ORG 727 Week 5 Types of Interventions Example

Matching Interventions to Causes: Choosing Among Process, Structural, Human and Strategic Options at a Credit Union

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

ORG/727: Organizational Diagnosis and Intervention

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Saguaro Federal Credit Union, its people, options and figures are composites written for a model paper.

Week 4 defined the main performance gap at Saguaro: about 3,400 conditionally approved loan applicants a year never become members. It traced the gap to separate lending and account-opening processes, no owner or measure for conversion, missing information across units and disconnected systems, with lending and branch staff blaming each other. This paper chooses interventions to close the gap.

The Interventions First Proposed

Before the diagnosis, leaders proposed four fixes: a $6 million app redesign, 45 new branch hires, a new loan origination system and customer service training for branch staff. Each addresses a real issue, but none targets the main causes. The app redesign would improve digital service overall but not the loan-to-account link unless specifically designed for it. New hires would add capacity to branches whose traffic has fallen 22 percent. A new loan system would speed decisions but not connect them to membership. Training addresses a skills gap the data did not find.

Families of Interventions

Cummings and Worley (2019) sort the many interventions available to change practitioners into four broad families. Human process interventions address interaction among people, through process consultation, team building, conflict resolution and intergroup work. Technostructural interventions change structure, work design and technology, through restructuring, process redesign, job enrichment and employee involvement. Human resource management interventions change practices such as goal setting, performance appraisal, rewards and development. Strategic change interventions address the organization's relationship to its environment, through culture change, strategy and transformation. Each works at a different level and through a different mechanism.

Evidence on Effects

Neuman et al. (1989) conducted a meta-analysis of organization development interventions and their effects on satisfaction and other attitudes and found that human process interventions had larger effects on attitudes than technostructural ones, and that programs combining several approaches did better than single ones. Robertson et al. (1993) tested a model in which interventions change work-setting variables, such as organizing arrangements, social factors, technology and physical setting, which change individual behavior, which in turn changes organizational outcomes. Their analysis of 52 studies found that interventions changed the work setting in most cases and that changes in behavior were linked to outcomes, supporting the logic that interventions work by altering the setting in which people act.

These findings suggest two points for Saguaro: interventions should change the work setting where the causes lie, and combinations will likely be needed, since causes span process, structure, systems, incentives and relationships.

The leaders proposed four single fixes; the evidence favors a combination aimed at one handoff.

Matching Interventions to Causes

Disconnected processes and no follow-up (highest-ranked cause): a technostructural intervention, redesigning the conversion process end to end, from conditional approval to funded loan and open account, so that a single member conversion team contacts each applicant within two hours, opens the account by phone or video and funds the loan.

No owner or measure for conversion: a technostructural and human resource intervention, assigning ownership of conversion to a new member growth manager reporting to the chief executive and adding conversion rate to lending and branch goals.

Missing information across units: a technostructural intervention, a shared dashboard of approved applicants and their status, visible to lending, branches and the conversion team.

Disconnected systems and no digital path: a targeted technology change, connecting loan approval to digital account opening in the app, about $1.2 million, rather than a full redesign.

Mutual blame between branch and lending staff: a human process intervention, intergroup sessions in which both groups review member journeys together and agree on handoff standards.

Incentive misalignment: a human resource intervention, adding a shared conversion bonus for lending and branch staff.

What Is Not Recommended Now

The full app redesign is deferred until the conversion path is fixed and its effect measured. New branch hires are not recommended; time recovered from data re-entry, about 20 minutes per account, will be reallocated. The new loan origination system is postponed; the immediate need is connection, not replacement. Customer service training is replaced by targeted product training for the conversion team.

Criteria for the Final Choice

The steering group compared the combined intervention with two alternatives against five criteria: fit with the ranked causes, evidence of effectiveness, cost, time to results and readiness of the people affected. The first alternative was the leaders' original package, which scored low on fit and high on cost. The second was a process-only fix, redesigning the conversion path without changes to ownership, incentives or relationships; it scored well on cost and speed but poorly on fit, since it left the measurement and blame causes in place. The combination scored highest on fit and evidence, with moderate cost and time.

Why the Human Process Work Matters

It would be tempting to skip the intergroup sessions as soft. The diagnosis argues otherwise. Lending and branch staff have blamed each other for three years, and the new process asks them to share a dashboard and a bonus. Without some repair of the relationship, each side may use the dashboard to document the other's failures. Intergroup work, in which both groups examine real member cases together and agree on what good handoffs look like, addresses the informal organization that the congruence model identified as misfit with the new work.

Readiness and Sequencing

The steering group's agreement on causes in Week 4 suggests readiness at the top. Branch and lending staff show low trust in each other, so the intergroup sessions should come early, before process changes ask them to depend on each other. Sequence: intergroup sessions and the conversion owner in months 1 to 2; process redesign and dashboard in months 2 to 4; incentives in the next pay cycle; digital connection by month 6.

Measures for Each Intervention

Each intervention carries its own measure so its contribution can be judged: conversion rate for the redesigned process, time from approval to account for the dashboard, share of conversions completed digitally for the app link and the cross-unit cooperation score for intergroup work.

Costs

The combination costs about $2.4 million in the first year: $1.2 million for the digital link, $600,000 for a six-person conversion team, $300,000 for the dashboard and $300,000 for incentives and sessions. Converting half the lost applicants, about 1,700 members a year, would bring deposits and lending relationships worth an estimated $4 million a year in net income at the credit union's average member value.

Conclusion

Saguaro's leaders proposed four single fixes, each tied to a function and none tied to the diagnosed causes. Organization development research groups interventions into human process, technostructural, human resource and strategic families and suggests that combinations changing the work setting are most effective. A combined intervention aimed squarely at the conversion handoff, with process redesign, ownership, shared information, a targeted system link, aligned incentives and intergroup work, fits the causes and costs far less than the original proposals.

References

Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2019). Organization development and change (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Neuman, G. A., Edwards, J. E., & Raju, N. S. (1989). Organizational development interventions: A meta-analysis of their effects on satisfaction and other attitudes. Personnel Psychology, 42(3), 461-483. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1989.tb00665.x

Robertson, P. J., Roberts, D. R., & Porras, J. I. (1993). Dynamics of planned organizational change: Assessing empirical support for a theoretical model. Academy of Management Journal, 36(3), 619-634. https://doi.org/10.5465/256595