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
|
Management
development
|
Organization Development
|
|
Objective
|
Increasing manager’s
contribution to goal accomplishment.
|
changing the nature of the
organization
|
|
Focus
|
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
|
Educative and training
Short-range
|
Problem-solving approach.
Long-range strategy for organizational innovation and renewal
|
|
Specialist
|
No special recruitment
|
Trained specialists required
|
ROLE OF ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT:
Organization development, as a long – term strategy for
organizational change, plays key role in organizational improvement. The basic
problem in a change effort which is not comprehensive is that it does not work
properly unless there is a proper change in the internal environment of the
organization in which people work. Since OD attempts to being comprehensive
change in the organization, it is quite suitable for improving organizational
performance on long – term basis. Thus
OD can be utilized for the following results in the organization:
1.
To
place emphasis on humanistic values and goals consistent with these values;
2.
To
treat each human being a s a complex persons with a complex set of needs
important in his work and his life.
3.
To
increase the level of trust and mutual emotional support among all
organizational members.
4.
To
increase the level of enthusiasm and personal satisfaction at all levels of the
organization.
5.
To
increase the level of self and group responsibility in planning and its
implementation.
6.
To increase the openness of communications in
all directions – vertically, horizontally and laterally.
7.
To
create an environment in which authority in which authority of assigned role is
augmented by authority based on knowledge and skills.
PROBLEMS IN ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT
Organization development, however has invited sharp criticism as a
strategy to increase organizational viability and effectiveness because many OD
programmes have failed. Much of the enthusiasm created at the beginning of OD programmes
vanished over the period of time. In early 60’s, OD became quite successful
with many professional consultants offering high services and programmes to
various organizations. By 70’s however, substantial disenchantment with OD
became evident because of many controversial OD techniques like sensitivity
training, confrontation techniques etc. research studies have also failed to
conclude significant contributions of OD in all organizations, particularly in
bottom – line ones. Therefore, OD can not be taken as panacea for curing all
organizational problems. In general, OD is criticized on the following lines:
1.
There
is discrepancy between ideal and real situations. OD ties to achieve ideal
without taking into account real.
2.
OF
makes people unit for the real organizational world because no organizations
can fully adopt open system concept.
3.
Resistance
to change is a natural phenomenon and OD puts undue pressure to change. Hence,
it fails even as a long term strategy.
4.
OD
fails to motivate people with low level of achievement needs. If an
organization is laden with these people, it is useless to try OD.
5.
OD
programmes are often quite costly and only large organizations can afford this
luxury without any guarantee of positive outcome.
It can be seen that many of these criticisms are based on reality
and experience. People realized its dysfunctional aspects only when many OD
efforts failed. However it may be emphasized that OD programmes are likely to
fail when these are not undertaken properly. In fact, there have been cases of
wrong implementation of OD programmes and hence failure. For example, Evans has
identified three factors which have been possible for the failure of OD
programmes:
1.
Failure
of the management consultant group to correctly tailor the programme to actual
needs of the organization.
2.
Failure
to correctly model appropriate personnel behavior in the programme.
3.
Failure
to increase employee motivation through participation and development of
personal growth and self – esteem.
Thus it can be visualized that OD itself may not be dysfunctional
but application may be. Therefore in order to make best use of OD efforts, some
specific efforts are required. Some of these efforts are as follows:
1.
There
should be genuine support of OD programme from top management.
2.
Organization
must formulate the objectives of OD programme very clearly and specifically.
3.
Enough
time should be allowed so that the effects of OD programme are realized.
4.
There
should be proper use of OD interventions. These should be based on the specific
needs of the organization.
5.
Only
fully competent OD consultant should be pressed for the service and he should
develop understanding with internal change agents.
