Introduction to Organization Development

What is Organization Development?
"Organization Development is an effort – planned, organization-wide and managed from the top – to increase organizational effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization’s processes, using behavioural science knowledge".– Richard Beckhard
"Organization Development is a systemwide process of data collection, diagnosis, action planning, intervention and evaluation aimed at
i. enhancing congruence among organizational structure, process, strategy, people and culture;
ii. developing new and creative organizational solutions;
iii. developing the organization's self-renewing capacity.
It occurs through the collaboration of organizational members working with a change agent using behavioural science knowledge". –Michael Beer
"Organization Developemt refers to a long-range effort to improve an organization's problem solving capabilities and its ability to cope with changes in its external environment with the help of external or internal behavioural scientist consultants or change agents as they are sometimes called" –Wendell French

Value system of Organization Developemt
The basic value underlying all organization development theory and practice is that of choice. Through focused attention, and through the collection and feedback of relevant data to relevant people, more choices become available and hence better decisions are made.
More specifically, the value system of Organization Development revolves around humanistic, optimistic and democratic principles.
According to a survey conducted by the American Society of Training and Development, the managers ranked the values absolutely necessary for success of any Organization Developemt intervention in terms of importance in the following order:
Empowerment
Openness in communication
Ownership of process and outcome
Collaboration
Continuous learning

Assumptions in Organization Development:
The basic building blocks of an organization are groups (teams). Therefore the basic units of change are groups and not individuals.
An always relevant change goal is the reduction of inappropriate competition between parts of the organization and the development of a more collaborative condition.
Decision making in a healthy organization is located where the information sources are, rather than in a particular role or level of hierarchy.
Organizations, subunits, of organizations and individuals continuously manage their affairs against goals. Controls are interim measures and not the managerial strategy.
One goal of a healthy organization is to develop generally open communication, mutual trust, and confidence between and across levels.
“People support, what they help create”. People affected by change must be allowed active participation and a sense of ownership in planning and conduct of change.

According to French & Bell, following assumptions hold good in Organization Developemt:
Most individuals have drives towards personal growth
Most people desire to make and are capable of making, a higher contribution to the attainment of organizational goals than most organizational environment will permit.
The most psychologically relevant reference group for most people is the work-group
Most people wish to be accepted and to interact cooperatively with at least one small reference group and usually with more than one group.
The formal leader cannot perform all the leadership and maintenance functions in all all circumstances at all times; hence group members must assist each other with effective leadership and member behaviour
Suppressed feelings and attitudes adversely affect problem solving, personal growth and job satisfaction.
The level of inter-personal trust, support, and cooperation is much lower in many groups and organizations than is either necessary or desirable.
The solution to many attitudinal and motivational problems are transactional.
The key movers in an OD effort need to have a relatively long range time perspective
Improved performance stemming from OD efforts needs to be sustained by appropriate changes in appraisal, training, staffing, tasks, and communication sub-systems.