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Publication Positive Organizational Dynamics: A Reflective Journey Through Organizational Design, Culture and The Individual Experience(2022) Caroline M. FloodThis capstone is a portfolio review of the author’s study of organizational dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania. It is a practical guide for business professionals to reflect on how to achieve positive organizational dynamics, as well as a conversational journey examining the relationship between dynamics and organizational design, culture, and the individual experience. The work provides insight into leading theories, models, and research on organizational dynamics, which are brought to life through the author’s personal application and reflection. The capstone articulates the complexity involved in defining organizational dynamics and reinforces the importance of examining dynamics at the individual level. The author concludes that achieving positive organizational dynamics is possible through a continuous personal reflective process.Publication DEI, Here I Come! Five Lessons From Organizational Dynamics For DEI(2023-05-15) Dajana D. Denes WaltersThis Capstone is a reflective summary of the learnings gained during my journey in the Organizational Dynamics graduate program at the University of Pennsylvania. As I have been proactively working on transitioning to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), I decided to collect five valuable lessons from Organizational Dynamics that I want to bring to the next chapter of my professional life. As a result, I pulled common threads from different courses and experiences in the program to create a guidebook for myself and anyone else who is eager to create an inclusive, just, and safe work environment for all. Each lesson explores a different concept together with a method (or methods) that can be used to put it in practice and its DEI application(s). The concepts—including curiosity, transformative learning, contained chaos, implicit bias, and feedback—create a broad spectrum of organizational solutions for building a human-centered and learning-oriented organization where everyone can thrive.Publication Eye of the Beholder: Examining Performance-Inhibiting Thoughts of Artists Through The Lens Of Leadership Coaching(2023-08-01) Banks, Anthony L.If a coach subscribes to artist stereotypes and/or preconceived notions about artists, the coach may not fully and accurately perceive artists as they are during coaching sessions. Not all creatives suffer from the angst of being a starving artist. What are some of the artists' actual concerns? And how can Leadership Coaches help artists lead their way on their creative paths? This capstone is an investigation of some of the performance-inhibiting thoughts of artists examined through the perspective of leadership coaching. This capstone is intended to provide practical information for coaches who have, or intend to have, clients who are artists and creatives. The information is applicable regardless of their client’s art form. This study includes interviews with artists to examine the varying viewpoints of different artists and their experiences. With this in mind, each of them were asked the same set of seven questions. Scenarios were created of how a Leadership Coach can help and guide artists to new levels of awareness of their cognitive distortions. Among the findings is that the coaching emphasis for artists should not be what society says they should want or aspire to, but what the individual artists want and aspires to, according to the standards they themselves set. The artists surveyed in this study expressed that a Leadership Coach and/or a good support system could help them by increasing their focus on priorities and increasing their confidence levels as artists.Publication Idealized Design of A Leadership from the Middle Process(2011-05-08) Stankard, Martin F.This slide presentation describes the origin, approach and deliverables of course Org. Dynm.633, on “Leadership from the Middle” (LftM). Course participants were middle managers taking responsibility without authority for producing results in uncertain organizational environments, under high pressure. This course involved students in analyzing their current organizational challenges and realities and then in designing an idealized leadership approach in class. Between classes students adapted the class idealized design to their own opportunities and challenges. The course had two phases; analyzing the current reality followed by the design of an idealized general LftM process. After using the nominal group technique to define class learning objectives; the current reality analysis involved using system thinking tools to analyze, and project a base case of the opportunities and challenges assuming no change in trends. The idealized design involved using group facilitation techniques such as brainstorming, affinity diagramming, process mapping, nominal group technique, prioritization matrices and others to design and validate the version 1.0 LftM process against top priority requirements. Based on the validation results, the class added and dropped elements of the idealized design to produce a version 2.0 idealized LftM process design. The presentation includes a flowchart of the third and final LftM process design and identifies next steps for further development of LftM.Publication Building Executive Coaching As An Academic Discipline: Establishing The Academic Community Database And Peer Review Of Proposed Academic Guidelines And Standards For Graduate Education In Executive Coaching(2008-12-01) Starr, LarryGraduate academic institutions in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scotland were identified via online searches that offered coaching courses for which one earns a grade and are part of a graduate degree; coaching courses for which one earns a grade and that contribute to a graduate certificate but are not part of a degree; coaching courses for which there is no grade but that contribute to a certificate of attendance; and coaching applications and delivery services. Results indicated that there were no academic programs in New Zealand; 17 coaching programs were being offered at universities in Australia; 21 in Canada; 52 in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scotland; and 124 in the United States. While all offered Master’s level coaching and the UK offered three Doctoral programs, most academic coaching was being used as a development service rather than as academic coursework. Follow-up recommendations were made to support the continued engagement and building of the academic coaching community through