PROCESS OF ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT
OD can be taken as a
process of changing people and other related aspects of an organization. Thus
it contains of many subprocesses or steps. However, theorists and practitioners
both differ about the various steps and their sequence in OD. This is because
most of the ideas in OD have generated from practices and these practices have
differed from organization to organization. It is not necessary that each
organization may involve all the steps with same results from OD strategy. As
such, uniformity in the steps involved
cannot be expected. Blake and Mouton provide six steps in OD programmes:
studying the managerial grid as a theoretical framework to understand
behavioral dynamics of organizations culture, study of the dynamics of the
actual work team, launching similar activities in different units, engaging the
top team, implementation tactics for transforming the organization into the
above model, and measurement of changes. Beckhard provides five steps:
diagnosis, action and process maintenance.
The difference in the various steps as described by various
scholars and practitioners is due to the defining scope of a particular step.
Moreover, since OD is on ongoing interactive process – a process is an
identifiable flow of interrelated events moving over time towards some goal –
many of the events overlap, and in real practice, a clear cut demarcation
between various events becomes a difficult. In OD programmes, various steps may
be problem identification and diagnosis, planning change strategy, intervening
in the system, and evaluation. These step are not exclusive to each other and
do not follow the same sequence but interact with each other.
1.
PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND DIAGNOSIS: OD programme leads to meet certain objective in the organization
because OD is a means and not an end in itself. Thus it attempts to solve some
organizational problem. The problem may be a gap between desired path of action
and actual path of action, that is the organization fail to meet its objective
on a long term basis. OD programme starts with the identification of the help
in identifying the problems. Diagnosis gives correct identification of the
problem and its causes and determines the scope of future course of action.
Diagnosis in OD involves a number of techniques concerned with identifying
concerns and issues, establishing priorities and translating them into aims and
objectives. At this stage itself, the collection and analysis of data is
undertaken. Major consideration is given to techniques and methods used to
desirable organization system, the relationships between the element or sub –
systems and ways of identifying major problems and issues.
Problem identification flows almost immediately into analysis.
Once a problem is identified, the analysis will show why the problem exists.
The analysis will identify the variables that can be altered or changed by the
organization and its management, such as leadership style, organization
structure, organizational objective, etc. In other words, analysis brings the
identification of environment that has caused problems.
2.
PLANNING STRATEGY FOR CHANGE: When the problems are diagnosed, the OD practioner – either
consultant or management, but preferably consultant – plans the various courses
of action in OD. Attempts are made to transform diagnosis of the problem into a
proper action plan involving the overall goals for change, determination of the
basic approach for attaining these goals, and the sequence of detailed scheme
for implementing the approach. Although it is a relatively simple matter to identify
changes after they have occurred, it is considerably more difficult to
influence the direction thrust of changes while they are under way. Thus,
planning and implementation of change while they are under way. Thus, planning
and implementation of change are interdependent; the ay in which change is
planned has an impact on the way in which it is carried out and conversely the
problems of implementing change have an impact on the ay in which it is
planned.
3.
INTERVENING IN THE SYSTEM:
Intervening in the system refers to the planned programme activities during the
course of an OD programme. these planned activities bring certain changes in
the system which is the basis objective of OD. There may be various methods
through which external consultant intervenes in the system, such as education
and laboratory training, process consultation, team development etc. which will
be discussed later.
4.
EVALUATION: This step
relates to evaluate the results of OD programmes so that suitable actions may
be followed up. Since OD is a long process, there is an urgent need for careful
monitoring to get precise feedback regarding what is going on as soon as an OD
programme starts. In this respect, the use of critique sessions, systematic
appraisal of change efforts and pre – post – training behavioral patterns are
quite effective. This step again involves data gathering because such data will
provide the basis for OD efforts evaluation and suggest suitable modification
or continuation of OD efforts in similar direction. All parties concerned in OD
programme need to realize that if major organizational improvements are to be
made and sustained, managerial practices with respect to many sub – systems
will need to be modified if these practices are not congruent with the OD
effort because there exists the possibility of slip back and regression to old
behavioral pattern if adequate changes in other parts integrating behavioral
change are not made.
