Organization Development and Action Research

Organization Development (OD)

• OD is a long-range effort to improve an organization's problem-solving and renewal processes, primarily through collaborative diagnosis and management of organizational culture.
• It involves utilizing behavioral science technologies, research, and theories to facilitate planned change.

Action Research

• Action research involves obtaining data from an organization's external environment, including stakeholders' perspectives and emerging threats or opportunities.
• It highlights the importance of bringing people together in dialogue to modify the organization's trajectory.

OD Process

• The OD process consists of four stages:
  • Entry/contracting
  • Diagnosing and enabling feedback
  • Collaborative action planning and implementation
  • Evaluating and institutionalizing change

Core Theories in OD

Planned Change

• Three-step model of change (Kurt Lewin, 1951):
  • Unfreezing: recognizing the need for change
  • Changing: diagnosing and testing new models of behavior
  • Refreezing: evaluating and adopting new behavior
• Change management framework (Kotter, 1996):
  • Establishing a sense of urgency
  • Forming a powerful coalition
  • Creating a vision
  • Communicating the vision
  • Empowering others to act on the vision
  • Planning for and creating short wins
  • Consolidating improvements and producing more change
  • Institutionalizing new approaches

Change Management Framework

• Motivating change: creating readiness for change and overcoming resistance
• Creating a vision for change: describing the core ideology and constructing the envisioned future
• Developing political support: assessing change agent power and identifying key stakeholders
• Managing the transition: activity planning, commitment planning, and management structures
• Sustaining momentum: providing resources for change, building support systems, developing new competencies, and reinforcing new behaviors

Mind-Space Model (Dolan, 2010)

• Nine elements influencing behavior:
  • Messenger (who communicates the information)
  • Incentives (possible losses or gains of change)
  • Norms (what others do)
  • Defaults (what pre-set options are presented)
  • Salience (what is novel and relevant to us)
  • Priming (sub-conscious cues)
  • Affect (emotions that shape our actions)
  • Commitments (public promises)
  • Ego (acting in ways to feel better about ourselves)

Systems Theory

• Equifinality concept (Bertalanffy, 1972): multiple paths to reach a goal, and what works for one organization may not work for another
• Open system concept (Katz and Kahn, 1966): organizations are influenced by their external environment, represented by concentric circles

Organization Development (OD)

• OD is a long-range effort to improve an organization's problem-solving and renewal processes, mainly through a more effective and collaborative diagnosis and management of organizational culture.

Definition of Organization Development

• OD is a planned process of change in an organization's culture through the utilization of behavioral science technologies, research, and theories.
• OD aims to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions using behavioral science.
• The goal of OD is not just organization effectiveness or performance but also organization health and sustainability.

OD Process

• The OD process consists of four stages:
  • Entry/contracting once the need for change is recognized
  • Diagnosing and enabling feedback on the organization's current state
  • Collaborative action planning and implementation of interventions
  • Evaluating and institutionalizing or sustaining change

Core Theories in OD

Planned Change

• Kurt Lewin's Three-Step Model of Change (1951):
  • Unfreezing: faced with a dilemma or disconfirmation, the individual or group becomes aware of a need to change
  • Changing: the situation is diagnosed and new models of behavior are explored and tested
  • Refreezing: application of new behavior is evaluated, and adopted if seen to reinforce change
• John Kotter's Change Management Framework (1996):
  • Establishing a sense of urgency
  • Forming a powerful coalition
  • Creating a vision
  • Communicating the vision
  • Empowering others to act on the vision
  • Planning for and creating short wins
  • Consolidating improvements and producing more change
  • Institutionalizing new approaches
• Change Management Framework:
  • Motivating change (creating readiness for change, overcoming resistance to change)
  • Creating a vision for change (describing the core ideology, constructing the envisioned future)
  • Developing political support (assessing change agent power, identifying and influencing key stakeholders)
  • Managing the transition (activity planning, commitment planning, and management structures)
  • Sustaining momentum (providing resources for change, building support systems for change agents, developing new competencies and skills, reinforcing new behaviors and staying in the course)
• MINDSPACE Model (Dolan, 2010):
  • Messenger (who communicates the information)
  • Incentives (possible losses or gains of change)
  • Norms (what others do)
  • Defaults (what pre-set options are presented)
  • Salience (what is novel and relevant to us)
  • Priming (sub-conscious cues)
  • Affect (emotions that shape our actions)
  • Commitments (public promises)
  • Ego (acting in ways to feel better about ourselves)

Action Research

• Action research involves obtaining data from an organization's external environment, such as the perspectives of stakeholders as well as emerging threats or opportunities.

Social Construction

• Social construction highlights the importance of bringing people together in dialogue to modify the trajectory of an organization by injecting alternative conversations and narratives into the system.

Complexity

• A complexity approach focuses on distributed leadership and influence, with change management plans that tend to be looser and allow for experimentation.