate
practical changes. The most successive way to implement an
organizational change is to follow the outlined steps with
consistent monitoring and reviewing.
Communication Plan.
Development of a communication plan is necessary for a change
management team. Statistics shows that teams tend to
communicate less frequently than they ought to during a
project. Approximately 40% of the study’s participants
indicated that communication within an organisation on a
weekly basis yielded the desired frequency. Effective
communication should be open and risk-free, where employees
can fearlessly ask questions.
Various methods of communication include corporate
newsletters, one-on-one meetings, emails, faxes and
demonstrations. The organisation’s employees form the larger
portion of the company’s stakeholders that requires the change
management information. The information conveyed should
comprise the organisation’s current situation, its vision after the
change, as well as the impact of the presumed change on the
employees. It should also highlight the basics of what is
changing, particular behaviour and activities expected from the
employee, procedures for getting help and assistance during the
change and status updates on the implementation of the change.
The Employee Supervisor could give information regarding how
the change will affect the employees as the CEO delivers
messages about business drivers and vision. Collectively, the
most effective mode of communication is the face-to-face
interactions which include group and team meetings,
presentation and demonstrations and one-on-one discussions.
The company could also use emails as they are more efficient,

8. as well as the company’s intranet websites. Of interest to note is
that certain characteristics of communication such as honesty
and consistency highly contribute to the overall effectiveness of
a communication channel.
Implementation Plan.
Implementing the developed change management plan involves
putting the plan into action to yield the desired results. The
implementation plan entails: defining change management
processes and practises of the organisation. This should cover
procedures for handling changes, tools to be used as well as
measurements for change management to ensure efficiency. The
next step involves receiving change requests, ideally through a
single change co-ordinator. The third stage is the plan for
implementation of changes to determine certain aspects such as
required resources for achieving the change. This will involve
examining the change request prioritisation, impact of change to
the system, back-out procedures and schedule of
implementation.
The proceeding step will entail implementing and monitoring
changes and backing them out where necessary. Afterwards, the
company will evaluate and report on changes implemented.
Feedback on all changes will be provided to the organisation’s
change coordinator, whether they were successful or not. If the
anticipated result is not achieved, then the company can opt to
back out of the change process. Finally, the organisation will
modify the change management plan if necessary as per the
received feedback. This will make the plan more effective. The
change coordinator is responsible for evaluating trends in the
application of changes to see if the change implementation
planning was sufficient. The company should keep in mind that
successive implementation of their developed change
management plan is highly dependent on effective monitoring
and evaluation of the stages of implementation.

9. Reference list
Anderson, D., & Anderson, L. A. (2010). Beyond change
management: How to achieve breakthrough results through
conscious change leadership. John Wiley & Sons.
Umble, E. J., Haft, R. R., & Umble, M. M. (2003). Enterprise
resource planning: Implementation procedures and critical
success factors. European journal of operational research,
146(2), 241-257.