COURSE WORK ANSWERS
- As an internal consultancy team in UMI, and based on your knowledge of UMI, undertake a SWOT analysis in line with the desired future position.
SWOT ANALYSIS OF UMI
STRENGTHS WEAKNESS
OPPORTUNITIES THREATS
Using a TOWS matrix, craft alternative strategies that can be at the disposal of UMI arising from the SWOT analysis.
Question
- Pick one set of alternative strategies and as a team, decide on whether to use the Devil’s Advocate or the Intellectual inquiry approach to come up with a specific strategy that UMI should adopt.
A devil’s advocate is a person who argues against a point of view to poke holes in it, this system is used to enable the management in the course of making a decision to enable the organization understand the challenges that it is likely to go through. This is imperative since the management can note in their plan moments when they believe there are opportunities to play the devil’s advocate role to promote debate. Management may interpret your devil’s advocate position as an attempt to teach unsavory views in the organization
Intellectual inquiry approach
Inquiry method is an approach that helps management to build their knowledge and understanding through research and exploration activities based on existing knowledge. The inquiry method requires higher-order thinking skills and critical thinking to make conclusions.
Intellectual inquiry approach involves ‘learning through discovery rather than instruction’ (Bache and Hayton, 2012) and has been widely used in the study of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and in fields such as medicine, business and law (Gormally et al., 2009). The use of IBL in social scientific fields such as public administration is relatively under-explored. There have, however, been some studies on the use of IBL within politics curriculums, which we refer to and draw lessons from in this paper (Bache and Hayton, 2012). Prior research on IBL in politics focuses on the experience of postgraduate and international students (Bache and Hayton, 2012), or documents case studies of IBL approaches such as case-based learning (Hale, 2006) and simulations (Kaunert, 2009). However, to date there are no articles that bring together evidence on the variety of IBL approaches used to teach politics that might also be applicable to the subfield of public administration. The public administration discipline has tended to focus on how academics can use research methods to educate practitioners already working in the field through knowledge exchange (Connolly et al., 2015). Although many academics teaching public policy and administration undoubtedly make use of inquiry-based approaches in elements of their teaching, there is need for greater conceptual clarity about what IBL means in this context, including the forms it might take, the challenges and opportunities of this approach, and how teachers using this approach might evaluate its effectiveness and engage in reflective practice to refine and modify their teaching.
Although they vary in terms of content and intellectual traditions, foundational courses in the social sciences promote an understanding, based on living bodies of theory and research, of individuals in the context of social interactions, groups, and societies.
Human societies are diverse and varied, with different understandings of the world among them, and with a multiplicity of actors within them who do not necessarily share the same views or goals. As a consequence, human phenomena are not as easily predictable as natural phenomena, and social science inquiry can lead to many plausible answers to any given question. Nevertheless, inquiry in the social sciences is empirical, guided by rigorous but varied theories and method
The phenomenon that often occurs during the process of setting strategies in most organizations, the manager tends to communicate in one direction with many providing material and slightly provide opportunities for learners to interact through performance or verbal communication. If this is allowed to continue will cause more and more employees in having difficulties in learning so that the results are expected not conform to what is expected.
Recommend to UMI this strategy pointing out what UMI should do to ensure that the implementation of the strategy is effective
UMI should adopt the devils devil’s advocate because using this strategy the organization is able to clearly understand the challenges it is going to encounter, during the process of implementing its strategy.
Team members are more likely to better process information. When someone presents an alternative perspective, it allows other members to consider all the angles of the problem, process and goals, and encourages them to explore solutions they had not considered before.
As the world gets flatter, teams are getting flatter right along with them. Thanks to the new digital workplace, team decisions are increasingly being made by consensus from members who weigh in remotely via email, conference call, Skype, text and a host of other ways.
By several measures, this is a good thing for the group decision making process: more voices allow for more insightful debate, additional buy-in among stakeholders, and increased options for possible outcomes. However, in an effort to reach consensus, larger groups also run the risk of not having enough dissension, and avoid asking themselves appropriately challenging questions.
Merits of using Devil’s advocate in UMI
Encourages management to see their blind spots or miscomprehensions.
Helps management to see diverse points of view.
Improves management’ improve their decision making skills.
REFERENCES
Bache, I., & Hayton, R. (2012). Inquiry-based learning and the international student. Teaching in Higher Education, 17(4), 411-423.
Gormally, C., Brickman, P., Hallar, B., & Armstrong, N. (2009). Effects of inquiry-based learning on students’ science literacy skills and confidence. International journal for the scholarship of teaching and learning, 3(2), n2.
Kaunert, C. (2009). Liberty versus security? EU asylum policy and the European Commission. Journal of contemporary European research, 5(2), 148-170.
Xia, J., Harmon, J. L., Connolly, K. G., Donnelly, R. M., Anderson, M. R., & Howard, H. A. (2015). Who publishes in “predatory” journals?. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(7), 1406-1417.
