CONCEPT OF
ORGANISATION DEVLOPMENT
“OD is a response to change, a
complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values
and structure of organizations so that they can better adapt to new
technologies, markets, and challenges and the dizzying rate of change itself.”
“Organization development is a
planned process of change in an organization culture through the utilization of
behavioral science technology, research and theory,.”
Organization development is a long
term effort to improve an organization’s problem – solving and renewal
processes, particularly through a more effective and collaborative management
of organization culture – with special emphasis on the culture of formal work
teams – with the assistance of a change agent or catalyst and the use of the
theory and technology of applied behavior science including action research.
FEATURES OF
ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT
1.
Planned change: OD is a
strategy of planned change for organizational improvement. This ‘Planned’
emphasis separates OD efforts from other kinds of more haphazard changes that
are frequently undertaken by organizations.
2.
Comprehensive change: OD efforts
focus on comprehensive change in the organization rather than focusing
attention on individuals, so that change is easily absorved. The concept of
comprehensive change is based on the systems concept open, dynamic and adaptive
system. OD efforts take an organization as an interrelated whole and no part of
it can be changed meaningfully without making corresponding changes in other
parts.
3.
Long range change: OD efforts
are not meant for solving short – term, temporary or isolated problems. Rather,
OD focuses on the elevation of an organization to a higher level of functioning
by improving the performance and satisfaction of organizational members on long
term basis. These long – term efforts are time consuming. Therefore, OD experts
emphasize that the process takes months or in many cases, years to implement.
Although there may be pressure for quick results the OD process is not intended
to be stop – gap measure.
4.
Dynamic Process: OD is a
dynamic process and includes the efforts to guide and direct changes as well as
to cope with or adapt changes imposed. It recognizes that organizational goals
change, so the methods of attaining these goals should also change. Thus, OD
efforts are not one – shot actions, rather they are ongoing, interactive and
cyclic process.
5.
Participation of change agent: Most OD emphasis the need for an outside, third party change
agent, or catalyst. They discourage ‘do it yourself’ approach. There is a close
working relationship between the change agent
and the target organizational members to be changed. The relationship
involves mutual trust, joint goals and means and mutual influence. The change
agent is a humanist seeking to get a humanistic philosophy in the organization.
He shares a social philosophy about human values.
6.
Emphasis on intervention and action research: OD approach results in an active intervention in the ongoing
activities of the organization. Action research is the basis for such
intervention. A change agent in OD process does not just introspect the people
and introduce changes, rather, he conducts surveys, collects relevant data
evaluates these data, and then takes actions for intervention. He designs intervention
strategies based on these data.
7.
Normative educational process: OD is based on the principle that norms form the basis for
behavior and change is a re-educative process of replacing old norms by the new
ones. This is done to arrive at certain desirable outcomes that may be in the
form of increased effectiveness, problem – solving and adaptability for the
organization as a whole. At the individual level, OD attempts to provide
opportunities to be ‘human’ and to increase awareness, participation and
integrate individual and organizational goals.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT AND ORGANIZATION
DEVELOPMENT
|
Factors
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Management
development
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Organization Development
|
|
Objective
|
Increasing manager’s
contribution to goal accomplishment.
|
changing the nature of the
organization
|
|
Focus
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Train and equip employees and
Managers to perform better in existing organization
|
focus on design, not on the managers; focus on achieving
improvements in design
|
|
Approach Time
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Educative and training
Short-range
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Problem-solving approach.
Long-range strategy for organizational innovation and renewal
|
|
Specialist
|
No special recruitment
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Trained specialists required
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