Change Management & Entrepreneurship

Aims and objectives: 

The module Change Management & Entrepreneurship focuses on growing competencies in the area of Entrepreneurial Leadership and Organizational Change. Markets, customer demands, technologies and the availability of resources are changing more and more rapidly as well as the overall political and financial context companies are operating in. As a result modern managers need to behave like entrepreneurs and consultants and need to design and implement fundamental changes to their own organizations. This seminar provides knowledge in the areas of entrepreneurial thinking and behavior as well as the implementation of entrepreneurial strategies by Change Management tools and the management of the organizational culture of an organization as part of the entrepreneurial tool set.

General learning objectives:

The MBA programme provides all participants a substantial knowledge of all relevant business areas and a holistic understanding of the value chain of a commercial company and how the different functions work together. They should have the insight how to organize and steer an organization.
Participants who are on a general manager career path should be able to enhance their general management knowledge by the methods to create an enterpreneurial vision and then an in-depth view on how to implement their entrepreneurial vision based on change management methodologies. 

Detailed learning outcomes:

• Understand entrepreneurship as a manageable process that consists of opportunity recognition, resource marshalling and team building driven by communication, creativity and leadership and can be applied in virtually any organizational setting
• Develop the attitude to keep an open mind, think outside the box and re-evaluate your own views in order to develop new business concepts
• Be able to transfer the knowledge about how new ventures are created, how they come into being and which factors are associated with their success into your own entrepreneurial activities
• Gain knowledge about business changes and the need for change management, psychological reasons for change resistance and fundamental change management theories and tools
• Know how to apply the different change managemet tool into the business practice
• Can describe the concepts of an organizational clture, fundamental culture models and the reasons a successful culture
• Be able to develop a new organizational culture

Course textbooks:

Change Management: Harvard Business School Press (2003). Managing change and transition. Harvard Business School Press Essential Series.

Adams, R. & Spinelli, S. Jr. (2012). New Venture Creation: Entrepreneurship for the 21th century. 8th edition.McGraw-Hill.

Content of Strategy and Change Management:

1. Entrepreneurship

• The entrepreneurial mind for an entrepreneurial world
• The opportunity
• The founder and the team
• Marketing and financing entrepreneurial ventures
• Startup and beyond

2. Change Management 

• Business changes and the need for Change Management
• Psychological reasons for change resistance 
• Fundamental Change Management theories 
• Change Management tools 

3. Organizational Culture 

• Fundamental cultural models 
• Successful organizational cultures 
• Developing a new organizational culture 

Recommended supplemental readings:

Barona, R. A. & Shane, S. A. (2007). Entrepreneurship: A process perspective. 2nd edition. Cengage Learning.

Doppler. K. & Lauterburg, C. (2010). Managing Corporate Change. Heidelberg: Springer. 

Eccles, A. (1993). Succeeding with change. London: McGraw Hill. Grant, R. M. 

Kotter, J.P. (1996). Leading Change. Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press 

Peters, T.J. & Waterman, R.H. (1988). In search of excellence: lessons from America’s best-run companies. New York: Harper & Row. 

Schein, E. (2004). Organizational culture and leadership. Jossey Bass.