Organization Development (OD)

• Organization Development (OD) is both a professional field of social action and a scientific inquiry area.
• OD practices span a wide range of activities, including team building with top management and structural changes in municipalities.
• OD studies cover topics like the effects and methods of organizational change, and factors influencing its success.
• OD comprises long-range programs that aim to improve an organization's ability to survive through changes to its problem-solving and renewal processes.
• OD aims to achieve corporate excellence by aligning what individuals want for growth and development with organizational goals.
• Richard Beckhard defined OD as a planned, organization-wide effort managed from the top, to increase organizational effectiveness and health through planned interventions using behavioral science knowledge.
• OD differs from change management, while both address the effective implementation of planned change.
• Organizational change is a broader concept compared to OD.
• OD's behavioral science foundation supports human potential, participation and development, performance, and competitive advantage.
• Change management is centered around values of cost, quality, and schedule.
• OD focuses on transferring knowledge and skills to enable the system to manage change in the future, unlike change management.
• All OD involves change management, but not all change management involves OD.
• OD is applied to managing organizational change, and is concerned in building organization's ability to achieve goals and solve problems.
• OD intends to improve responsiveness, quality of work life, and effectiveness.
• Organizational change applies to any kind of change, including innovations, decline, or system evolution.
• Behavioral sciences offer concepts for organizations to deal with changing environments like technological innovation or restructuring.

Characteristics of Organization Development

• OD programs involve a planned strategy for organizational change with specific objectives.
• OD involves a collaborative approach that includes the participation of organization members affected by the changes.
• OD programs emphasize ways to improve performance and quality.
• OD relies on humanistic values about people and organizations to increase human potential.
• OD represents a systems approach that considers the interrelationship of divisions and individuals as subsystems.
• OD is based on scientific approaches to increase organization effectiveness.

Growth and Relevance of Organization Development

• Organizations face uncertainty and chaos, requiring a management revolution.
• Three major trends are shaping change in organizations: globalization, information technology, and managerial innovation.
• Globalization is changing markets and organizational functions, with opportunities and threats in the global economy.
• Information technology is redefining business models by changing work performance, use of knowledge, and cost calculation.
• Managerial innovation responds to globalization and information technology trends, creating new organizational forms for manufacturing and service delivery.
• Many organizations are making changes to become streamlined, responsive, ecologically sustainable, and inclusive of employees' input.
• Organizations are innovating and managing change proactively.

A Short History of Organization Development

• OD emerged from five major backgrounds:
  • National Training Laboratories (NTL)
  • Training groups (T-groups)
  • Action research
  • Survey feedback
  • Normative views of OD
  • Focus was productivity and quality of work life
  • Strategic change
  • Organizational transformation
• Kurt Lewin contributed to development of T-groups, survey feedback, and action research, which led to the creation of OD.
• Rensis Likert's participative management framework and Blake and Mouton's Grid® OD suggest the "one best way" to operate.

Laboratory Training Stem

• Laboratory training applied insights from laboratory training to organizations.
• In 1946, Kurt Lewin and colleagues conducted "T-group training" at the National Training Laboratory (NTL).
• T-groups involve small, unstructured groups introspecting their behaviors and group dynamics.
• The Carnegie Foundation supported its programs in 1948 and 1949.
• There was permanent program for NTL in the National Education Association.
• Richard Beckard coined the term "OD" in 1958 and conducted laboratory experiments at NTL.
• As T-groups declined in use as intervention, the activities came to be known as team building.

Action Research and Survey Feedback Background

• Kurt Lewin pioneered the evolution of OD into a field in social science.
• In the 1940s, Willian White, John Collier, and Edith Hamilton initiated research for organizational improvement.
• Collaboration with consultant and organizational members needed to meet the goals.
• It tried to understand members feelings before design and implementation of any OD or change.
• Collaboration with members for data collection related to organization was key.
• The first benefit was members use data to monitor them selves.
• The second benefit involved social scientists generalizing this information to other organizations.
• Survey research was the key in the data collection process.
• Likert developed attitude surveys that used the 5-point "Likert Scale".
• Survey feedback includes relates to data about the organization, to solve problems.

Normative Background

• Likert identified the four categories:
  • Exploitative authoritative system
  • Benevolent authoritative system
  • Consultative system
  • Participative system
• The participative system was seen as a benchmark the members could achieve, by bridging the gap between their organizational setting and the ideal.
• Blake, Mouton and Bidwell (1962) developed a managerial grid to demonstrate organizational effectiveness.
• Managers styles involved concerns for production (relevant tasks, quality decision making) and people (good working conditions, fair salary structure was paramount).
• Managerial style with levels of effectiveness to tackle communications and improvements was key.

