ODC 5 Module

th
 Concept of OD
• OD is a system wide application of behavioral science knowledge to the planned
development and re-enforcement of organisational strategies, structures, and processes
for improving an organisation’s effectiveness. (Cummings & Worley, 1993)
• OD is a planned long-term effort aimed at improving functional efficiency of the
organization. The process is supported and guided by top management and aims at
improving an organizational vision and problem-solving capability, and developing a
positive work culture to help an organization to improve its performance in the prevailing
business environment.
 Definitions of OD
• OD is a system-wide and value based collaborative process of applying behavioural science
knowledge to the adaptive development, improvement, and reinforcement of such organisational
features as the strategies, structures, processes, people, and cultures that lead to organisational
effectiveness. (Bradford, Burke, Seashore and Worley, 2004, as quoted by Warrick, 2005)
• ‘OD is a planned effort, initiated by process specialists to help an organisation develop its
diagnostic skills, coping capabilities, linkage strategies in the form of temporary and semi-
permanent systems and a culture of mutuality’ (Pareek & Rao, 1975).
• OD ‘Is a response to change, a complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs,
attitudes, values, and structure of the organisation so that they can better adapt to new
technologies, markets, and challenges, and the dizzying rate of change itself’ (Bennis, 1969).
• ‘Organisational Development is an effort (1) planned, (2) organisation-wide, (3) managed from
the top, to (4) increase organisation effectiveness & health through (5) planned interventions in
organisation’s “processes”, using behavioral-science knowledge’ (Beckhard, 1969).
• ‘OD … it’s a term used to encompass a collection of planned-change interventions built on
humanistic–democratic values that seek to improve organisational effectiveness and employee
well-being’ (Robbins, 2003). Robbins also emphasized the importance of employee well-being
for OD besides improving the performance of an organization.
• OD is a system-wide application of behavioural science knowledge to the planned development
and re-enforcement of organizational strategies, structures and processes for improving an
organization’s effectiveness (Cummings & Worley, 1993).
 OD Activities
1. Recognize need for change, what to change and how to change considering the state of organizational health, its
likely effectiveness and adaptability of an organization.
2. OD is effective with all types and sizes of organizations and also at all levels of an organization.
3. It recognizes that change is a dynamic process and takes much longer time, and quick-fix solutions normally do not
last.
4. OD aims at developing a positive work culture to make best use of HR.
5. OD aims at transferring and enhancing knowledge and skills of the employees of an organization.
6. OD is data driven and uses an action research process to achieve the desired result.
7. OD heavily draws from behavioural science knowledge.
8. OD is a collaborative top-down and bottom-up process.
9. OD gives great importance to reliable feedback for managing and monitoring a change process.
Values, Beliefs and Assumptions of OD
• An OD activity must cater for the needs of both organizational objectives and employees’
concerns, following humanistic values. These values must create a work environment
which welds employees to organizational vision/mission and motivates them to achieve
these objectives economically and effectively.
• The aim of OD is to create an environment where employees are treated as human beings
rather than as resources in the production process to maximize the profit of the
organization.
 Organizational Values
• Organizational values motivate and guide the behaviour of employees to achieve
organizational goals by modifying their behaviour and work culture wherever required as
these are influenced by his belief.
• What you believe about yourself is what happens to you.’ ‘Man is made by his belief. As he
believes, so he is. (Bhagavad Gita)
• Organizational values even guide formulation of the vision, organizational objectives and
strategy. Organizational values are influenced by the values of the founder/management
of the organization and the way these are communicated and demonstrated to the
employees. However, these values need to be generally accepted by the employees and
other stakeholders (Simmerly, 1987: 15).
 OD values facilitate to:
1. Cater growth and development through professionalism.
2. Maintain an ideal balance between growth of an organization and well-being of people.
3. Maintain dignity and respect of all individuals.
4. Include, collaborate and participate.
5. Maintain transparency through open and honest communications.
6. Attain growth for both people and organization.
7. Experiment.
8. Motivate and create a realistic hope.
9. Enhance integrity.
10. Ensure autonomy and empowerment.
• Pareek has considered following eight values as OD values:
• (a) Openness,
• (b) collaboration,
• (c) trust,
• (d) authenticity,
• (e) proactively,
• (f) autonomy,
• (g) confrontation and
• (h) experimentation.
