Module-VIOrganization Development and Human Resource Development: OD-HRD Interface,
participation of top management in OD/ HRDE, OD research and practice in perspective, future
of OD, Case Study
Human Resources Development is the improvement of skills, knowledge, and indirectly, the
value of the employee in the organisation. It is the responsibility of managers, and Human
Resources Department.
Organisation Development is a description of change needed in the organisation if it is to reach
its future goals. Sometimes, organisations then try to accelerate this change by creating OD plans
which involves managers from all departments. Sometimes, they create a new department called
OD. This helps to accelerate the change by moving resources and management to a special task.
US organisations started this term, and they like to create OD department and specialists. Of
course, this type of change affects people, so HR development specialist is often involved in OD.
However, it is a mistake to describe HRD and OD as the same thing.
OBJECTIVES OF ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME
1. Individual and group development.
2. Development of organization culture and processes by constant interaction between members irrespective of levels of hierarchy.
3. Inculcating team spirit.
4. Empowerment of social side of employees.
5. Focus of value development.
6. Employee participation, problem-solving and decision-making at various levels.
7. Evaluate present systems and introduction of new systems thereby achieving total system change if required.
8. Transformation and achievement of competitive edge of the organization.
9. Achieve organization growth by total human inputs by way of research and development, innovations, creativity and exploiting human talent.
10. Behavior modification and self managed team as the basic unit of an organization.
Organizational Development Theory
Organizational Development (OD) is a field of research, theory, and practice dedicated to expanding the knowledge and effectiveness of people to accomplish more successful organizational change and performance.
OD is a process of continuous diagnosis, action planning, implementation and evaluation, with the goal of transferring knowledge and skills to organizations to improve their capacity for solving problems and managing future change.
History and Application of Organizational Development Theory
OD emerged out of human relations studies from the 1930s where psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation.
Lewin's work in the 1940s and 1950s also helped show that feedback was a valuable tool in addressing social processes.
More recently, work on OD has expanded to focus on aligning organizations with their rapidly changing and complex environments through organizational learning, knowledge management and transformation of organizational norms and values.
Key Concepts of Organizational Development Theory
Organizational Climate
Defined as the mood or unique "personality" of an organization.
Attitudes and beliefs about organizational practices create organizational climate and influence members' collective behavior.
Climate features and characteristics may be associated with employee satisfaction, stress, service quality and outcomes and successful implementation of new programs. Climate features and characteristics include:
o Leadership, openness of communication, participative management, role clarity,
and conflict resolution, leader support and leader control.
Organizational Culture
Deeply seated norms, values and behaviors that members share.
The five basic elements of culture in organizations include:
1. Assumptions
2. Values
3. Behavioral norms
4. Behavioral patterns
5. Artifacts
The subjective features (assumptions, values and norms) reflect members' unconscious thoughts and interpretations of their organizations.
The subjective features shape the behaviors and artifacts take on within organizations
OD IS A PROCESS
Action Research is a process which serves as a model for most OD interventions. French and
Bell (5) describe Action Research as a "process of systematically collecting research data about
an ongoing system relative to some objective, goal, or need of that system; feeding these data
back into the system; taking actions by altering selected variables within the system based both
on the data and on hypotheses; and evaluating the results of actions by collecting more data."
The steps in Action Research are (6, 7):
1. Entry. This phase consists of marketing, i.e. finding needs for change within an
organization. It is also the time to quickly grasp the nature of the organization, identify
the appropriate decision maker, and build a trusting relationship.
2. Start-up and contracting. In this step, we identify critical success factors and the real
issues, link into the organization's culture and processes, and clarify roles for the
consultant(s) and employees. This is also the time to deal with resistance within the
organization. A formal or informal contract will define the change process.
3. Assessment and diagnosis. Here we collect data in order to find the opportunities and
problems in the organization (refer to DxVxF>R above.) For suggestions about what to
look for, see the previous article in this series, on needs assessment (8). This is also the
time for the consultant to make a diagnosis, in order to recommend appropriate
interventions.
4. Feedback. This two-way process serves to tell those what we found out, based on an
analysis of the data. Everyone who contributed information should have an opportunity to
learn about the findings of the assessment process (provided there is no apparent breach
of anyone's confidentiality.) This provides an opportunity for the organization's people to
become involved in the change process, to learn about how different parts of the
organization affect each other, and to participate in selecting appropriate change
interventions.
