MLDR 6905 Week 2 Capstone Position Statement Example

Position Statement Without Hedges: Cedar Hollow Should Consolidate Continuing Education Registration, Scheduling and Billing Within Twelve Months, With Terms Defined, Three Grounds, a Fair Rival and What Would Change My Mind

Student Name

Walden University

MLDR 6905: Capstone: A Case for Leaders as Change Agents

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Position Statement Without Hedges: Cedar Hollow Should Consolidate Continuing Education Registration, Scheduling and Billing Within Twelve Months, With Terms Defined, Three Grounds, a Fair Rival and What Would Change My Mind

Position

Cedar Hollow Community College should move continuing education registration, scheduling and billing for all four campuses into one shared-services unit within twelve months, while each campus keeps program design and its employer relationships.

Definitions

Shared-services unit means a single team that processes registrations, publishes the combined course schedule and invoices employers for all four campuses, under one supervisor reporting to the dean of workforce and continuing education. It includes the nine clerks now spread across four offices. Each campus keeps a staffed service point where learners can get help in person. Program design means choosing which courses run, their content and their instructors. Employer relationships means the campus director's role as the contact who plans training with each employer. Twelve months begins on the first day of the fall term after the dean approves the plan.

Three Grounds

First, learners face four registration routines for one college. A learner who takes a certificate course on the Main campus and a follow-up course at a suburban campus registers twice, on two forms, and receives two confirmations in two formats. Employers who send staff to more than one campus see the same duplication.

Second, employer contracts are billed four ways, and billing errors recur. The division's own records show 37 of 412 employer invoices last year needed correction, about 9 percent, and corrections delayed payment by an average of five weeks. Three of the four offices use different invoice templates and payment terms.

Third, staff time spent on duplicated processing is time not spent on employer outreach. Each office processes registrations, schedules rooms and reconciles payments separately. Consolidation would free an estimated two positions' worth of hours, illustrative until the finance comparison in Week 9, which the plan commits to rural and suburban employer outreach.

The Rival Position

The strongest alternative is to keep the four campus offices and share only the registration software, which the college already licenses, while standardizing the invoice template. This position has real merits. It avoids the risk that sank the earlier centralization attempt, keeps the walk-in help that rural learners rely on and leaves the employer contact who plans training as the person who bills for it. It costs almost nothing. If the problems were only inconsistent forms, it would be the better choice. My position differs because the second and third grounds concern duplicated work and divided accountability for billing, which a shared template does not remove: four offices would still each process, schedule and reconcile. Janssen and Joha (2006), studying a shared service center in public administration, found that the motives for creating one went well beyond cost and that not every expected benefit appeared, which is one reason this statement names its own failure conditions. Battilana and Casciaro (2013) found that a change agent's ties to likely resisters shaped whether a change was adopted, so this position will be argued first to the two directors who oppose it.

What Would Change My Mind

Two pieces of evidence would make me abandon this position. First, if the registration error rate in the shared unit's first full term exceeds the prior year's rate by more than two percentage points, consolidation is doing harm faster than it saves time. Second, if continuing education enrollment at the Linden campus falls by more than 10 percent relative to the other campuses during the first year, the change is costing rural learners access. Either finding should lead the college to return those functions to campus offices. Toulmin (2003) describes a well-built argument as one that states the conditions of rebuttal; these are mine.

References

Battilana, J., & Casciaro, T. (2013). Overcoming resistance to organizational change: Strong ties and affective cooptation. Management Science, 59(4), 819-836. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1120.1583

Janssen, M., & Joha, A. (2006). Motives for establishing shared service centers in public administrations. International Journal of Information Management, 26(2), 102-115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2005.11.006

Toulmin, S. E. (2003). The uses of argument (Updated ed.). Cambridge University Press.