this web system.Publication Collaborative SCA Survival Project: Cardiac Arrest Survival is a Mess(2009-02-01) Starr, Larry M; Pourdehnad, John; Braslow, Allan; Poliafico, Frank; Abella, Benjamin; Nadkarni, Vinay; Becker, Lance; Merchant, Raina; Brennan, RobertSystems diagnoses have been effectively used to understand many complex organizational systems within healthcare, government, military, and global corporate enterprises. Systems methodologies have been effectively used to change the direction and improve the outcomes of complex organizational systems. We feel that framing cardiac arrest survival as a systems problem and applying a systems methodology is innovative, practical, and essential if we are to make significant and sustainable impact.Publication S Corp ESOP Legislation Benefits and Costs: Public Policy and Tax Analysis(2008-07-29) Freeman, Steven F; Knoll, MichaelSamuel Zell’s acquisition of the Tribune Company in December 2007 using an S corporation employee stock ownership plan (S ESOP) brought S ESOPs to national attention. An S ESOP is a trust that holds shares of an S corporation (a closely held corporation whose shareholders are taxed on a pass-through basis similarly to partners in a partnership) for the benefit of the corporation’s employees. S ESOPs, which have only existed since 1998 are not as well known as C ESOPs, an ESOP that holds shares of a C corporation (a separately taxed corporation). Enron, Polaroid and United Airlines, all of which had ESOPs when they went bankrupt, were C corporations. Perhaps because they have only existed for ten years, little academic attention has focused on S ESOPs. In this paper we draw on the extensive existing employee ownership literature to describe the benefits and costs to employees, to firms and to society at large from the legislation that authorizes S ESOPs, and, where possible, we quantify these costs and benefits. We estimate that annual contributions to S ESOPs on behalf of employees total $14 billion, which represent additional compensation that would not have been paid without an ESOP. Annual gains attributable to increased job stability also save employees approximately $3 billion annually. Accumulated stakes, which are essentially forced savings and usually do not displace other savings, lead to additional annual accruals of $34 billion. Employers pay for ESOP contributions out of firm-level productivity and sales gains of $33 billion annually attributable to employee ownership. We estimate that one quarter of the annual gain, $8 billion ultimately goes to the federal treasury, which thereby also benefits from the adoption of S ESOPs.Publication Academic Guidelines Distribution Project(2007-06-18) Perry, Kimberly A.; Starr, LarryThe number and scope of programs of organizational and executive coaching has dramatically increased over the past 15 years. An unknown number of private and professional consulting companies offer proprietary or standardized workshops, classes, and coaching services. A growing number of academic institutions in the United States and Canada offer or have plans to offer "coaching programs" packaged or delivered as educational workshops; graduate courses; post-baccalaureate and/or graduate certificates; degree programs or graduate concentrations within degree programs; and as direct coaching service to enhance personal and professional development for students, faculty, and members of the academic administration. Academic coaching programs are located in many areas within a university including within schools or departments of psychology, business, education, public policy, and human resources. A single institution may have multiple yet autonomous coaching programs or offerings. This results in separate and often inconsistent policies and standards by those who establish and deliver the programs, confusion or miscommunication by those who buy the programs, and little interaction between program managers within a single institution, as well as between institutions.Publication Examining Workplace Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) With The COMMIT Inclusive Behavior Framework(2022-01-01) Harris, LawanaEfforts to protect marginalized and minority groups from workplace discrimination go back decades. With the increase of social turmoil in America, many organizations faced the urgent need for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Therefore, the problem addressed in this grounded theory quantitative study was the lack of research that examined whether positive mechanisms such as the COMMIT Inclusive Behavior Framework influenced climates of equity and inclusion within organizations. To do so, the primary focus was on the demographics of the population surveyed and produced results that reflected the correlation between the COMMIT Inclusive Behavior Framework among corporate employees and among corporate workplaces. This quantitative grounded theory study determined whether relationships exist between the COMMIT Inclusive Behavior Framework among corporate employees and among corporate workplaces. Although a relationship was found between the independent and the dependent variables, causation was not determined. This study successfully met the purpose of the research and provided practical information for organizations and corporate leaders and management practitioners. Based on this study’s results, inclusion coaching should concentrate on areas of negative correlation. In contrast, there were several areas of positive correlation that should be reinforced in the workplace. The significance and social change implication is that organizational leaders and corporate executives could use the results of this study to expand DEI policies and programs that leverage full range inclusion among minority and marginalized employees to address the new reality of supporting the increasingly global workforce.Publication A Model of Congruency, A Personal Coaching Philosophy(2015-04-17) Subramanian, Amrita VConsciousness gifted us a singular conundrum - One must think! Spectacularly, Nature receded from unconscious control, and let man be. The quest ever since has been that of reason and raison d'être! Muse we shall just for an ephemeral moment: Of many myths and legacies of human thought, the Hellenic era is usually credited for rationality; Socrates, Plato and Aristotle formed the bedrock of suppositions that continued to pique the curiosity of Homo sapiens. Greeks, as a civilization, delivered us from superstition to observation, from unknown, we began to explore the known realms of the environment by experiments, drafted laws...created reality and its understanding(s). This was new to man. Thinking, and thinking about thinking.