Application of Brown’s 5 stages model of OD in Papa John’s

This report explores the application of Brown’s 5 stages model of Organizational Development (OD) in Papa John’s. It discusses the need for change, the client-practitioner relationship, diagnosing client’s problems, and action plan, strategies, and techniques. The report also includes a PEST analysis of Papa John’s and the importance of the social exchange theory in the client-practitioner relationship.

Application of Brown’s 5 stages model of OD in Papa John’s
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Abstract
This report employs Brown’s 5 stages model of OD in Papa John’s. The sequential stages
of the model were related to the changes required to take place by Papa John’s. The theoretical
approaches were investigated and incorporated from an OD practitioner view point.

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Table of Contents
Introduction....................................................................................................................................4
Background: The need for change at Papa John’s.....................................................................5
Stage 1: Need to change.................................................................................................................6
1.1 Considering pretreatment change......................................................................................6
1.2 Papa John's PEST Analysis................................................................................................7
Stage 2: Client practitioner relationship.....................................................................................8
2.1 The social exchange theory..................................................................................................8
2.2 The social exchange theory application to Papa John's...................................................8
Stage 3: Diagnosing client’s problems.........................................................................................9
Stage 4: Action plan, strategies and techniques........................................................................10
4.1 Change types.......................................................................................................................11
4.2 Change methods.................................................................................................................11
4.3 Major intervention techniques..........................................................................................11
4.4 Using the McKinsey 7s model in Papa John's change planning....................................12
Stage 5: Self-renewal, monitor and stabilize Papa John's change management...................13
Conclusions...................................................................................................................................14
References.....................................................................................................................................15

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Introduction
The contemporary business environment on the global scale enabled change to become a norm
for various types of organizations in order to sustain their survival and achieve success.
Organizations and their leaders change in response to environmental requirements. They tend to
manage knowledge and innovation rather than managing tangible resources (Brown & Katz,
2011; Foster, 2013).
Consultants and business practitioners have an important role in assisting the organization to
plan and implement changes required to achieve success and enhance their performance. The
practitioner act according to a proactive process to solve problems and manage the renewal
process (Mulili & Wong, 2011).
Papa John’s International, Inc. was founded in Delaware in 1984, it operates in pizza delivery,
franchises and restaurants across certain international markets. The company success is due to
delivering the highest quality pizza within the shortest time. The company depends on team
members' cooperation. The company strategy is to build the strongest product loyalty by
delivering better ingredients. The used ingredients and toppings are supplied by the North
American Quality Control Center (“QC Center”) system that represents an approved supplier.
The company is committed to delivering training and development to the team members through
training programs, opportunities for advancement and recognition programs. Therefore, Papa
John's future orientation aims to product improvement, customer satisfaction and creating value
to shareholders, it won't sacrifice the quality for profit making (Papa John's International Inc.,
2016).

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This report considers Brown's five stages of organizational development (OD) in the case of
Papa John's orientation to change. The model considers stages of anticipating the need for
change, developing the practitioner-client relationship, the diagnostic phase, action plans,
strategies and techniques and self-renewal, monitor and stabilize (Choi & Ruona, 2011).
Background: The need for change at Papa John’s
The field theory is considered a psychological construct that examines the type of interaction
between the individual and the environment. It focuses on the forces responsible for influencing
an agent in a social situation. It considers two major types of forces, the enabling forces and the
hindering forces. This theory was developed by Kurt Lewin as coted in Berthaume, et al. (2014).
The re-emergence of field theory in the 1990s was due to the investigation of the resistance to
change and the deep defensive actions of individuals and groups for the routines (Burnes &
Cooke, 2013). Lewin argued that the strength of the driving forces exceeds the restraining forces,
which results in changes in the status quo. The aim of the change is to move beyond the status
quo through unfreezing – changing – refreezing change three stages (Kaminski, 2011).
Papa John’s has announced several changes to achieve the main goal of improving customer
experience and driving growth. The company made significant changes among its top
management to fulfill this desired goal. Mike Nettles who has more than 28 years of restaurant
management joined the company in 2017 as chief information and digital officer, was elected to
a new position of chief operating and growth officer to manage the desired changes. This
promotion was the major among other changes in the top management. The CEO Steve Ritchie
announced his policy of aligning the leadership with the customer experience and leveraging the
team diverse talents to lead the company major changes and pioneer innovations that accelerate
the company growth (Maze, 2018).