• Systematic organisation development activities are studied in an analogy of the mangrove tree, have at least four important
trunk stems. One trunk stem consists of innovations in applying laboratory training insights to complex organizations. A
second major stem is survey research and feedback methodology. Both stems are intertwined with a third, the emergence of
action research. The fourth stem is the emergence of the (Tavistock) socio-technical and socio-clinical approaches. The key
actors in these stems interact with each other and are influenced by experiences and concepts from many fields.
 Laboratory Training and T-Groups
• Laboratory training, essentially unstructured small-group situations in which participants learn from
their own actions and the group's evolving dynamics. It began to develop about 1946 from various
experiments in using discussion groups to achieve changes in behaviour in back-home situations.
• A T-group is a form of group training where participants themselves (typically, between eight and 15
people) learn about themselves (and about small group processes in general) through their interaction
with each other.
• They use feedback, problem solving, and role play to gain insights into themselves, others, and groups.
•  A T-group meeting does not have an explicit agenda, structure, or express goal. Under the guidance of
a facilitator, the participants are encouraged to share emotional reactions (such as, for example, anger,
fear, warmth, or envy) that arise in response to their fellow participants' actions and statements.
• A T-group is a form of group training where participants themselves (typically, between eight and 15 people)
learn about themselves (and about small group processes in general) through their interaction with each other.
• They use feedback, problem solving, and role play to gain insights into themselves, others, and groups.
• The emphasis is on sharing emotions, as opposed to judgments or conclusions. • In this way, T-group
participants can learn how their words and actions trigger emotional responses in the people they communicate
with.
• Many varieties of T-groups have existed, from the initial T-groups that focused on small group dynamics, to those
that aim more explicitly to develop self- understanding and interpersonal communication. Industry also widely
used T-groups.
• A more recent version of the T-groups is the Appreciative Inquiry Human Interaction Laboratory, which focuses
on strengths-based learning processes. • It's a variation of the NTL T- groups, since it shares the values and
experiential learning model with the classic T-groups
Action Research and Survey Feedback
• Action research is the third stem which is a collaborative, client consultant inquiry.
Participant action research is used with the most frequency in OD. The laboratory training
stem in the history of OD has a heavy component of action research; the survey feedback
stem is the history of a specialized form of action research, and Tavistock projects have
had a strong action research thrust. The scholars and practitioners who have invented and
utilized action research in the evolution of OD were William F. Whyté and Hamilton.
Kurt Lewin also conducted several experiments in the mid-1940s and early 1950s. This
approach, today is as one of the most important methods for OD interventions in
organisations.
 Survey Research and Feedback Stem:
• It is the second major stem in the history of Organisation development.
• It involves a specialised form of organisation research. It revolves around the techniques and approach
developed over a period of years by staff members at the Survey Research Center (SC) of the
University of Michigan.
• The results of this experimental study lend support to the idea that an intensive, group discussion
procedure for utilizing the results of an employee questionnaire survey can be an effective tool for
introducing positive change in a business organization.
• The effectiveness of these studies were more than the traditional training courses as it deals with the
system of human relationships as a whole (superior and subordinate can change together) and it deals
with each manager, supervisor, and an employee in the context of his own job, his own problems, and
his own work relationships.
 Defining Values
• A great deal of psychological research and writing has defined and examined the concept of values and how
values affect our thinking and behavior.
• Rokeach (1973) defined a value as “an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence
is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence”.
• Values express what a person believes should happen or ought to happen, and they are relatively stable and
enduring from situation to situation, though they can also change and become more complex, particularly as a
person gains more experience.
• Value statements are organized into a person’s value system, which is “a learned organization of rules for
making choices and for resolving conflicts” (Rokeach, 1968, p. 161).