Productivity and Quality-of-Work-Life Background (Qwl)

• Eric Trist and colleagues at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, researched integrating people and technology (Trist & Bamforth, 1951).
• Quality of work life (QWL) programs involved both unions and management in discussions, generating designs that enabled more employee discretion and feedback.
• These programs enabled self-managing work groups.
• QWL referred to techniques such as job enrichment, labor management committees, and self-managing teams.
• There was integration of the Organizations human and technical aspects.
• Productivity and employee satisfaction led to success.

Strategic Change Background

• Need for planned change at the organizational system level.
• Pioneered by scientists such as Richard Beckhard, Eric Trist, and Kem Bamfort.
• The underlying assumption involves organizational productivity and employee satisfaction would increase if all the three factors were aligned (Worley, Hitchin & Ross, 1996).

The Nature of Planned Change

• The pace of global, economic, and technological development makes change an inevitable.
• Change that happens to an organization can be distinguished from change that is planned.

Theories of Planned Change

• Conceptions of planned change tend to focus on how change can be implemented in organizations.
• Frameworks describe activities needed to initiate and carry out successful.
• Three theories include:
  • Lewin’s change model
  • The action research model
  • The positive model
• Frameworks have received widespread attention in OD and are the basis for planned change.

Lewin’s Change Model

• Kurt Lewin conceived change as modifying the forces keeping a system’s behavior stable.
• Behaviors result from forces striving to maintain the status quo and forces pushing for change.
• Both forces are about equal, so the current behaviors are maintained.
• Change can be:
  • Increase forces pushing
  • Decrease forces maintaining the current state
  • Apply some combination
• Lewin viewed change as having three steps, like unfreezing, moving and refreezing.
• Unfreezing reduces an organizations forces through a process of "psychological disconfirmation".
• This involves using feedback that shows discrepancies can motivate members to engage.
• Moving shifts the organization to a new level and intervening to develop new behaviors.
• Refreezing stabilizes the organization through support that reinforces the new state.

Action Research Model

• Action research model focuses on planned change as a process in initial research.
• Results are assessed to guide after the action.
• It combines and collaborates among organizational members and OD practitioners.
• Heavy focus placed on data prior, and action after.
• The eight steps are:
  • Problem Identification
  • Consultation with a Behavioral Science Expert
  • Data Gathering and Preliminary Diagnosis
  • Feedback to a Key Client or Group
  • Joint Diagnosis of the Problem
  • Joint Action Planning
  • Action
  • Data Gathering After Action
• Problem identification starts when there is executive power.
• Practitioners are normative can must understand their assumptions.
• Data gathering is for gathering appropriate information.
• Feedback involves diagnostic data fed back to the client.
• Members validate feedback and make further diagnosis.
• An action plan on ways to reach equilibrium must be proposed.
• The "action stage" requires a transition for the organization moves from one period to another.
• Data gathering after is must, to see how the new action has helped.

The Positive Model

• The positive model represents an movement to Lewin’s model.
• Positive model shows organizational are better when the model is focused on whats going right.
• This model is consistent with a growing movement - “positive organizational scholar ship,” - on positive dynamics.
• People tend to act ways that make their expectations occur.
• Positive expectations create an anticipation that energizes the organization.

Comparisons of Changed Models

• Lewin’s change model, the action and the positive model describe the phases by organizations.
• The models overlap to implement change.
• All three highlight:
  • Application of new behaviors or processes
  • Membership involvement
  • Interaction between those involved
• Lewin's models focuses on planned change.

General Model of Planned Change

• This framework describes the four activities practitioners must take:
  • Entering and contracting
  • Diagnosing
  • Planning and implementing
  • Evaluating and institutionalizing
• Organizational change it not straightforward
• There is overlap and feedback among the activity.
• The four different segments are:
  • Establishing initial contact with the organization or client system
  • Defining the scope of the change project and setting expectation.
  • Agreeing on timelines and goals
  • Analyzing causes and strengths
  • Gathering data through sources
  • Providing feedback
  • Action steps
  • Roles
  • Communicate to stakeholders
  • Following a timeline
  • Assessing the effectiveness
  • Monitoring progress
  • Integrating new systems

Organization Development Practitioner

• Refers people focusing on OD as a profession.
• They offered their professional services to organizations and managers.
• The term OD practitioner refers to those specializing in relevant fields.
• Also related to people in reward or technology related areas.
• This is also shown where OD is applied to its own work areas.
• The line between these roles are blurring.
• The number of companies are temporarily moving manager into the OD profession, for training.
• It becomes more and more common for people to grow competent in other fields, and use OD as a support.