38 Organizational Development

DR.Geeta Sachdev

1. Learning Objectives:

Basic objectives of this module are:

To understand the Concept & meaning of Organizational Development

To know the nature, importance and objectives of Organizational Development To know how to implement OD Programs and OD Interventions

2. Introduction

Organizational Development (OD) is a management discipline envisioned to rise an organization’s efficacy& productivity. Rooted in behavioural science basics, OD stresses on multi-layered interpersonal skills as they affect the problem solving activities grave to the organizations. Organizational Development is a systematized tactic to organizational improvement that put on behavioural science theory & research in order to improve individual & organizational well-being and competency. It is a term used to include a pool of planned change interventions that follow to improve organizational efficiency &employee welfare.

It pursues to upsurge how organizations relates to their external environments & function inside to attain high performance & great quality of work life.

OD place stress on change in organizations that is deliberate& implemented deliberately. It is both an applied arena of social practice& an area of systematic inquiry. Experts, such as managers, staff & consultants, put on relevant knowledge &methods to organization change processes, though researchers study those procedures to arise new knowledge that can accordingly be applied elsewhere. In practice, this variance between application & knowledge generation is not straight-forward as OD practitioners & researchers frequently work meticulously together to jointly apply knowledge & learn from those experiences. Hence, OD is an ‘action science’ where knowledge is recognised in the viewpoint of applying it & learning from the outcomes.

OD includes a variety of concepts &approaches for altering organizations. The following definition follows to clarify developing sides of OD while drawing on previous definitions of the arena: “OD is a system wide process of applying behavioural science knowledge to the planned change and development of the strategies, design components, and processes that permit organizations to be effective.”

OD discourses a whole system, such as a team, department, or entire organization. It also pacts with associations between a system & its environment as well as amongst the various features that contain a system’s design. This system-wide application trails from an open-systems approach to organizations.

OD stresses on changing & improving three important aspects of organizations:

Strategies: It deal with how organizations utilize their possessions to attain competitive advantage. This includes diversities about the functions an organization would do, the products or services it would provide, & the markets & customers it would serve.

Design Components: It contain judgements about organization structure, job design, measurement systems, & HRM practices.

Processes: It deal with how organizations does things & encompass how workforces associate to each other & their tasks & how various functions, such as communication & decision-making, are carried out.

OD pursues to convey resemblance or fit amongst strategies, design mechanisms, & processes so that they jointly direct & fortify organizational behaviour in a planned direction.

Finally, OD stresses on enhancing organization efficiency. This comprises assisting organizations to gain great performance, good working environment, & ability for continued problem-solving & growth. Effective organizations perform at great levels though meeting the necessities of numerous investors, including owners, clients, employees, suppliers, & government. Effective organizations are capable to resolve their own difficulties while incessantly refining and renewing themselves.

Underlying values in OD efforts

The OD paradigm focuses on human & organizational development, accommodating& participative procedures, & an essence of investigation. The change agent may be directive in OD, though, there is a tough pressure on teamwork. Ideas such as power, authority, control, conflict &force are held in comparatively low esteem amongst OD change agents.

As per Robbins the subsequent are the original values in utmost OD efforts:

Respect for people: Persons are supposed as being answerable, careful, and considerate. They must be treated with self-esteem & honour.

Trust and Support: The effective & fit organization is considered by confidence, authenticity, candidness & a helpful environment.

Power Equalization: Effective organizations do not believe in ranked authority & control.

Confrontation: Problems shouldn’t be cleaned under the rug. They should be comfortably confronted.

Participation: The more that persons who would be affected by a change are involved in the decisions surrounding that change, the more they would be devoted to put on those decisions.

3. Nature of Organizational Development

OD emphases on development of organizational culture.

OD emphases on whole development of organization & individuals with win-win strategy. It trusts profoundly on action research.

It deals with enhancement of ongoing processes.

OD emphases on whole system change & views organization as complex social system. Delegation of authority, empowerment, & quality of work life a sense of autonomy are the symbol of OD programme.

OD practitioners are facilitators &collaborators. Their assistance in identification of problem areas, reaching at a solution, execution and feedback is essential. Their services are valuable.