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Stage 1: Need to change
1.1 Considering pretreatment change
When an organizational development (OD) practitioner understands the client perception, their
cooperation results in better outcomes that meet the client needs. This relationship becomes more
important if the desired changes are permanent. Therefore the pretreatment change becomes
essential (Kindsvatter, et al., 2010). This confronts of the action taken by Papa John's that
prepared for the change by major changes across the company leadership. The matter that laid a
solid basis for the success of the change and goals achievement.
It is very important that organizations consider other organizations' experience of performance
failure that reflects their inability of achieving their aims. Also, the change leaders should be
accountable for implementing change, because they play a central role in the change process.
Considering the employees' attitude towards the change is also very important. According to
Choi (2011), organization–environment fit is measured by readiness for change, commitment to
change, openness to a change, and cynicism of the organizational change.
 Readiness for change: During change implementation, employees try to adapt to the new
environment and expect the benefits and danger of the new context
 Commitment to change: It refers to a forced mindset that drives individual actions towards
the success of change implementation.
 Openness to change: It is related to the cultural aspects and individual characteristics. People
with a high level of self-efficacy for change, personal resilience, internal locus of control and
need for achievement are more likely to have openness to change compared to others (Choi,
2011).

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 Cynicism of the organizational change: It represents the most complex case that an
organization could face in implementing changes. Cynicism of change could lead to
implementation failure. Accordingly, leaders should be aware of how to manage and
effectively deal with different employees' perceptions and various cultures when implementing
change (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015).
1.2 Papa John's PEST Analysis
The PEST analysis is a strategic tool for analyzing the organization macro environment. It is
meant for analyzing the political, economic, social and technological. The PEST analysis is
discussed according to Fern Fort University., (2017), with an application on Papa John's as
follows:
 Political: The political system risks and uncertainty conditions of the various countries in
which the company operates devotes the company business to the country associated risk.
Therefore, the company is required to analyze its target markets of the Specialty Eateries sector
within the countries.
 Economic: The factors of the macro-economic environment, including, inflation rate, income
level, saving rates and economic cycle define the level of demand. Also, the level of
competition within the food industry affects Papa John's business by determining the level of
competition. Accordingly, Papa John's should analyze each target market before entering it and
devotes much importance to the level of competition.
 Social: The society culture in which the company operates highly impacts the organization
environment. The shared beliefs and food habits highly affect Papa John's business.
Understanding the consumer needs in every society by designing a message for the Specialty
Eateries industry consumers enables business success.

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 Technological: Technology represents Papa John's main tool to achieve customer satisfaction.
The company manages high response to customer needs through the mobile app developed in-
house. Further developments will take place in the company growth plan.
Stage 2: Client practitioner relationship
The relationship between the client and OD practitioner should be built on accepted
communication criteria that has to be based on confidentiality, mutual confidence and to ensure
that the injury caused by disclosure will be greater than the benefits (Glosoff, et al., 2011).
2.1 The social exchange theory
The practitioner efforts should enhance organizational performance and improve their results.
The practitioner should have enough skills, knowledge, expertise communication and
consultation skills. The client-practitioner relationship can be considered as part of the
environment social exchange between the client and the consultant. The social exchange theory
(SET) sets a primary framework to understand the nature of the interpersonal relationship. The
SET determines the exchange value by estimating the cost, reward and profit within the client-
practitioner relationship. Trust has an important mediating role in the success of this relationship
(Solomonson, 2012).
2.2 The social exchange theory application to Papa John's
Papa John's leadership encourages all the team members to submit innovative ideas through
'Your Franchise’s Innovation and Celebration' program. The design of this program aims to
stimulate creativity and influence the employees to provide their ideas and encourage teamwork.
Moreover, it recognizes the team members for sharing their ideas that contribute to increase the
company sales, enhances the workplace productivity and cost reduction for 'Your Franchise'. The
team members are highly encouraged to discuss their problems, raise questions and complains

