Organizational Development - an introduction

Organizational
Development -
An Introduction
Sandeep Kulshrestha, PhD

Objectives
• To simplify the concepts and give food for thought in
the area of OD
• To make the target audience understand the
significance and practical insights of OD
• To discuss and debate the role of OD in shaping
great organizations

Introducing Organizational
Development (OD)
• It is an effort to drive change, for making an
organization competitive and efficient
• Small things done at regular intervals or even giant
things done at longer intervals
• Mindset and structural change
• Deliberately planned effort, participative at large
• The idea is to re-look at the way things work in an
organization
• The primary purpose of OD is to develop the
organization, not to train or develop the staff.

Let us think
• An organization where employee work long hours (a
conventional 6-days-a-week-office in India) and the
actual work contribution on an average is merely 5-6
hours a day (as per the observation of the HR
department) and on Saturdays employee do not
show enough enthusiasm
• Or say that the competitors are gaining more market
share than your company
• What should the organization do?

Let us think…(contd..)
• Perhaps review issues like working hours, job
descriptions, job rotation, profitability, productivity,
communication gaps, old processes etc (again
related to change the status quo!)
• This needs a deliberately planned effort to increase
the organizational efficiency, isn’t it?
• Hence OD challenges the status quo – either in an
organizational thinking, approach, function, structure,
processes, policies, strategy and people!

Beckhard’s Definition of OD
OD is an effort (1) planned, (2) organization-wide,
and (3) managed from the top, to (4)
increase organization effectiveness and health
through (5) planned interventions in the
organization’s “processes,” using behavioral
science knowledge.

In few words
• OD is about promoting organizational readiness to
meet change
- Vasudevan

History of OD
• Kurt Lewin (1898–1947) is widely recognized as the
founding father of OD, although he died before the
concept became current in the mid-1950s.
• From Lewin came the ideas of group
dynamics and action research which underpin the
basic OD process
• Institutionally, Lewin founded the "Research Center
for Group Dynamics" (RCGD) at MIT, which moved to
Michigan after his death.
• RCGD colleagues were among those who founded
the National Training Laboratories (NTL),

History of OD
• Kurt Lewin played a key role in the evolution of
organization development as it is known today. As
early as World War II, Lewin experimented with a
collaborative change process (involving himself as
consultant and a client group) based on a three-step
process of planning, taking action, and measuring
results. This was the forerunner of action research,
an important element of OD
• Lewin then participated in the beginnings of
laboratory training, or T-groups, and, after his death
in 1947, his close associates helped to develop
survey-research methods at the University of
Michigan

History of OD
• Douglas McGregor and Richard Beckhard while
"consulting together at General Mills in the 1950s,
the two coined the term organization
development (OD) to describe an innovative bottoms-up
change effort that fit no traditional consulting
categories"

Core Values of OD
Margulies and Raia (1972) articulated the humanistic values
of OD as follows:
• Providing opportunities for people to function as human beings
rather than as resources in the productive process.
• Providing opportunities for each organization member, as well as
for the organization itself, to develop to their full potential.
• Seeking to increase the effectiveness of the organization in
terms of all of its goals.
• Attempting to create an environment in which it is possible to find
exciting and challenging work.
• Providing opportunities for people in organizations to influence
the way in which they relate to work, the organization, and the
environment.
• Treating each human being as a person with a complex set of
needs, all of which are important to their work and their life

Vision and Mission
Statements
• Organizations summarize their goals and
objectives in mission and vision statements. Both of
these serve different purposes for a company but are
often confused with each other. While a mission
statement describes what a company wants to do now,
a vision statement outlines what a company wants to be
in the future.
• The Mission Statement concentrates on the present; it
defines the customer(s), critical processes and it
informs you about the desired level of performance.
• The Vision Statement focuses on the future; it is a
source of inspiration and motivation. Often it describes
not just the future of the organization but the future of
the industry or society in which the organization hopes
to effect change.