5. Action planning. In this step we will distill recommendations from the assessment and
feedback, consider alternative actions and focus our intervention(s) on activities that have
the most leverage to effect positive change in the organization. An implementation plan
will be developed that is based on the assessment data, is logically organized, results-
oriented, measurable and rewarded. We must plan for a participative decision-making
process for the intervention.
6. Intervention. Now, and only now, do we actually carry out the change process. It is
important to follow the action plan, yet remain flexible enough to modify the process as
the organization changes and as new information emerges.
7. Evaluation. Successful OD must have made meaningful changes in the performance and
efficiency of the people and their organization. We need to have an evaluation procedure
to verify this success, identify needs for new or continuing OD activities, and improve the
OD process itself to help make future interventions more successful.
8. Adoption. After steps have been made to change the organization and plans have been
formulated, we follow-up by implementing processes to insure that this remains an
ongoing activity within the organization, that commitments for action have been
obtained, and that they will be carried out.
9. Separation. We must recognize when it is more productive for the client and consultant
to undertake other activities, and when continued consultation is counterproductive. We
also should plan for future contacts, to monitor the success of this change and possibly to
plan for future change activities.
It would be nice if real OD followed these steps sequentially. This rarely happens. Instead, the
consultants must be flexible and be ready to change their strategy when necessary. Often they
will have to move back and repeat previous steps in light of new information, new influences, or
because of the changes that have already been made.
But for successful OD to take place, all of these steps must be followed. It works best if they are
taken in the order described. And, since learning is really an iterative, not a sequential process,
we must be prepared to re-enter this process when and where appropriate
Trends within OD and their impacts on OD’s future
TRADITIONAL
The first trend has to do with increasing calls for a return to OD’s traditional and
others, traditionalist argue that OD should be driven by long –established values
of human potential, equality, trust, and collaboration. It is proposed that OD should
do what is right by assuring that organizations promote positive social
change and corporate citizenship.
PRAGMATIC
Related to increasing demands for professionalization of the field and an emphasis on relevance.
Championed by change management practices at large consulting firms and some
OD professional associations, pragmatists argue that OD practitioners should be certified like
TRADITIONAL
Return to original humanistic values
Increasing focus on process intervention
PRAGMATIC
Emphasize values of effectiveness
Increasing focus on relevant practice
ACADEMIC
Emphasize value of understanding, prediction and control
Search for variable that explain change and effectiveness
ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Will:
Have more conflict in short term
Be more integrated in long term
most other professionals. OD should require certification of members, create a common body of
knowledge, define minimum levels of competencies, and institute other regulatory infrastructure.
SCHOLARLY
Focuses on understanding, predicting an controlling change. Unlike traditionalist and pragmatist,
scholars are concerned with creating valid knowledge, and with generalizing conclusions about
how change occurs, how it is triggered, under what conditions it works well and so on.
Scholars proposed a research agenda w/c includes
How multiple context and levels of analysis affect organizational change?
The inclusion of time, history, process and action in theories of change
The link between change processes and organization performance
The comparative analysis of international and cross cultural OD interventions
The study of receptivity, customization, sequencing, pace, and episodic versus continuous
change processes
The partnership between scholars and practitioners is studying organizational change
IMPLICATION OF OD’S FUTURE
OD will have more conflicts in the Short term
Traditionalist fear that OD is becoming too corporate and may unwittingly collude
with powerful stakeholders to promote goals in consistent with OD’s social responsibility
and humanistic values
Pragmatist on the other hand worries that relying too heavily too heavily on traditional
values will reinforce OD’s touchy feely orientation.
The debate over values demonstrates how difficult it will be to gain agreement about
standards, competencies, enforcement mechanisms, and oversight.
OD will become more integrated in the long term. There is a considerable common ground
among the diverse trends within the OD, and the emergence f a more integrated view of the field
seems likely in the long term
TRENDS IN CONTEXT OF ORGANISATION DEVELOPMENT
ECONOMY More concerned with cultural diversity More concentrated wealth More concerned ecologically
WORKFORCE Increasing diverse Increasingly educated Increasingly contingent
TECHNOLOGY More E-commerce Faster organizational process More productivity
ORGANISATIONS More networked More knowledge, learning. and innovation
based
ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT will be:
More involved in driving effectiveness in a broader range of organizations
More involved in supporting technical and managerial innovation
More concerned with preserving cultural diversity
More focused on ecological sustainability
The Economy
Increasing concern over social and ecological consequences
Cultural diversity – Governments face the difficult choice of preserving their culture ant the risk
of being left out of the global economy. Income distribution – globalization of the economy is
closely related to an increasing concentration of wealth in relatively few individuals, corporation
and nations. Ecological sustainability – there are increasingly clear warnings that the ecosystem
no longer can be treated as a factor of production and that success cannot be defined as the
accumulation of wealth and material goods at the expense of the environment
.
