Organization Development and

Leadership
 Zebra

2 1/22/2018
 Preliminary Work

• 1. Think of an Organisation that you were dissatisfied

with at some point in the past. What was it that made
the experience dissatisfying?

• 2. Think of an Organisation that was a pleasure to work

with/in. What is it that made you happy with/in the
Organisation?

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 Definitions of OD

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 Definitions of OD

 “ OD …. Attempt to influence members of an

organization to expand their candidness… and to take
greater responsibility for their own actions… The
assumption behind OD is that when people pursue both
of these objectives simultaneously, they are likely to
discover new ways of working together that they
experience as more effective for achieving their own
shared org. goals…’ (Neilsen 1984:2-3)

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 Near Consensus Definition

• Organization development is a system-wide application of

behavioral science knowledge to the planned
development of organizational strategies, structures, and
processes for improving an organization’s effectiveness.(
Cummings and Worley 1997: 2).

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 Beckhard’s Definition of OD

• ‘Organization Development is an effort planned,

organization-wide, and managed from the top, to
increase organization effectiveness and health through
planned interventions in the organization’s “processes,”
using behavioral- science knowledge.’ (Beckhard 1969:9)

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 Definition of OD

• It involves both ‘hard’ and ‘Soft’ issues

• Hard issues are strategies and policies,
structures,metrics and systems
• Soft issues are developing appropriate skills,
ideas,excitement, fear and behaviours to achieve
optimum performance
• Both hard and soft issues have to be addressed to avoid
conflict between goals and needs

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 Five Stems of OD Practice
Laboratory Training

Current Practice
Action Research/Survey Feedback

Normative Approaches

Quality of Work Life

Strategic Change

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 Today

 OD and Medicine: OD Practitioners

• Health of Organizations compared to health of human

body
– Anatomy and physiology-----Organization theory
– Psychology------Organizational behaviour
– Physicians---Organization development practitioners

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 OD Practitioners as Organizational
Physicians
 Establishing relationships with key personnel in the org
(entering and contracting)
 Researching and evaluating systems in the organization
to understand dysfunctions and/or goals of the systems
in the organization (diagnosing the systems in the org)
 Identifying approaches (interventions) to improve
effectiveness of org and its people

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 OD Practitioners as Organizational
Physicians
• Applying approaches to improve effectiveness (methods
of planned change in the organization and
• Evaluating the ongoing effectiveness of the approaches
and their results.

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 Functions of OD

• To assess the effects and relationships between people,

processes and technologies

• To proactively anticipate and successfully respond to

change

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 Purposes of OD

• To design interventions to close the gaps between what

is and what ought to be.
• It is the fit between individuals and organizations;
organizations and environment; among organization’s
strategy, structure and processes.

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 Important components

• OD must be supported by top management to improve an

organization’s visioning (picture of desired future),
• Enhance empowerment, learning process (interactive
listening and self-examining process), and
• problem-solving (diagnose situation, solve problems,
make decisions, & take actions)

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 Important Components

• Through collaborative management (participating in

creating and managing culture) emphasizing interactive
work teams (organization’s building blocks).

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 Two Main goals

• Improve individuals, teams, and organization functioning

• Give members the skills and knowledge to continuously
improve

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 Where do the demands for change come
from?
• Outside the organization: government, customers,
competitors, market, society.
• Within the organization: strategies, profitability, diversity,
new personnel, products/services

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 OD Focuses on

 Culture: values, assumptions, beliefs, norms

 Processes: how things get done; method for arriving at
results
 Structure: overall design of the organization; how
individual work tasks are grouped

 **The system is the target of change, individuals are the

instruments of change

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 Key Characteristics of OD
• Leading change---planned strategy to bring about change
which aims at specific objectives based on diagnosis of
problem areas
• Collaborative—includes the involvement and participation
of org. members most affected by the changes

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 Key Characteristics of OD
• Humanistic--relies on a set of humanistic values about
people and orgs. Opens up new opportunities for
increased human potential

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 Key Characteristics of OD

• Performance---OD programmes include an emphasis on

ways to improve and enhance performance and quality
• Systems---OD represents a systems approach concerned
with the interrelationship of various divisions
• Scientific—OD is based upon scientific approaches to
increase organization effectiveness.

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 What OD is Not

• Training and Development---OD work is not confined to

training activities.
• OD is concerned with making training programmes
successful
– Job role clarification
– Management support
– Process design

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 What OD is Not

• Short –term---OD is not short-term even if the

intervention can be short.
• OD efforts are meant to develop systemic changes that
are long lasting

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 What OD is Not

• The Application of a toolkit---OD does not imply a toolkit

as it has some values
• It is more than a rigid procedure for moving from point A
to B
• OD usually requires flexibility in problem solving not a
standardised set of procedures

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 Conclusion

• OD as a field/profession/discipline concerned with

applying behavioural science knowledge and practices to
help orgs achieve effectiveness
• Orgs are facing accelerating changes and OD can help
them cope with such changes
• Concept of OD has multiple meanings

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