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with their supervisors (Papa John’s International, Inc., 2015). The start-up cost for a franchised is
$129,910 for Papa John’s (Grant, 2016).
The OD practitioner is expected to interact with the leaders and employees at Papa John's.
According to the investigation of the company towards its employees, the team members are
cooperative and the new leadership will highly support the change. The practitioner is required to
support the company business to continue to open restaurants in the existing markets. This will
enhance customer awareness of the products and enhance the company marketing and
operational efficiency (Papa John's International Inc., 2016).
The newly employed independent directors; Chief Executive Officer of Starboard, Jeffrey C. and
Anthony M. Sanfilippo are expected to assist the practitioner with their substantial experience in
the restaurant and skill sets spanning operational turnarounds. The client-practitioner relationship
is expected to be shaped by the SET assumption of mutual exchange of expertise to achieve the
company desired goals. Last September has witnessed the company orientation towards
maximizing the shareholders' value, the matter that led to extensive communications with
practitioners from Merrill Lynch, the financial advisor. A Special Committee took place and
concluded that Papa John's is required to invest with Starboard to perform in the best interest of
the shareholders (Papa John’s International, Inc., 2019).
Stage 3: Diagnosing client’s problems
There are many benefits of collecting the client data that helps the practitioner to understand the
current situation of the client, the need for change and how to achieve the goals. This is
considered a pre-change assessment that not only benefits the practitioner, but it also benefits the
client. Providing feedback by the client and discussing progress is essential for the change
implementation success (Martin, et al., 2012).

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The practitioner needs to access the Papa John's secondary data to comprehensively understand
its strategic goals of implementing change. The company aim for growth requires analyzing its
financial indicators in order to position the company for success in the long term. Papa John's has
always introduced high-quality pizza, it enjoys a strong foundation with its best product and
service, franchisee and customer base. The company looks forward to experiencing the best
leadership, sponsorship and support to implement the desired change of creating value to the
shareholders and delighting the customer every day (Papa John’s International, Inc., 2019).
Also, the OD practitioner awareness of the new leadership structure enables him to manage the
leaders' role in implementing the required changes and enable growth acceleration and enhance
the customer experience. The practitioner with the cooperation of Papa John's management will
be able to formulate the leaders' roles around each customer touch point. Also, the practitioner
should evaluate the current customer experience to be able to define the new priorities of
operations (Papa John’s International, Inc., 2018).
Stage 4: Action plan, strategies and techniques
Organizational change should be implemented over the time to match the environmental changes
and increase the probability of business success. Planning for change by setting a clear time
frame is an important factor for change success. The proper planning and investigation assist in
identifying the gap between the current position where the organizations stand and the desired
destination. According to Anderson and Ackerman Anderson (2001), as cited in Al-Haddad &
Kotnour (2015), the major aspects of comprehensive change plan are people, content and
process. People are the humans involved in the change process. Content is the strategy,
technologies, systems and practices. Process refers to the carried out actions to implement
change.

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4.1 Change types
Change type refers to the basic characteristics that define the change kind and form of change
and the required capabilities that make the required change. Defining the change type enables the
organization management and the practitioner to select the appropriate method to support the
change. It is important to know where the organization stands today to be able to process its
needs for future development (Crear, 2015).
Meyer et al. (1990), as cited in Al-Haddad & Kotnour (2015), defined two dimensions of
deciding the change type; first, the organization’s level compared to the industry level and the
second is continuous change versus discontinuous.
4.2 Change methods
Change methods are the procedures carried out by managers to implement change. Methods
could be systemic or planning change management methods. The systematic change method
comprises of tools and processes to assist the management team in making a series of decisions.
While the planning method involves a cyclical process of continuous improvement of the change
process by monitoring and evaluating the organizational situation after change implementation to
define the new changes that need to take place (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015; Smartt, et al.,
2018).
4.3 Major intervention techniques
The OD practitioner can use a variety of intervention techniques, they are discussed according to
Romme (2011), as follows:
 Individual or interpersonal level: In this technique, the practitioner focuses on enhancing the
individual skills and empowering them within the organization. This approach considers the
fact that if individuals become more involved, effective and skilled the whole organization.