• As a system, values help us decide what action to take and how to assess both our actions and the actions of
others.
Values Important to the OD Practitioner
• Why Are Values Important to the OD Practitioner?
• Values are significant for organization development because they are the underlying beliefs that are enduring and
broader than any single consulting engagement or intervention. Values have been a part of the field since its founding,
and they have held such an important place in the practice of OD that the field has been some-what derisively referred
to as a "religious movement".
• Yet failing to take values into account leaves OD as a list of intervention techniques to be studied without
understanding the reasons why those interventions were developed or when the practitioner should apply them.
• Management scholar Edgar Schein wrote of his frustration in completing a questionnaire about OD intervention
techniques that "I did not see OD as a set of techniques at all, but as a philosophy or attitude toward how one can best
work with organizations".
• OD is value-based and more importantly its core values provide the guiding light for both the OD process and its
technology
 Core Values of O D
1. Thèy guide choices about how to proceed. Returning to our values helps to guide us when we are
uncertain how to proceed with a client or when we have multiple courses of action that are possible. When
a client does not know which solution is best, for example, the OD value of participation and involvement
may encourage the practitioner to recommend including organization members in thedecision about which
solution is most desirable. OD values can give direction and tend to specify guiding principles rather than
exact behavior.
2. They provide a larger vision that extends beyond any individual intervention. For the OD practitioner,
values provide a constancy of purpose that is greater than any single consulting engagement, providing a
larger mission for one's career. Many OD practitioners hold values of environmental and social
responsibility and social justice, and they see results in those areas as enduring effects of their work.
Developing better working conditions in more humanistic and democratic organizations is an overarching
value that many practitioners hold, core beliefs that endure regardless of the situation.
3. They distinguish OD from other methods of consulting and change. OD and other types of management consulting share
important similarities but also important differences. One of these differences relates to the values of OD work. Focusing
interventions and the consulting process to ensure growth, development, and learning is a key value that does not show up as a
purpose of most other management consulting activities. "It is the humanistic value structure and concern for people that
differentiates organization development from many of its competing disciplines"
4. They can help to prompt dialogue and clarify positions. Being explicit about our values and the choices they prompt can help
OD practitioners and clients understand one another's behavior. The OD practitioner can explain why he or she believes in a certain
course of action by articulating the values underlying this choice, and the manager or client can do the same. We can learn from one
another's perspectives and discover underlying similarities and differences (as well as avoid repeating the same conflicts over and
over). A client who decides not to implement a mentoring program may still believe in the value of individual growth and shared
learning, but may believe that the time is not right for this particular program. The consultant can then work with the client to
develop another program that meets the client's needs and also maintains the same objectives and underlying values.
5. They can help us evaluate how we did. Values can be a starting point for evaluation of an engagement (as we will discover in
Chapter 13) or a point for personal reflection and self-evaluation as a consultant. Whether we acted in accordance with our values
and helped to further those values is an important point of learning and evaluation after any engagement.
 Humanistic values are
1. Providing opportunities for people to function as human beings rather than as resources in the
productive process
2. Providing opportunities for each organization member, as well as for the organization itself, to develop
to his [or her] full potential.
3. Seeking to increase the effectiveness of the organization in terms of all of its goals.
4. Attempting to créaté an environment in which it is possible to find exciting and challenging work.
5. Providing opportunities for people in organizations to influence the way in which they relate to work,
the organization, and the environment.
6. Treating each human being as a person with a complex set of needs, all of which are important in his
[or her] work and in his [or her] life.
 OD considers
• Away From.