Objectives of OD
• Making individuals in the organization aware of the vision and mission of
the organization. Organizational development helps in making employees
align with the vision of the organization.
• Encouraging employees to solve problems instead of avoiding them.
• Strengthening inter-personnel trust, cooperation, and communication for
the successful achievement of organizational goals.
• Encouraging every individual to participate in the process of planning, thus
making them feel responsible for the implementation of the plan.
• Creating a work atmosphere in which employees are encouraged to work
and participate enthusiastically.
• Replacing formal lines of authority with personal knowledge and skill.
• Creating an environment of trust so that employees willingly accept
change.

Ingredients of an OD
Process
Change
Agent
Sponsoring
Organization
Behavioral
Science
Applications

Change Agent
• A change agent in the sense used here is not a
technical expert skilled in such functional areas as
accounting, production, or finance. The change agent
is a behavioral scientist who knows how to get
people in an organization involved in solving their
own problems. A change agent's main strength is a
comprehensive knowledge of human behavior,
supported by a number of intervention techniques
• The change agent can be either external or internal
to the organization
• An internal change agent is usually a staff person
who has expertise in the behavioral sciences

Change Agent
Things which would help a change agent includes;
• A real need in the client system to change
• Genuine support from management
• Setting a personal example: listening, supporting
behavior
• A sound background in the behavioral sciences
• A working knowledge of systems theory
• A belief in man as a rational, self-educating being
fully capable of learning better ways to do things.

Sponsoring Organization
• The initiative for OD programs often comes from an
organization that has a problem or anticipates facing
a problem. This means that top management or
someone authorized by top management is aware
that a problem exists and has decided to seek help in
solving it.

Behavioral Science
applications
• OD is based on "helping relationship.“
• Using theory and methods drawn from such behavioral
sciences as industrial/organizational
psychology, industrial sociology, communication,
organizational behavior, economics, and political
science, the change agent's main function is to help the
organization define and solve its own problems.
• The basic method used is known as action research.
This approach, which is described in detail later,
consists of a preliminary diagnosis, collecting data,
feedback of the data to the client, data exploration by
the client group, action planning based on the data, and
taking action.[

Systems context
• OD deals with a total system — the organization as a
whole, including its relevant environment — or with a
subsystem or systems — departments or work
groups — in the context of the total system. Parts of
systems — for example, individuals, cliques,
structures, norms, values, and products — are not
considered in isolation; the principle of
interdependency — that change in one part of a
system affects the other parts — is fully recognized.
Thus, OD interventions focus on the total culture and
cultural processes of organizations.

Improved organizational
performance
• The objective of OD is to improve the organization's
capacity to handle its internal and external
functioning and relationships. This includes improved
interpersonal and group processes, more effective
communication, enhanced ability to cope with
organizational problems of all kinds.
• Essential to organization development and
effectiveness is the scientific method — inquiry, a
rigorous search for causes, experimental testing of
hypotheses, and review of results

Self Managing work
groups
• Self-managing work groups allows the members of
a work team to manage, control, and monitor all
facets of their work, from recruiting, hiring, and new
employees to deciding when to take rest breaks

Self Managing work
groups
An early analysis of the first-self-managing work groups yielded
the following behavioral characteristics (Hackman, 1986):
• Employees assume personal responsibility and accountability for
outcomes of their work.
• Employees monitor their own performance and seek feedback on
how well they are accomplishing their goals.
• Employees manage their performance and take corrective action
when necessary to improve their and the performance of other
group members.
• Employees seek guidance, assistance, and resources from the
organization when they do not have what they need to do the job.
• Employees help members of their work group and employees in
other groups to improve job performance and raise productivity
for the organization as a whole.

Planned Change
• OD is all about planned and deliberate change

Five Stems of OD Practice
Current Practice
Laboratory Training
Action Research/Survey Feedback
Normative Approaches
Quality of Work Life
Strategic Change
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Today

Organizational Development - an introduction

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