OD is characterized by study &development of multi-ethnic culture that is supportive of work ethics. Persons with varied value system, culture, & interests should be able to work effectively under one roof &attain pleasant relationship with fellow employees. It should be able to assist attain organizational effectiveness.

Organizational development is a combined accountability of owners, employees, investors’ society, government agencies & consumers. It must be understood that the organizations exist for all of them.

4. Importance of Organization Development

Efficiency, competency, morale & quality of work life are major concerns to most of the organizations because they effect achievement of organization goals. There is mounting tendency to maximize an organization’s investment in its workforces. Jobs that earlier required physical skill now need more intellectual energy. Organizations need to “work smarter” & implement creative thoughts. The employees has also changed. Employees expect more from a day’s work than just a day’s salary. They want experiment, acknowledgement, & a sense of accomplishment, valuable tasks & noteworthy relations with their bosses & co-workers. When these desires are not happened, performance drips. Today’s clients demand ceaselessly enhancing quality, fast product or service delivery; quick turn-around time on changes, economical pricing & other features that are greatest attained in intricate environments by imaginative organizational practices.

The efficient organization must be proficient to meet today’s & tomorrow’s encounters. Flexibility& approachability are vital to exist & flourish.

5. Objectives of Organizational Development Programme

It focuses on individual & group development.

It deals with the development of organization culture & processes by continuous communication between members regardless of levels of hierarchy.

It Inculcates team spirit.

It does empowerment of social side of employees. It focuses on value development.

It gives emphasis on employee participation, problem-solving & decision-making at several levels.

It evaluates present systems & introduction of new systems thus gaining total system change if essential.

Transformation and achievement of competitive edge of the organization.

It achieves organization growth by whole human inputs by way of research & development, innovations, creativity & exploiting human talent.

It lays stress on behaviour modification &self-managed team as the basic unit of an organization.

6. Implementing OD Programs

OD efforts mostly include two groups of actions; “action research” & “interventions.” Action research was conceived in the 1940s by Lewin & another U.S. researcher, John Collier. It is a way of methodically gathering data on a precise organization, feeding it back for action preparation, &evaluating results by congregation& reflecting on more data. Data gathering approaches include all from surveys & questionnaires to interviews, collections, drawings, & tests. The data is regularly evaluated inferred by means of advanced statistical analysis techniques.

Action research could be thought of as the logical component of the OD process. But it also contains the interference component, whereby the change agent usages actions plans to inhibit in the organization & make variations. In a ceaseless procedure, the results of actions are measured & evaluated and new action plans are planned to effect new changes. Therefore, the intervention process can be considered a feature of action research.

The initial phase in the OD process is acknowledgement of a problem by important managers. Those managers then consult with a change agent (a group or individual), who gathers data, gives feedback to the managers, and then supports them to describe change objectives. Then, the agent does fresh research inside the framework of the stated OD objectives, offers additional feedback, discovers a plan of action, & then arbitrates in the corporation to effect change. After (or during) the intervention(s), data is composed, feedback is supplied, actions are planned & executed & the process is repeated.

7. OD Interventions

Organization Development is a special organizational development strategy. The groups of organized/planned activities acknowledged by groups or individuals in an organization as a part of the organization development program are accepted as OD methods or OD interventions. While change programs may include either outdoor or indoor consultants, OD interventions usually encompass outdoor consultants.

“OD interventions are groups of structured activities in which nominated organizational units (target groups or individuals) engage in a task or sequence of tasks with the objectives of organizational improvement & individual development.”

These are plans or programs made up of certain actions proposed to effect alteration in some facet of an organization. Numerous interventions have been recognised over the period of time to address various difficulties or generate several results. Although, they all are prepared toward the purpose of increasing the complete organization through change. In general, organizations that wish to achieve a high degree of organizational change would employ a complete range of interventions, including those envisioned to convert individual & group behaviour & attitudes. Individuals attempting smaller changes would halt short of those aims, applying interventions directed chiefly toward functioning rules, management structures, worker skills, & personnel policies. OD interventions could be categorised in several ways, including function, the kind of group for which they are projected, or the business to which they apply. In fact, W.L. French acknowledged 13 major “families” of interventions created on the kind of activities that they included—activity groups contained teambuilding, survey feedback, structural change, & career-planning. One suitable method of classifying OD interventions is by group size & interrelationship, encompassing: interpersonal relationships, group processes, intergroup systems, & the entire organization. Typically, an OD program would simultaneously integrate more than one of these interventions. A few of the more dominant interventions are briefly conversed underneath.