1. A view of people as essentially bad
2. Avoidance of negative evaluation of individuals
3. Seeing individuals as fixed
4. Resisting and fearing individual differences
5. Utilizing an individual primarily with reference to his or her job description
6. Walling-off the expression of feelings
7. Game-playing
8. Use of status for maintaining power and personal prestige
9. Distrusting people
10. Avoiding facing others with relevant
1. A view of people as essentially good
2. Confirming them as human beings Toward
3. Seeing them as being in process
4. Accepting and utilizing them
5. Making possible both appropriate expression and effective use
6. Authentic behavior
7. Use of status for organizationally relevant purposes
8. Trusting them
9. Making appropriate confrontation
10. Game-playing
11. Use of status for maintaining power and personal prestige
12. Distrusting people
13. Avoiding facing others with relevant data
14. Avoidance of risk taking
15. View of process work as being unproductive effort
16. Primary emphasis on competition
17. Willingness to risk
18. Seeing process work as essential to effective task accomplishment
19. Greater emphasis on collaboration
 Changes to OD Values
1. Financial and economic tensions. OD practitioners are frequently either external consultants needing to sell clients on an approach or
internal practitioners working with managers of the same organization. In either case, it is easier to describe approaches to solving a
problem rather than to engage in a philosophical statement about values to a potential cliCht. External consultants making a living in OD
may find it easier to talk with clients about OD techniques versus holding nebulous values-based dialogues. They may decide to accept
an engagement that does not fit with their values over declining the invitation of a paying client. This is a "tension of being driven by ego
gratification, personal success, and financial rewards versus championing traditional humanistic values in the consulting process" .
2. The push to see OD as technology. OD practitioners find it tempting to quickly and arbitrarily use favorite tools or the latest technique
in an attempt to be cutting edge. Businesses and consulting practices have evolved that promote specific OD techniques so that both
consultants and clients may be enamored with a popular approach or a sales pitch.
3. Management culture and expectations. Speed and productivity are key values of business culture in the United States. Managers seek
rapid solutions to immediate problems and want to be able to quantitatively prove the value of spending money on a consultant. A
consultant who spends time with surveys, conducting interviews, giving feedback, or facilitating meetings may appear to be producing very
little and taking a long time to do so. This culture of productivity and expectations of speed pushes OD practitioners away from the rigor of
values-based, diagnostic processes and into rapid discussions of solutions and intervention programs.
This creates a "tension between projecting one's own values and normative beliefs onto client organizations versus being only a facilitator
for serving management's interests". Managers may see a practitioner who discusses values as out of touch with contemporary
organizational challenges.
4. Research. Academic research projects that sought to compare and contrast methods and techniques used in OD work have pushed
practitioners to see OD (and the field to evolve) as a set of techniques that resulted in certain outcomes rather than to examine whether those
techniques appropriately applied the core values of the field
 Values Statement of O D
• Ethics follow from values in guiding practitioners in how to implement and enact values.
Ethical beliefs outline more and less desirable behaviors, based on a set of underlying
values such as those defined above. In a survey of organization development and human
resources professionals in the early 1980s, practitioners admitted that there was no
widespread definition of ethicsm for the field. Several scholars collaborated on an early
draft of a statement, which was further revised.
• The statement of ethical guide-lines for OD professionals is reprinted in the Appendix to
this chapter. This statement contains many of the categories of OD values discussed
earlier in this chapter, including client-centered values.
 Ethical Issues of OD
• The values of organization development are a significant part of its identity, and they distinguish OD from other
methods of consulting. Its values help practitioners with making choices about how to proceed in an
intervention. They clarify our thinking and help to establish a dialogue with clients about what we value and
why. They also provide a method for evaluating our work and give practitioners a larger purpose for their work.
OD's values include participation, involvement, empowerment, groups and teams, growth, development,
learning, thinking of organizational members as whole people, dialogue, collaboration, authenticity, openness,
and trust.
• Recently, business effectiveness has been added to this list of humanistic concerns to include values such as
quality, productivity, and efficiency, which some highlight as a potential conflict with OD's humanistic values
tradition. In any case, values conflicts do occur as OD practitioners must cope with economic and cultural forces
that push them to see OD as a set of tools or intervention techniques and to neglect the values that underlie these
techniques. Finally, a statement of OD ethics has been developed as an explicit statement of desired practitioner
behaviors that are based on OD's values.