Organizational Development and Change

By: Zeyad Faisal Al-Azzam

Organization development is a discipline encompasses an interdisciplinary

sciences or activity, based on the behavioural sciences, that, either initially or
over the long term, has the potential to develop in an organizational setting
enhanced knowledge, expertise, productivity, satisfaction, income,
interpersonal relationships, and other desired outcomes, whether for personal or
group/team gain, or for the benefit of an organization, community, nation,
region, or, ultimately, the whole of humanity. I would add that, OD is aligning
organization with its business objectives striving to improve organizational
effectiveness.

The target of the change effort is the whole organization, departments, work
groups, or individuals within the organization as the OD recognizes the
importance of top management's commitment, support, and involvement. It also
affirms a bottom-up approach when the culture of the organization supports
such efforts to improve an organization. It is a planned and long-range strategy
for managing change, while also recognizing that the dynamic environment in
which we live requires the ability to respond quickly to changing
circumstances. Meanwhile, OD uses a collaborative approach that involves
those affected by the change in the change process.

I guess that OD is an education-based system seeks to develop values, attitudes,

norms, and management practices that result in a healthy organization climate
that rewards healthy behaviour and data-based approach to understanding and
diagnosing organizations which involves planned interventions and
improvements in an organization's processes and structures and requires skills
in working with individuals, groups, and whole organizations. OD might be

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used in the situations of developing or enhancing the organization's where
change will be effectively managed and implemented and managed conflicts
that might exist among individuals, groups, functions and so on.

An atmosphere can be established which will support more innovation and

creativity, increase job satisfaction, develop more positive interpersonal
relationships and foster greater participation in creating plans and defining
organizational goals. The primary goal of OD is to improve organisation
effectiveness; therefore the primary role of an OD practitioner (might be
consultant or professional or manager) is to establish helping relationships
within the organisation, with and between individuals and groups, to achieve
that objective of change.

In my viewpoint, OD practitioner is playing the vital role in OD processes so

they must have competencies qualified them to deal with many parts inside-
outside organization and during change processes, in other words, OD
practitioner should possess the basic skills and knowledge required to execute
change inside organizations. In addition, OD practitioners must create trust and
be able to explain the results of their assessments and recommendations to
clients who may be strongly resistant to perceived criticism, having already
hired a consultant to make changes.

Eventually, the organization development mainly starts with planned changes

without overlooking unplanned changes happened or enforced to place them
and precisely relies on practitioners who should be skilful and knowledgeable
in the field of OD to manage organizational effectiveness.