Organization development November 2012

Sec A 1. Explain the concept of OD. What are its objectives?

According to Bennis - OD is a response to change, a complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values and structure of organization so they can better adopt new technologies, markets and challenges, and the dizzying rate of change itself. OD is basically a problem-solving approach. It is a planned change effort carried out at the organizational level. It is a continuous process of organization as changes occur continuously in the external environment. Though the primary purpose of OD is to improve the organizational health and efficiency through planned interventions, it aims to accomplish multiple objectives.

Objectives . The important objectives of OD are:

to improve the ability of the organization to plan and manage changes through a transparent, effective and honest process to identify and allocate the precious resources of the organization in the most productive manner to improve the organizational and individual efficiency for effective accomplishment of organizational goals through planned interventions.

Improving mutual trust and emotional support among all the employees. Promoting, in a healthy manner, incidences of intra-group and inter-group confrontations. Creating a culture in which authority is based on knowledge and skills. Encouraging open communication bottom up, top down, side ways and diagonally. Increasing the level of enthusiasm and satisfaction among the employees. Promoting problem solving culture. Improving individual employee participation and group participation to plan and implement.

2. Discuss the various methods that are available for collecting diagnostic information. There are a number of methods which can be used to collect data to complete the diagnostic within the OD cycle. Questionnaires, Surveys and Checklists

WHAT - A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. WHY - Designed for statistical analysis of the responses,often have standardized answers that make it simple to compile data.

Interviews

WHAT - Interviews are a qualitative research methods consisting of a conversation between two or more people where questions are asked by the interviewer to glean facts or statements from the interviewee. WHY - Provides a description of meanings regarding the central themes in the world of the interviewee. Helps develop an understanding to the meaning of what information the interviewees provide.

Document Review

WHAT Collecting data by reviewing existing documents. Documents may be hard copy or electronic and may include strategic and tactical plans, reports, performance management data, proposals, meeting minutes, newsletters, and marketing materials WHY - Important to gather background information to answer what, how and who for the OD programme. Determine if implementation of the program reflects program plans. Provides evidence to develop other data collection tools for diagnostic and evaluation processes.

Observation

WHAT - gathering data by watching behaviour, events, interactions or noting physical characteristics in their natural setting. WHY - Provides understanding of an ongoing process or situation, especially in regards to what is really happening versus what is supposed to happen. Essential when gathering data on individual behaviours or interactions between people and seeing the place or environment will increase understanding of the event, activity, or situation you are evaluating. Useful when data collection from individuals is not a realistic option where people usually perform better when they know they are being observed (indirect observation may decrease this problem). Only provides data on what is happening it does not increase your understanding of why people behave as they do.

Focus Groups

WHAT - a form of group interview. WHY - Uses group interaction encouraging people to talk to one another: asking questions, exchanging anecdotes and commenting on each others experiences and points of view.

Case Studies

WHAT - In depth investigation of a single person, group or event, which involves the collection and presentation of detailed information about a particular topic. Explores cause-effect relationships with an emphasis on exploration and description. WHY - Used to draw conclusions about a particular area of interest, in a specific context.

3. SN A. Rationale for evaluating OD interventions The main reasons for evaluating the OD interventions as follows After implementing OD interventions, it is very necessary whether such change has any positive outcomes or not. If it has some positive signs such as increase in productivity, effective working of organization etc, depends which type of interventions is made. The organization can go with the change in future. If it has any negative outcomes or does not work, the OD consultants finds out where they went wrong, identify the fit falls and once again go back to square one and formulate new plans and strategies for the organization. b. Issues involved in developing a contract between OD practitioner and the organization Insufficient or ambiguous level of commitment to change Resistance or opposition by major stakeholders Major clients lack power to influence change or manage the boundaries to allow change within their organization Clients desire to manipulate the consultant or use the consultant in ways that violate the latters ethical framework

4. Elaborate Human resource OD interventions .with Examples Goal Setting: This change program involves setting clear and challenging goals. It attempts to improve organization effectiveness by establishing a better fit between personal and organizational objectives. Performance Appraisal: This intervention is a systematic process of jointly assessing work-related achievements, strengths and weaknesses, Reward Systems: This intervention involves the design of organizational rewards to improve employee satisfaction and performance. Career Planning and development: It generally focuses on managers and professional staff and is seen as a way of improving the quality of their work life. Managing workforce diversity: Important trends, such as the increasing number of women, ethnic minorities, and physically and mentally challenged people in the workforce, require a more flexible set of policies and practices. Employee Wellness: These interventions include employee assistance programs (EAPs) and stress management. 5. Explain how the positive model can be used for identifying and implementing planned change in organization. What are the benefits of using this model The Positive Model, as it names implies, has its roots in the positive mentality that things can be better, and that things are already good. Therefore it does not need a problem to require initiation, but rather, can be initiated at any time in the expectation that things could be better.