The Workforce
The workforce is becoming more:
Diverse – organizations, whether they operate primarily in their home country or abroad, will
need to develop policies and operating styles that embrace the changing cultural, ethnic, gender
and age diversity of the workforce.
Educated – the workforce is becoming more educated. A more educated workforce demands
higher wages, more involvement in decision making and continued investment of knowledge and
skills.
Contingent – the continued high rate of downsizings, re-engineering efforts, and mergers and
acquisitions is forcing the workforce to become more contingent and less loyal.
Technology
Internet – the backbone of global economy. E-commerce – an economy that knows
no boundaries. It involves buying and selling products and services over the internet. Two types
of E-commerce relevant to OD’s Future
•Business-to-consumer – garners much attention and awareness because it is how the public
participates in E-commerce.
•Business-to-business – more complex
Organization
Involves increasingly networked and knowledge based nature of organizations.
The interventions help organizations become more streamlined and flexible, more capable of
improving themselves continuously in response to economic and other trends and more effective.
Networks – are highly adaptable and can disband and reform along different task or market lines
as the circumstances demand.-
OD will be more embedded in the organization’s Operations
This suggest that OD practices will become more embedded in the organization’s normal
operating routines. OD skills, knowledge, and competencies can and should become the daily
work of managers and employees
OD process will be more technologically Enabled
Information technology is pervasive and will have a significant effect on OD practice. First, it
will enable OD to be synchronous and asynchronous (anytime, anywhere) as well as virtual and
less face to face. Second, information technology will provide much more data about the
organization to a greater number of participants in a shorter period of time.
OD Cycle Times will be Shorter
New information technologies will expedite certain steps in the change process. Incoming years,
new technologies such as groupware and video conferencing will increasingly be used to bring
more people together faster than ever before. There is a real potential to reduce dramatically the
time required to perform many OD practices
OD will be more Interdisciplinary
OD will continue to become more interdisciplinary and rely on different perspectives and
approaches to develop and change organizations. It will balance human fulfillment and
economic performance, provide a fuller recognition of the systemic and dynamic nature
of organizations and develop improved techniques for managing large scale, and change w/n and
across natural cultures.
Concepts that can be used to describe systems changeand may yield new insights into the
change process
•Emergence
•Instability
•Phase transitions
•Bifurcation
•self-organization
•Strange attractors
OD will be Applied to More Diverse Organizations
In the future planned change will be applied to a more diverse client base. Types of organizations
that are target of planned change
•Small entrepreneurial start-ups – important underserved market for OD.
•Governments – increasingly applying OD interventions such as strategic planning, employee
involvement, and performance management.
•Global Social Change Organizations – the increasing concentration of wealth and globalization
of the economy will create a plethora of opportunities for OD to assists developing countries,
disadvantage citizens and ecology
OD will become more Cross-Cultural
As organizations and the economy become more global, the recent growth of OD practice in
international and cross-cultural situations will continue. The current trends of OD clearly point to
the need for OD applications that work across cultures.
OD will Focus more on Ecological Sustainability
Limits to the world’s ecosystem, including its capacity to absorb population growth, function
with a depleted ozone layer, and operate with polluted waters, provide serious challenges to the
traditional business model
PARTICIPATION OF TOP MANAGEMENT IN OD/ HRDE
A key feature of organizational development is the active role of top management in all the
phases of process. They are responsible for strategic direction and operation of the organization
and actively lead the transformation. They decide when to initiate organizational development,
what the development should be, and how it should be implemented, and who should be
responsible for directing it. Because existing executives may lack the talent, energy and
commitment to undertake these tasks, they may be replaced by outsiders who are recruited to
lead the development.
1. Envisioning
Executives must articulate a clear and credible vision of the new strategic orientation. They also
must set new and difficult standards for performance, and generate pride in the past
accomplishments and enthusiasm for the new strategy
2. Energizing
Executives must demonstrate personal excitement for the changes and model the behaviors that
are expected of others. Behavioral integrity, credibility, and “walking the talk” are important
ingredients. They must communicate examples of early success to mobilize energy for
development.
3. Enabling
Executives must provide the resources necessary for undertaking significant organizational
development and use rewards to reinforce new behaviors. Leaders also must build an effective
top management team to manage the new organization and develop management practices to
support the organizational development.
.
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