| Course | HI550 Organizational Development and Management for Health Information |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 8 |
| Paper type | Seminar reflection |
| Length | About 850 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MS in Health Informatics |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HI550 Unit 8
A Fair Rotation and a Six-Thousand-Dollar Question: A Unit 8 Seminar Reflection on Process, Outcome and a Coding Overtime Decision
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
HI550: Organizational Development and Management for Health Information
Unit 8 Seminar Reflection
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Quillan Health, the coders, the classmate and every amount are composite; the sources cited are real.
The Case
Through the spring, Quillan Health's health information department paid weekend overtime to work down the unbilled coding queue. The shifts were posted and went to whoever volunteered, and two senior inpatient coders volunteered for almost all of them. In July I replaced that arrangement with a rotation that offers weekend shifts to every qualified coder in turn. I announced it after two staff meetings and a two-week comment period, and the two senior coders filed a complaint with human resources the following week.
Where I Started
Before the seminar I wrote this note to myself: "The process was fair. If they are angry, I explained it badly." I believed the complaint was a communication problem. The rotation had been discussed openly, every coder had the same access to shifts, and I had changed one detail, the order of the list, after comments from the community hospital coders. I came to the seminar expecting to be told how to explain it better.
The Question That Changed It
When I presented the case, most of the group agreed the process was sound. Then a classmate who had coded for eleven years before moving into management asked a question I had not considered: what had those two coders budgeted that overtime for? She said that when she was a coder, weekend shifts paid for her daughter's tuition, and that losing them would have felt like a pay cut no matter how carefully it was decided.
I went back to the payroll figures that evening. Each of the two senior coders had earned roughly $6,000 in overtime over the previous year. Under the rotation, with eleven coders sharing the shifts, each can expect less than a fifth of that. For two people who had built that income into their household plans, the rotation was a real loss.
I had been asking whether the decision was made well, and they had been telling me what it cost them.
Testing My Original View
My confidence going in was not baseless. Leventhal (1980) proposed six tests of a fair procedure, which I applied to the rotation one by one. It treated every coder alike over time and across sites. My own preferences about who should work weekends played no part. It used accurate information, a current list of qualified coders. It could be corrected, and in fact was corrected after comments. Staff were represented through the meetings and comment period. Nothing in it offended ordinary ethical standards. On all six, the decision passes. A meta-analysis of organizational justice research confirms that procedural fairness of this kind predicts trust and acceptance of decisions (Colquitt et al., 2001), so I was not wrong to care about it.
What I Had Missed
Brockner and Wiesenfeld (1996) reviewed dozens of studies and found that procedures and outcomes interact: a fair process matters most when the outcome is unfavorable, and it softens people's reactions to that outcome. What it does not do is turn an unfavorable outcome into a favorable one. The senior coders' reaction would likely have been worse had I simply announced the rotation without meetings, but no process I could have run would have returned their $6,000. I had treated fairness of process as if it settled the matter, when it only changed how the loss would be received.
My Revised View
I now see two obligations where I saw one. The first is to run a fair process, which I did. The second is to answer a concrete loss directly, which I did not. Looking back, I could have offered a phase-out, reducing the senior coders' share over two quarters instead of at once. I could have given them first refusal on other extra work, such as the contracted backlog review planned for the fall. Or, if neither was possible, I could have said plainly that the change would cost them income and that I had decided it was still the right call for the department. Any of those would have treated them as people with a stake, not as an audience for an explanation.
I have since met with both coders and offered first refusal on the backlog review hours. One accepted. The other has not withdrawn the complaint, which I think is reasonable.
What the Seminar Left Unresolved
One question remains open for me. The rotation also helps the newer coders, who said in the comment period that they had wanted weekend hours and never got them. If I phase out the senior coders' share slowly, I delay a fair outcome for others to soften an unfair-feeling one for two people. The seminar did not settle how to weigh those, and I am not sure there is a rule that does.
