Q. Define Organizational Development (OD). What are the characteristics of OD?

A. According to Koonz et. al, “OD is a systematic integrated and planned approach to improve the
effectiveness of the enterprise. It is designed to solve problems that adversely affect the operational
efficiency at all levels”.

Burke’ has defined OD as “a planned process of change in an organisation’s culture through the
utilization of behavioural science technology, research and theory”.

The salient characteristics of OD implied in its definitions are gleaned as follows:

First, OD is a systematic approach to the planned change. It is structured style of diagnosing

organisational problems and opportunities and then applying expertise to them.

Second, OD is grounded in solid research and theory. It involves the application of our knowledge of
behavioural science to the challenge that he organisations face.

Third, OD recognizes the reciprocal relationship between individuals and organisations. It ac-
knowledges that for organisations to change, individuals must change.

Fourth, OD is goal oriented. It is a process that seeks to improve both individual and organisational
well- being and effectiveness.

Fifth, OD is designed to solve problems.

Q. As an HR, you find that the OD professional in your organization is not competent enough.
What are the competencies you will consider in a good OD professional?

A. Competencies Required for OD professionals

Participation skills: An effective and efficient OD practitioner helps the organisation in redesigning and
implementing the plan which must be clear, concrete, simple, rooted with data, result oriented,
measurable and rewarded.

Contracting skills: An effective and efficient OD practitioner helps the organisation to confirm the
resource commitment and clarify the role of client and consultant. This helps them to identify the
change needed in the system and critical success factors for intervention. This way, realistic
expectations are built.

Organisational development theory skills: One of the most important tools for OD practitioner is
knowledge of organisational development and for this the practitioner must know the planned change
model. They need to know what, where and how the interventions are applicable. They must also be
clear about their position, role and responsibilities they are about to perform.

Impact: Creating a good first impression, commanding attention and respect, showing an air of
confidence.

Emotional Intelligence: When we talk about “applying behavioural science knowledge” Emotional
Intelligence is the core competency OD professional must possess. EI will help an OD professional to
sense the challenges in an organization perceiving rightly the concerns and challenge of its
employees. So EI gives an effortless insight into psyche of people and hence the teams and groups
within an organization. As said “Humans are not the creatures of logic but emotions”.
Building Positive Working Relationships and Trust: Developing and using collaborative relationships
to facilitate the accomplishment of work goals. Interacting with others in a way that gives them
confidence in one’s intentions and those of the organization.

Mentoring & Coaching: Providing timely guidance and feedback to help others strengthen specific
knowledge/skill areas needed to accomplish a task or solve a problem.

Influencing and Gaining Commitment: Using appropriate interpersonal styles and techniques to gain
acceptance of ideas or plans; modifying one’s own behaviour to accommodate tasks, situations, and
individuals involved.

Managing Conflict: Dealing effectively with others in an antagonistic situation; using appropriate inter-
personal styles and methods to reduce tension or conflict between two or more people.

Strategic Decision Making: Obtaining information and identifying key issues and relationships relevant
to achieving a long-range goal or vision; committing to a course of action to accomplish a long-range
goal or vision after developing alternatives based on logical assumptions, facts, available resources,
constraints, and organizational values.

Q. Discuss the Ethical Dilemmas in practicing OD

A.

Q. What is Performance Appraisal? What are the purposes and its characteristics? Describe
the steps in Performance Appraisal System.

A. Meaning of Performance Appraisal

Performance appraisal is the process of reviewing an individual’s performance and progress in a job
and assessing his potential. It is a systematic method of obtaining, analyzing a recording information
about a person doing a specific job, rather than assessing the job itself as in the case of job analysis.

Characteristics of Performance Appraisal:

The characteristics of performance appraisal are given below:

1. The system must be bias-free:

The evaluator must be objective and the methods of appraisal must be fair and equitable. The
atmosphere must be that of confidence and trust.

2. It must be relevant:

It should only measure behaviour that are relevant to the successful job performance and not any
other personal traits.

3. It should be acceptable to all:

The performance standards as well as the appraisal methods should be developed by joint
participation and joint collaboration.

4. It should be reliable; dependable; stable and consistent:

High reliability is essential for correct decision-making and validation studies. It should be sufficiently
scientific, so that if an employee is evaluated by two different evaluators, then the result should be
significantly the same.

