The Organization

Development
Practitioner
Who is the OD Practitioner?
O They may be internal or external
consultants who offer professional
services to organizations, including their
top managers, functional department
heads, and staff groups.
O They may be those specializing in fields
related to OD, such as reward systems,
organization design, total quality,
information technology, and business
strategy.
Who is the OD Practitioner?
O The increasing number of managers and
administrators who have gained
competence in OD and who apply it to
their own work areas.

Competencies of
an Effective OD
Practitioner

KNOWLEDGE
Foundation Competencies
O Organization Behavior
O Organization Culture
O Work Design
O Interpersonal Relations
O Power and Politics
O Leadership
O Goal-Setting
O Conflict
O Ethics
O Individual Psychology
O Learning theory
O Motivation theory
O Perception theory
O Group Dynamics
O Roles
O Communication Processes
O Decision-Making Processes
O Stages of Group Development
O Leadership
O Management and Organization Theory
O Planning, organizing, leading, and
controlling
O Problem solving and decision making
O Systems theory
O Contingency theory
O Organization structure
O Characteristics of environment and
technology
O Models of organization and system
O Research Methods / Statistics
O Measures of central tendency
O Measures of dispersion
O Basic sampling theory
O Basic experimental design
O Sample inferential statistics
O Comparative Cultural Perspectives
O Dimensions of natural culture
O Dimensions of industry culture
O Systems implications
O Functional Knowledge of Business
O Interpersonal communication
O Collaboration / working together
O Problem solving
O Using new technology
O Conceptualizing
O Project management
O Present / education / coach
Core Competencies
O Organization design
O Organization research
O System dynamics
O History of organization
O Theories and models for change
Competencies of
an Effective OD
Practitioner

SKILLS
Core Competencies
O Managing the consulting process
O Analysis/diagnosis
O Designing/choosing appropriate, relevant
interventions
O Facilitation and process consultation
O Developing client capability
O Evaluating organization change
The Organization
Development
Practitioner

Professional Values
O Traditionally, OD practitioners have promoted a set
of values under a humanistic framework including
a concern for inquiry and science, democracy, and
being helpful. They have sought to build trust and
collaboration; to create an open, problem-solving
climate; and to increase the self-control of
organization members.
O More recently, they have extended those values to
include a concern for improving organizational
effectiveness and performance. They have shown
an increasing desire to optimize both human
benefits and production objectives.

O In addition to value issues within organizations,
OD practitioners are dealing more and more with
value conflicts with powerful outside groups.
Organizations are open systems and exist within
increasingly turbulent environments. Those
external groups often have different and
competing values for judging the organizations
effectiveness.
O Practitioners must have not only social skills but
also political skills, They must understand the
distribution of power, conflicts of interest, and
value dilemmas inherent in managing external
relationships, and be able to manage their own
role and values with respect to those dynamics.
O Interventions promoting collaboration and system
maintenance may be ineffective in a larger arena,
especially when there are power and dominance
relationships among organizations and
competition for scarce resources. Under those
conditions, they may need more power-oriented
interventions, such as bargaining, coalition
forming, and pressure tactics.
The Organization
Development
Practitioner

Professional Ethics
O Ethical issues in OD are concerned with how
practitioners perform their helping relationship with
organization members. Inherent in any helping
relationship is the potential for misconduct and
client abuse. OD practitioners can let personal
values stand in the way of good practice or use
the power inherent in their professional role to
abuse (often unintentionally) organization
members.
OEthical Guidelines
OEthical Dilemmas
O Misrepresentation
O Misuse of Data
O Coercion
O Value and Goal Conflict
O Technical Ineptness