References
Brockner, J., & Wiesenfeld, B. M. (1996). An integrative framework for explaining reactions to decisions: Interactive effects of outcomes and procedures. Psychological Bulletin, 120(2), 189-208. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.120.2.189
Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 425-445. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.425
Leventhal, G. S. (1980). What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. In K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.), Social exchange: Advances in theory and research (pp. 27-55). Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3087-5_2
The Purdue Global HI550 Unit 8 instructions
In the eighth unit the seminar becomes the subject, and the prompt typically wants a short first-person account of how your view of a management issue developed. Prompts commonly ask you to describe the issue, state your position before the seminar, identify what challenged it, connect the change to course concepts and say what you would do now. About two pages in first person is typical. Fix your starting point clearly, ideally in your own earlier words, so the reader can see the movement. Name the specific comment or question that made you reconsider. Use theory to explain both why your first view was reasonable and what it overlooked. Many instructors appreciate a reflection that admits something is still unresolved. Past tense works well for the seminar itself.
How the HI 550 Unit 8 example is put together
Four sentences set out the case: volunteer overtime, two senior coders, a rotation announced after meetings and a comment period, and the complaint that followed. The writer's pre-seminar note is quoted to fix the starting position. The next section reports the classmate's question and the payroll figures checked that evening, and the highlighted sentence captures the shift from how the decision was made to what it cost. Leventhal's six tests are then applied to the rotation in one paragraph, and the decision passes all of them, supported by Colquitt's meta-analysis. Brockner and Wiesenfeld's finding on process and outcome explains the gap. The revised view names three things the director could have offered, reports one coder accepting extra hours, and closes on the unresolved trade-off with newer coders.
Reading the HI550 Unit 8 grading rubric
A seminar reflection in this course tends to be marked on four things: how deeply the writer examines the shift, how well course ideas explain it, how plainly the before and after can be seen, and the writing itself. Depth carries the most points and is judged on whether the reflection shows genuine movement with reasons, not a summary of what was said. Course concepts earn credit when they explain the shift, so applying a framework to the case scores better than defining it. Clarity rewards a clear before and after. Specific details from the seminar add credibility. Graders often give credit for honest uncertainty. Grammar, structure and APA citations complete the rubric. A reflection that says the seminar was valuable without showing what changed tends to lose most of the depth points.
HI550 Unit 8 help: mistakes that cost points
A frequent weakness is a reflection that never states the starting position, so no change can be seen. Another is summarizing the discussion instead of reflecting on it. Some writers claim their view changed completely when the evidence shows a smaller shift, which reads as less credible than an honest partial change. Theories are often named but not applied to the case. Endings that offer a general lesson rather than what the writer will actually do also lose points. If your seminar topic was different, perhaps layoffs or remote work policy, pass along the case and your seminar notes, and we will shape a reflection around the moment your own view moved.
Get an HI550 Unit 8 example written to your instructions
Which moment in the seminar shifted your view? Two or three lines about the case, plus the exact point your thinking moved, will do; a section working through the written alternative can forward that assignment's wording instead. With the rubric attached, the free first sample arrives in 24-48h and builds the reflection around that turn instead of this rotation. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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HI550 Unit 8 questions, answered
What if my view did not change during the seminar?
Then the reflection can record a position that held up under a real challenge, still a kind of movement: the writer now knows why the position survives. What rarely works is claiming a change that did not happen. The example shows a real shift, but an honest account of an argument that failed to persuade, with the reasons it failed, can earn the same credit.
Are Leventhal's rules still used in management courses?
Yes, often alongside later work on organizational justice that separates procedural, distributive and interactional fairness. Leventhal's 1980 criteria remain a convenient checklist for judging a procedure. The example uses them to show the rotation was fair on procedure, then uses Brockner and Wiesenfeld to explain why that did not settle the outcome question, which is where the reflection's value lies.
Can the reflection disagree with the classmate who changed the discussion?
It can, and partial disagreement often reads as more thoughtful than full conversion. The example accepts the classmate's point about lost income but keeps the rotation, arguing that the loss needed a separate answer rather than a reversal. Showing where the writer moved and where the writer stayed put gives the reader a clearer picture of the reasoning.
Where can I find a free HI550 Unit 8 sample paper?
The whole Unit 8 reflection is posted here, showing how one classmate's question changed a director's view of a fair overtime rotation.
What if a fair process still leaves people upset?
Research on process and outcome suggests that is normal. A fair process softens reactions to a loss but does not remove it, so a manager may also need to answer the loss directly.