5. It must be able to objectively differentiate between a good employee and an ineffective employee:

Rating an employee average does not adequately indicate the degree of effectiveness. So the
technique must be sufficiently sensitive to pick up the difference between an effective and an
ineffective employee.

6. It must be practical, sound, clear and unambiguous so that all parties concerned understand all its
implications.

Necessary Steps in Process Of Performance Appraisal

Step 1: Establish performance expectations and standards

Appraisal processes start with establishing standards and expectations. The essence of this is to
make it easy for you to identify particular output, skills, and accomplishments that will be assessed.

Step 2: Providing regular feedback

This is simply about establishing effective communication between you and the employees in regards
to standards and expectations. It is an important aspect because it helps in ensuring that employees
perform their roles by the goals and objectives of the organization. Feedback can be provided formally
or can be communicated informally.

Step 3: Measure actual performance

This stage incorporates measuring of employees’ actual performance based on information obtained
from different reports such as written, oral and statistical as well as through personal observation.
This is the stage that calls for a careful choice of the ideal methods that are used in measuring
performance.

Step 4: Compare actual performance with standards

The next thing you need to do is comparing the actual performance with the anticipated or standard
performance. This comparison is essential because it makes it possible for you as the manager or
evaluator to identify the deviations of your employees from the established standards.

Step 5: Discuss results of appraisal

It is always challenging for managers to present truthful appraisal to the employees and enable them
to constructively accept the results, especially if it reflects more negatives than positives. But what
you need to know is that discussing feedback together is a better approach of allowing them to
understand their strengths and weaknesses. This ultimately has an impact on how they will perform in
future depending on how you communicate the feedback whether positive or negative.

Step 6: Come up with corrective measures

This is the final stage in appraisal processes. Initiating some effective corrective measures should be
executed according to the results of the appraisal. Carefully examine the results and identify areas
that require improvement and then come up with corrective action that will make it possible for
employees to improve performance.

To conclude

Performance evaluation is an essential component in any ideal organization. It helps in identifying,

fixing and improving different areas that eventually enable organizations to achieve goals and
objectives from a human resource perspective. It is also significant for the manager to ensure that
they find out opportunities that would help in enhancing personal growth and development of
employees in regards to the career.

Q. What is a Learning Organization? Discuss the attributes of a learning organization. Explain

the various learning disciplines in learning organization

A. A learning organization is the term given to an organization which facilitates the learning of its
employees so that the organization can continuously transforms itself. Learning organization develops
as a result of the pressures which are being faced by the organizations these days for enabling them
to remain competitive in the present day business environment.

Five Attributes of a Learning Organization

Standards. Organizational values, employee ethical expectations, and behavioral standards must be
outlined clearly, and disseminated in writing to each and every employee, as well as publishing them
in the Organization’s policy and procedures.

Instruction. Just knowing of the standards – wisdom – is insufficient for sustainability. Training
sessions must be held to explain their meanings and the associated ethical practices required by
employees – understanding.

Practice. Practice makes perfect. Practice creates habitual behaviors, which teach personal growth
and life-skills. Practice also enables success after failure by teaching what “should” have been done
versus what “was” done. Practice builds expertise in professional skills and personal life styles.

Feedback. Leaders need to constantly and consistently monitor and evaluate performance.
Employees require feedback in order to insure practice is productive. And when exceptional or
positively productive, public praise is required to build confidence and esteem.

Release. Micro-managing, even micro-leading, is counterproductive to growth and employee

effectiveness and efficiency. Constantly keeping an “eye-ball” on those you lead creates an “ask the
boss” mentality that inhibits personal confidence and growth.

The dimension that distinguishes a learning organization from more traditional organizations is the
mastery of certain basic disciplines or ‘component technologies’. The five main characteristics (Fig 1)
that Peter Senge had identified are said to be converging to innovate a learning organization. These
are (i) Systems thinking, (ii) Personal mastery, (iii) Mental models, (iv) Building shared vision, and (v)
Team learning.
Systems thinking

The idea of the learning organization developed from a body of work called systems thinking. This is a
conceptual framework that allows people to study businesses as bounded objects.