Sensitivity Training

It is a psychological technique in which rigorous group discussion & communication takes place to develop individual awareness of self & others; it is implemented in several forms like T-group, encounter group, human relations & group-dynamics training. The group is usually small & free and chooses its own goals.

An imperative part of sensitivity training is the sharing, by individual member of the group, of his or her own special perceptions of everyone else present. This, in turn, reveals information about his or her own separate qualities, anxieties, emotional matters & things that he or she has in communal with other participants of the group. A group’s coach refrains from acting as a group leader or lecturer, bidding instead to clarify the group procedures using events as examples to explicate general points or offer feedback. The group action, usually, is the goal as well as the process.

Sensitivity training endeavour for to teach its members& lead to more productive positive behaviour. It respects vision and remedial emotional or behavioural experiences as more important purposes than those of genuine therapy. The feedback part of the training supports to ease this because the members in a group can distinguish individuals’ drives, goals, and behaviour in certain conditions that rise inside the group. Group members can support people to learn whether showed behaviour is important and/or effective, and the feedback loop operates constantly, spreading the opportunity to learn more appropriate behaviour.

Survey Feedback

Survey feedback is utilized for assessing the attitudes held by the personnel of the organizations, noticing dissimilarities amongst member perceptions &solving these differences.

Every individual in an organization can participate in survey feedback, but of key importance is the organizational family – the manager of any specified entity & those workers who account straight to him or her. A questionnaire is usually filled up by all workforces in the organization. Organization members might be asked to suggest or might be cross-examined to determine what matters are relevant. The questionnaire frequently asks members for their perceptions & attitudes on a varied array of topics, including decision making practices, communication effectiveness, harmonisation between units, & satisfaction with the organization, job, co-workers, & their straight supervisor.

The data from this questionnaire are tabulated with data linking to a person’s specific ‘family’ & to the entire organization & distributed to employees. These data then become the enabler for determining problems & clarifying matters that might be generating problems for people. In some circumstances, the manager might be advised by an outdoor change agent about the meaning of the answers to the questionnaire & might even be given recommended guidelines for leading the organizational family in group discussion of the outcomes. Precise deliberation is given to the importance of improving discussion &approving that discussions stress on matters & ideas and not on criticizing persons.

Finally group discussion in the survey feedback approach should result in member identifying possible implications of the questionnaire’s findings. Are member listening? Are novel thoughts being produced? Can decision making, interpersonal relations, or job assignments be advanced? Answers to questions like these, it is probable, would result in the group approving upon commitments to numerous actions that would cure the problems that are acknowledged.

• Process Consultation

The objective of process consultation is for an external OD consultant to support the management, “to perceive, understand & act upon process events inside the organization.

The consultant notices the processes like communication patterns, decision making & leadership styles, approaches of cooperation & conflict resolution amongst members and groups and acts as a guide or a coach who counsels on how these processes can be enhanced.

In common, all OD efforts are intended to fetch changes in the conceptual environment of an organization as well as the viewpoint of organizational members. Each member starts to see himself as a resource to others & is prepared to give his sustenance to his colleagues when such sustenance is required.

The conceptual environment carries about open &free expression of feelings, emotions and perceptions. It also assists members to improve interpersonal competence counting communication skills and an insight into themselves and others.

Steps in Process Consultation

As per Schien, process consultation usually continues as given underneath:

Initial Contact –in this step, client contacts with the consultant & discuss the difficulty that cannot be resolved by normal organizational procedures or resources.

Define the relationship –After identifying the exact problematic areas, the consultant & the client go into an official agreement. The official contract is about the services, time & the charges of the consultant. Fundamentally there is also a psychological contract because both parties are occupied in the satisfaction of certain expectations.

