Academic Courses

Dr. Beatty is an Associate Professor with Queen's School of Business. Since joining Queen's University, she has taught in undergraduate and graduate programs in the Schools of Business, Industrial Relations and Policy Studies.

An acknowledged expert on change management, Dr. Beatty focuses her teaching and research on the human and organizational issues resulting from the implementation of change.

Current courses include:

Queen's School of Business

MBUS 845 - Leading Change and Organizational Renewal:

Managers today face the demanding tasks of foreseeing the future direction of their industries and organizations, helping keep the organization ahead of the change curve, and creating enthusiasm for transformation, while simultaneously not neglecting their present leadership duties. In this course, you will learn the skills of a change leader and then you will test your skills in successfully planning and implementing a change program from concept to full adoption. Through an interactive mix of lectures, cases, diagnostic tests and computer simulations, develop your competencies in:

  • Anticipating the trends and events that may blindside your organization
  • Shaking your organization and employees out of complacency
  • Building support and commitment for renewal and change
  • Creating a transition structure to get the change off the ground and launched at high speed
  • Assessing organizational readiness
  • Creating a potent communications and commitment strategy
  • Identifying and overcoming resistance
  • Aligning organizational structures and systems with the change objectives
  • Developing a meaningful change plan, complete with goals, objectives, targets, responsibilities and timeline

Queen's School of Policy Studies

SPS 872 - Managing Change:

Winning organizations, especially in the public sector, are set apart by their ability to implement the changes they plan. Research shows that most new initiatives do not fail at the planning stage but during implementation. This is largely because implementation is a complex, multi-staged process, which is poorly understood by most managers. When they actually have to implement a major change initiative, many forget that they must plan a staged approach, starting by developing a sense of urgency, communicating a change vision and strategy before jumping into action.

This course offers a thorough understanding of the stages and the processes of change, of the key factors of a change program and of the skills and attributes necessary to lead a planned change project. It explores the commonalities of different types of change situations ranging from technological to organizational to cultural change. A combination of cases, including some newly written public sector cases, reading, seminars, and exercises will be used as instructional media. In addition, students research, prepare and analyze their own change case and present it to the class.