| Course | BUS 733 Transforming the Business (BUS/733) |
|---|---|
| Week | 7 |
| Paper type | Doctoral literature review on transformation |
| Length | about 1,164 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | DBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BUS 733 Week 7
What Scholars Know About Organizational Transformation: A Review Applied to a Utility in Transition
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
BUS/733: Transforming the Business
Week 7 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Great Plains Energy Cooperative is a composite used to apply the literature; the review describes published research in summary form.
Organizational transformation has been studied for decades from many angles: strategy, psychology, sociology and leadership. Doctoral practitioners need to know what this research shows, how strong the evidence is and where it falls short. This review organizes the literature into four themes and applies each to Great Plains Energy Cooperative, the composite wholesale supplier whose coal-to-renewables transformation has been examined in earlier papers in the course. The research offers useful guidance on how change unfolds and how people respond, but it says much less about long, multi-year transformations in organizations owned by their customers.
Scope and Method
The review draws on major integrative reviews and influential empirical studies in management and applied psychology journals. It focuses on organization-level transformation and individual responses to it, rather than technical change management tools. Sources were located through business and psychology databases using terms such as organizational transformation, radical change, change recipients and readiness for change, then traced backward through their reference lists and forward through later citations. Integrative reviews were used to define themes, and empirical studies were added where they strengthened or challenged a theme. Practitioner books were excluded unless their claims had been tested in peer-reviewed research, since popular change advice often outruns the evidence.
Theme One: Episodic and Continuous Change
Weick and Quinn (1999) distinguished episodic change, which is infrequent, discontinuous and intentional, from continuous change, which is ongoing, evolving and cumulative. Each implies a different role for leaders. In episodic change, leaders act as prime movers who create change; in continuous change, they redirect what is already happening. Earlier work on punctuated equilibrium supports the episodic view, while research on organizational learning supports the continuous view.
Application of Theme One
Great Plains' plant retirements are episodic: dated, planned and disruptive. Its growing skill in forecasting and storage is continuous, developing through daily practice. The literature suggests the cooperative needs both leadership roles at once, a point that early transformation plans often miss.
Theme Two: Content, Context, Process and Outcomes
Pettigrew et al. (2001) argued that research on change had been too focused on single episodes and called for studies that link the content of change, the context in which it happens, the process by which it unfolds and its outcomes, and that examine change over time and across levels. Their critique highlighted the scarcity of longitudinal research and the tendency to study change without connecting it to performance.
Application of Theme Two
For Great Plains, content includes the generation mix and workforce; context includes trade policy, regulation and rural communities; process includes the plant closure plan; and outcomes include emissions, rates and jobs. The framework warns against judging the transformation by any single dimension.
Theme Three: Readiness and Recipients
Armenakis and Bedeian (1999) reviewed a decade of change research and grouped it into content, context, process and criterion issues, noting growing attention to how individuals experience change. Research since then has examined readiness, commitment, resistance and the role of trust and fairness. Findings consistently show that participation, information and support improve recipients' reactions, while perceived unfairness and low trust worsen them.
Application of Theme Three
The plant closure plan reflects this research: early disclosure, guaranteed offers, local change agents and fair, published rules. The literature supports these choices, though most studies measure attitudes at one point in time rather than following workers through a multi-year closure.
Theme Four: Outcomes
Measuring the outcomes of transformation is difficult. Effects take years to appear, many forces act at once and organizations rarely have comparison groups. Studies often rely on managers' perceptions of success, which may be biased. Claims that most change efforts fail are widely repeated but rest on weak evidence.
Application of Theme Four
Great Plains' balanced scorecard, with leading indicators and tested links, offers a practical response to the measurement problem and could supply data for future research.
Synthesis Across Themes
Read together, the four themes suggest that transformation is neither a single event nor a smooth evolution. Large, planned episodes such as plant retirements sit inside continuous adjustments in skills, routines and relationships. Outcomes depend on how content, context and process interact, and on how recipients interpret what leaders do. The integrative reviews converge on a practical point: organizations that treat people's experience as central, rather than as a communication problem, tend to report better results. They diverge on how much leaders can design change in advance, a question the next sections take up.
Methodological Critique
Much research uses cross-sectional surveys, which show associations but not causes, or single case studies, which offer depth but limited generality. Longitudinal designs are rare because transformations take years. Samples come mostly from large, publicly traded companies in a few countries.
Strength of the Evidence
Evidence is strongest on individual reactions, where many studies with large samples point the same way about participation, information, support and trust. It is moderate on the value of linking content, context and process, which rests largely on case research. It is weakest on organization-level outcomes, where designs rarely allow causal claims. For a practitioner, this means the people-focused elements of Great Plains' plan rest on firmer ground than claims about which overall change model produces better performance.
Conflicting Findings
Research disagrees about whether planned, top-down change or emergent, bottom-up change is more effective. Some studies credit strong leaders with transformation; others emphasize distributed adaptation. The conflict may reflect different types of change, supporting a contingency view in which the right approach depends on the situation.
Gaps
Three gaps stand out: few longitudinal studies of transformations lasting a decade or more; little research on member-owned, cooperative or regulated organizations; and limited study of how workforce redeployment affects both employee commitment and organizational capability during asset retirements.
Proposed Research Question
How do worker redeployment programs during plant retirements affect employee commitment and the retention of critical skills in member-owned utilities? A mixed-methods study combining surveys over time with interviews at several cooperatives could address it.
Limits of This Review
This review relies heavily on integrative reviews, which are efficient but can hide variation among the studies they summarize. It draws mostly on English-language journals and on research from large firms, which may not reflect rural cooperatives. A systematic review with explicit inclusion criteria and a coding protocol would provide stronger grounds for the gaps identified here and is a sensible next step before designing the proposed study.
Implications for Practice
The research supports Great Plains' attention to people, fairness and multiple outcomes. It also cautions against assuming a single change model will work and encourages the cooperative to collect data that tests its assumptions.
Conclusion
The literature on transformation offers frameworks for understanding episodic and continuous change, linking content, context, process and outcomes, and anticipating how people react. Its methods have limits, its findings sometimes conflict and it has gaps in long-term and cooperative settings. A focused research question on worker redeployment could help fill one of those gaps.
References
Armenakis, A. A., & Bedeian, A. G. (1999). Organizational change: A review of theory and research in the 1990s. Journal of Management, 25(3), 293-315. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639902500303
Pettigrew, A. M., Woodman, R. W., & Cameron, K. S. (2001). Studying organizational change and development: Challenges for future research. Academy of Management Journal, 44(4), 697-713. https://doi.org/10.2307/3069411
Weick, K. E., & Quinn, R. E. (1999). Organizational change and development. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 361-386. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.50.1.361
What the BUS 733 Week 7 instructions ask
The seventh BUS 733 assignment usually has doctoral students review and synthesize scholarly research on organizational transformation. Common requirements include identifying major themes or perspectives, comparing findings across studies, evaluating the strength of evidence and methods, noting gaps and contradictions and applying the research to an organization or a proposed study. Some prompts ask for an annotated bibliography or a literature matrix before the review. Organize the paper by theme rather than summarizing one source at a time, use peer-reviewed sources and give APA citations for each claim. Close by identifying a gap that a DBA study could address, since the review prepares students for doctoral research.
How this BUS 733 Week 7 example is built
The paper reviews research on how organizations change and applies it to a rural utility leaving coal. It contrasts episodic and continuous change, explains a framework calling for attention to content, context, process and outcomes, summarizes research on readiness and recipients and examines why outcomes are hard to study. It critiques the field's reliance on cross-sectional surveys and single cases, notes conflicting findings about planned change and highlights a gap: few studies follow transformation over many years in member-owned or regulated firms. The review closes with a mixed-methods design. The proposed research question asks how worker redeployment programs shape commitment and skill retention during plant retirements.
BUS 733 Week 7 grading rubric: where the points go
Strong literature reviews synthesize rather than summarize, grouping studies by theme and showing how findings connect or conflict. Faculty credit accurate descriptions of research, critical evaluation of methods and evidence, clear identification of gaps and a research question that follows from those gaps. Applying the literature to a case shows practical understanding, and acknowledging limits in the field shows scholarly maturity. Reviewers look for recent and foundational sources balanced together, a logical organizing structure, careful paraphrasing and accurate citation. Reviewers also value a short note on how sources were found and selected. Writing that moves smoothly between sources, with transitions that explain relationships among studies, signals readiness for the dissertation literature review that follows in later courses.
BUS 733 Week 7 help: mistakes to avoid
Students often write a series of source summaries. Organize by theme and compare studies within each theme. Another common gap is accepting findings without evaluating methods; note sample sizes, designs and limits. Students also struggle to identify real gaps. Look for populations, settings or time spans that research has not covered. Avoid overstating what a single study shows. Use reviews and meta-analyses to anchor themes, then add individual studies. Keep quotations rare and paraphrase carefully, and build a literature matrix first so patterns across studies become visible. Apply the research to a case to show its relevance. Finally, end with a focused, researchable question rather than a broad topic, since a clear question guides the rest of doctoral work.
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BUS 733 Week 7 questions, answered
What does BUS 733 Week 7 usually cover?
It usually covers research on transformation: major themes and perspectives, comparison of findings, evaluation of methods and evidence, gaps and contradictions and application to a case or proposed study.
Where can I find a free BUS 733 Week 7 sample paper?
A full literature review on organizational transformation, applied to a rural utility, is included above with a proposed research question; we can also write a review built around your own topic.
What is the difference between episodic and continuous change?
Episodic change is infrequent, intentional and often dramatic, occurring when an organization falls out of alignment with its environment. Continuous change is ongoing and cumulative, emerging from everyday adjustments.
How do I organize a doctoral literature review?
Group sources by theme or question, compare and contrast findings within each theme, evaluate methods, identify gaps and end with the research question the gaps suggest.
What is a gap in the literature?
A question, population, setting or method that existing research has not adequately addressed, which a new study could help fill.
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