Select the method of work –It contains the clear-cut understanding of where and how the consultant would perform the job. Every employee in the organization is made conscious of who the consultant is so that he could support the consultant by giving the vital information.

Collection of Data and Diagnosis –The consultant dedicates time in collecting the appropriate information. Usually, he amasses data through questionnaires, observation & personal interviews etc. and then makes an in-depth examination of the problems.

Intervention –Plentiful interventions by the consultant such as agenda setting, feedback, coaching &structural commendations are made in the process consultation approach. During this phase, the resolutions intended by the consultant would be interpreted into action in the organization.

Reducing Involvement and Termination –When the goals of OD intervention have been certainly reached, the consultant leaves the organization by concluding the official contract with the client.

Team building

Team building activities are intended to improve the effectiveness &satisfaction of individuals who work in groups in order to increase the effectiveness of the whole group. It is significant to identify work group’s problems as early as possible so that clarifications can be applied before the problems can do any harm.

These might be task connected problems or personality conflict &personality cult problems inside the group. The group’s work related issues can be simplified by altering the way things are done, by readdressing the resources, used and by re-examining the work processes.

The interpersonal relationships inside the team can be increased by creating the environment which is open &reliable, where members can openly and easily communicate their feelings and thoughts, where leadership develops on the basis of respect &functional excellence and where conflicts are solved on the basis of common understanding.

Intergroup Development

Just as there are problems inside a group, there are problems amongst two or more different groups who are co-dependent amongst themselves. The actions of these groups must be coordinated and harmonized to attain the organizational goals & any unhealthy competition between the groups must be removed.

Other problems might include conflicts over coinciding responsibilities or muddled lines of authority. Some instances of such groups, where conflicts might lie, are sales & production, line & staff, labour& management, hospital administrators and doctors in a hospital etc. All these problems and conflicts must be resolved in a spirit of faith, generosity and openness.

8. Summary

Organization development provides a prescription for increasing the “fit” between the individuals &the organization, between the organization & the environment, and amongst the organizational constituents like strategy, structure &process. The prescription is executed through inventions actions that address exact problematical conditions. Organizational development is a constant process. The programmes are executed on short-term as well as long-term basis. Organization Transformation (OT) can be termed as the second generation OD as recommended by Porras and Silvers. Organizational development is a set of behavioural science founded theories, values, plans& techniques envisioned at the deliberate change of the organizational work setting for the goal of enlightening employee development & increasing organizational performance by the amendment of organizational members on the job behaviours.

In OD, there is a mutual influence between culture, strategy, structure & processes; each is imperative and each effects the other.

Innovations are carried out to resolve intricate organizational problems through laboratory training, survey research & feedback methodology, action research& socio-technical & socio-clinical approach to organizational development.

References:-

• Organization Development and Change by Cummings and Worley, 10th edition, South-Western Publishing. 2001.
• Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Consultants
• by Rothwell, Roland Sullivan , Gary N. McLean. Pfeiffer & Co., 1995
• Organization Development Classics : The Practice and Theory of Change — The Best of the OD Practitioner by Van Eynde ,Judith C. Hoy , Dixie Cody Van Eynde, and Donald Van Eynde.Jossey-Bass, 1997.
• Organization Development: A Practitioner’s Guide for OD and HR by Holbeche and Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge. Kogan Page, 2011.
• Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change by William J. Rothwell, Jacqueline M. Stavros. Pfeiffer & Co., 2009.
• Organizational Behaviour-Managing People & Organizations by Griffin & Moorehead, 11th edition, Cengage Learning.
• Organizational Behaviour by Stephen P. Robbins, 13th edition, Pearson Education.
• http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/management/5-different-od-interventions-explained/3442/ http://www.citehr.com/3596-organization-development-interventions.html
• http://armandojusto.blogspot.in/2009/04/organizational-development-od.html
• https://changedesignsportal.worldsecuresystems.com/public/team/team_strategy/Team-intervention.html
• https://www.wisdomjobs.com/e-university/principles-of-management-and-organisational-behaviour-tutorial-366/od-interventions-or-techniques-12915.html