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Individuals are attempted to enhance their communication abilities, managerial performance
and interpersonal skills.
 Team or group level: This technique depends on managing group difficulty due to lack of
clear objectives, conflicts, ineffective communication and interpersonal differences. The
practitioner manages to increase team effectiveness. The team reviews and evaluates their
performance to help the practitioner in the process intervention.
 Intergroup level: This approach focuses on the group contact or what the group performs and
how it approaches tasks completion. The intervention devotes attention to problem-solving,
group norms, leadership and power distribution, member role within the group and decision
making.
 Total organizational system level: This approach involves intervention action to change a
certain organizational system. This purposeful intervention might succeed or fail to attain the
desired outcomes.
4.4 Using the McKinsey 7s model in Papa John's change planning
This tool analyzes the organizational design by focusing on major seven internal elements of the
organization; strategy, structure, systems, shared values, style, staff and skills. The human
resources and intangible resources represent the soft elements, while the hard elements are
represented in the organizational structure, strategy and systems (Ravanfar, 2015), they are
discussed as follows:
 Strategy: Papa John's plans to allocate half of its investments to repay its debt, the remaining
will be used in its capital investment to accelerate its major strategic priorities of people,
product value, brand, unit economics and technology

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 Structure: The company made significant changes among its top management to fulfill this
desired goal. It added two new job roles that involved two independent directors for the
positions of Chief Executive Officer of Starboard.
 Systems: The company depends on clear parameters and analytics to evaluate and track the
individual, group and organizational performance.
 Shared values: Papa John's core values are focus, accountability, superiority, people are a
priority always, attitudes and constant improvement.
 Style: Papa John's manages that creativity and bringing new ideas to business and franchises
among the staff. The spread of such a value is the leading way to success and goals'
achievement in the future.
 Staff: At PAPA 'people are a priority always'. The company has highly cooperative staff
members who act together toward goals achievement.
 Skills: The company manages to increase staff skills through training and development. Also,
transforming into a learning organization is likely to increase organizational success.
According to Papa John's change plan, the OD intervention should take place on the
organizational level (Papa John’s International, Inc., 2019).
Stage 5: Self-renewal, monitor and stabilize Papa John's change management
The evaluation, re-evaluation, and action (ERA) method was proposed by Chen, Yu, and Chang
(2006), as cited in Al-Haddad & Kotnour (2015). It is considered a customer-oriented method
that could be applied to monitor Papa John's change management, as follows:

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 Evaluation and re-evaluation phases: They aim at assessing the current situation of the
company, its values and systems and identifying the client needs. Then re-analyzing the
situation before the implementation of the change management plan.
 Action phase: This phase witnesses the actual implementation of the change strategy and
action plan.
Papa John's adopts the philosophy of continuous improvement that was originally provided by
Deming. It represents a practical tool for solving problems at the workplace. The change
management method on the company organizational level is likely to incorporate Lewin change
management model of unfreezing, change and refreezing. It focuses on solving problems among
teams to sustain the change and enable goals achievement. Applying Lewin's model in Papa
John's is likely to manage the change and facilitate the monitoring process (Al-Haddad &
Kotnour, 2015).
The success of the OD practitioner in association with the company leadership is likely to create
and maintain harmony and succeed in balancing between strategy and organizational structure.
Flexibility in managing Papa John's growth should be considered in the evaluation after
implementing changes because of the international nature of its business that creates complexity
(Ravanfar, 2015).
Conclusions
Papa John’s has announced several changes to achieve the main goal of improving customer
experience and driving growth. The company made significant changes among its top
management to fulfill this desired goal. Leaders should be aware of how to manage and

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effectively deal with different employees' perceptions and various cultures when implementing
change.
The team members are highly encouraged to discuss their problems, raise questions and
complains with their supervisors. The practitioner is required to support the company business to
continue to open restaurants in the existing markets. This will enhance customer awareness of
the products and enhance the company marketing and operational efficiency. The client-
practitioner relationship is expected to be shaped by the SET assumption of mutual exchange of
expertise to achieve the company desired goals.
The practitioner with the cooperation of Papa John's management will be able to formulate the
leaders' roles around each customer touch point. Also, the practitioner should evaluate the
current customer experience to be able to define the new priorities of operations.
At PAPA 'people are a priority always'. The company has highly cooperative staff members who
act together toward goals achievement. The company manages to increase staff skills through
training and development. Also, transforming into a learning organization is likely to increase
organizational success. The OD intervention should take place on the organizational level.

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