The first step is therefore simply initiating an enquiry. Often, this enquiry will not be very specific. It could be a team wanting to improve in some area, or it could be an organisation identifying that it needs to improve something, e.g. profitability or market share but it might not be sure what to change. The services of an expert, together with research of the organisation and other organisations are utilised to identify the things that the organisation has done really well, in the past. It could be compared to a story telling process where organisation members tell stories of the things theyd done really well. These success stories are then analysed to identify the organisations major strengths. Themes of strengths are then discovered. Based on these strengths, the organisation designs for itself an ideal future. The organisation then designs ways to achieve that future, and implements those plans.

Benefits This model is applied primarily through the concept of Appreciative Enquiry which relates to the idea of identifying what is already strong, and building further on to that.

It is supported by research relating to Expectation Theory. All of this could be summarised in a belief and understanding that a person or organisation would have the most impact in the areas of its strength and should therefore develop primarily in those areas, and that People are more motivated to produce superior results by a desire for positive than simply trying to reduce the negative. Sec B Case Study 1.How can group level diagnosis help you to understand the problem? Case summary The performance of Team members are not up to the mark from last six months.As there are lot of conflicts between team members and due to conflicts , the overall team performance was suffered. Mainly the group level diagnosis model focus on Organization Design (Input) Design Components- task structure, Team process, Functioning, norms (Process) and Team Effectiveness ( Output) So with the help of Group level diagnosis model and focusing on main components such as Goal clarity, Task structure & technology, Team functioning, Group processes And Group norms, it helps to understand the conflicts between the team members may be due There is lack of goal clarity between team members. Team members might not know their job objectives as what exactly they have do. Secondly, Task structure, the reasons might be there is lot of confusion between team members regarding their task structure. Work might not be properly assigned to them. Thirdly, Group composition helps to understand that as it is a Team, there may different kind of traits or characters in a team due to which conflict might be happening between them because different of opinion, views, attitude. Group norms help us to understand that due to lack of unwritten norms or rules in organization or for a team to behave in a particular manner or rules regarding the work related activities, set of rules for work processes there may be conflicts because as there is no particular rules as to how to work then everyone in the team might assuming that their work or process they are following is correct according to them. Lastly Team functioning helps us to understand that different quality of group dynamics among members.

2. How can group level diagnosis help you to identify appropriate OD interventions for your team. Team Development and Group Processes Interventions Team development and group processes interventions aim at improving different aspects of a group performance, such as goal setting, development of interpersonal relations among team members, role clarification and analysis, decision making, problem solving, and communities of practice, among other. One of the most important objective of team building interventions relies on improving interdependency of team members. The underlying premise is that the aggregated value of the team is much greater than any individual. According to Robbins (1994), Team building is applicable where group activities are interdependent. The objective is to improve the coordination efforts of members, which will result in increasing the teams performance. Sec C Case summary The case talks about the Marlin company products and sales representatives work. As the company were having more than 100 sales representatives for a particular complex industrial products. Were this sales pipeline required more closely contact to with the buyers in order to know their need about products. In fact the sales representatives who allocated this line of industrial products selling were very happy with their wok as its ultimately results on their individual efforts which leads to income and self recognition. But due to new implementation of Software in the company they were assigned to fill up all the forms & supplying the info , which resulted in declining their morale as they were spending more two hours in this new assigned work. 1. Comment on the sales Manager analysis. Solution: Looking at the situation, according to me sales manager is right in his analysis, because the sales representatives was very happy with their work regarding the selling the company products and they were getting good income and self recognition as it was totally based on individual efforts. So of all sudden they were put into a new job of filling up the forms and supplying the information due to new implementation of control and report system in the company which ultimately affected thoieir work as well their morale as they were spending more tow hours on this new work assigned. As a resulted they were getting less time for sales and were complaining to the sales manager about this

because sales are directly related to their income and recognition. More they do sales, more they will get incentives and recognition in the company. Therefore, income and recognition is more important aspect for each and every individual. If anything is affecting their work will ultimately results in poor performance and morale of an employee will decline. Because every employee work for earning good knowledge and income. 2. How can Marlin Company create readiness for change and how can resistance to change be reduced or overcome? Marlin Company has established a new system in their company for the betterment and more effectiveness for whole organization. So in such a case they can take a help of OD consultant internal or external experts in order to bring the change in their process more properly and effectively so that they dont lose their talented human resource of their company and can make profits for long lasting. With the help of OD consultants, they can have a Techno structural interventions Approach, where it mainly focus on improving the organizational effectiveness and human development by focusing on technology and structure. These interventions are rooted in the fields of engineering, sociology, and psychology, combined with socio-technical systems and job analysis and design. These types of interventions rely on a deficit based approach; the idea is to find problems to solve. According to Cummings and Worley (2001) techno structural approaches focus on improving an organizations technology (for example, task methods and job design) and structure (for example division of labor and hierarchy) With the help of this type of intervention, the company should to communicate properly with their employees as to why such kind of technology is need in the company and what are its possible outcomes benefits to the company and employees. At the same time the company should guarantee their employees that putting up this kind of technology their performance is not going to affect at any cost and company itself should take into consideration human affect such as income and time management.