Personal mastery

Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee
organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs. Personal mastery is the
discipline of continually clarifying and deepening employee’s personal vision, of focusing their
energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.

Mental models

Mental models are ‘deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures and images that
influence how we understand the world and how we take action’.

Building shared vision

If any one idea about leadership that has inspired organizations for thousands of years, is the
capacity to hold a share picture of the future the organizations seek to create.

Team learning

The accumulation of individual learning constitutes team learning. The benefit of team or shared
learning is that the employees grow more quickly and the problem solving capacity of the organization
is improved through better access to knowledge and expertise.

Q. Write short notes : a) Role Analysis Technique (RAT) b) Reward Systems

A. Meaning and steps in RAT : The role analysis technique also Known as RAT clarifies the role
expectations and obligations of team members to improve team effectiveness. The individuals have to
fulfil different specialized roles in organisations, in each role they have to manifest different
behaviours. This specialization resulting from division of labour helps in improving organisational
performance. But sometimes the individual members do not have the role clarity.

The steps involved in this technique are as explained below:

(i) Analysis of Focal Role:

The focal role individual initiates the analysis of focal role in the first step. The important points to be
discussed are the role, its place in the organisation the purpose of its existence, its place in achieving
the overall organisational goals, specific duties of the office etc.

(ii) Focal Role Incumbent’s Expectations of Others

In the second step, the focal role incumbent’s expectations of the others are examined. The
incumbent makes a list of his or her expectations of the other roles in the group that affect the
incumbent’s role performance.

(iii) Others Expectations and Desired Behaviour of the Focal Role:

In the third step, the members of the group describe what they want from and expect from the
incumbent in the focal role. Again these expectations are discussed, modified and agreed upon by the
group and the focal role person.

(iii) Others Expectations and Desired Behaviour of the Focal Role:

In the third step, the members of the group describe what they want from and expect from the
incumbent in the focal role. Again these expectations are discussed, modified and agreed upon by the
group and the focal role person.

(v) Review of the Role Profile:

The written role profile prepared hi the previous step is briefly reviewed in the following meeting of the
team. Till one role profile is reviewed, no other focal role is to be analyzed. After the review, the
accepted role profile constitutes the role activities for the focal role person.

Meaning, objectives and types of rewards

Reward Systems are a critical part of any organization's design. How well they fit with the rest of the
systems in an organization has an important impact on how effective the organization is and on the
quality of life that people experience in the organization. Over the past decade, some new reward
systems practices have become popular in order to align reward systems with the important changes
that are occurring in the way organizations are designed and managed .

Objectives of the Reward System

The research on reward systems suggest that potentially they can influence six factors which in turn
impact organization effectiveness.

1. Attraction and Retention - Research on job choice, career choice and turnover clearly shows that
the kind and level of rewards an organization offers influences who is attracted to work for an
organization and who will continue to work for it (see e.g. Lawler, 1973; Mobley, 1982).
2. Motivation of Performance - When certain specifiable conditions exist, reward systems have been
demonstrated to motivate performance (Gerhart and Milkovich, 1992; Lawler, 1990; Lawler 1971;
Vroom 1964).

3. Skills and Knowledge - Just as pay systems can motivate performance they can motivate learning
and development. The same motivational principles apply. Individuals are motivated to learn those
changes which are rewarded.

4. Culture - Reward systems are one feature of organizations that contribute to their overall culture.
Depending upon how reward systems are developed, administered, and

5. Reinforce and Define Structure - The reward system of an organization can reinforce and define
the organization's structure (Lawler, 1990). Often this impact of a reward system is not fully
considered in the design of reward systems. As a result, their impact on the structure of an
organization is unintentional.

6. Cost - Reward systems are often a significant cost factor. Indeed, pay alone may represent over
50% of an organizations operating costs. Thus, it is important in strategically designing the reward
system to focus on how high these costs should be and how they will vary as a function of the
organization's ability to pay.

Types of Rewards:

Extrinsic rewards: concrete rewards that employee receive.

Bonuses:

Salary raise:

Gifts

Promotion:

Other kinds of tangible rewards

Intrinsic rewards: tend to give personal satisfaction to individual

Information / feedback:

Recognition:

Trust/empowerment: