Материал: Management-and-Organization-Behavior

(vi)Manipulation and co-optation: Covertattempts(manipulation) such as selective sharing of information and consciously structuring certain type of events would win the support for change. Giving key role to those revisiting change in the change decision is known as cooptation.

(vii)Leadership for Change: effective leadership reinforces a climate of psychological support to change. Change is more likely to be successful if the leader introducing change has high expectations of success.

(viii)Use of Group Forces: The idea is to help the group join with management to encourage and support desired change.

(ix)Working with Unions: Union-management differences lead to conflict over change. Most unions support change that is carefully planned to protect member interests.

(x)Working with the Total System: resistance to change can be reduced by helping employees to recognize the need for each change, to recognize the need for each change, to participate in it, and to gain from it.

Review Questions

1.“Change is basically positive.” Discuss the pros and cons of this statement.

2.Resistance to change is often viewed negatively. Discuss some possible benefits of resistance to change in an organisation.

3.Considering that change even further, was there an organisational learning curve for it? Discuss its length shape and some of the problems that developed.

4.Continuing the analysis of this change, how did management alter the restraining and supporting forces for it? Discuss.

5.Think of an organisation change that you have experienced. Was there resistance of the change? Discuss. What could have done to prevent or diminish it?

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Lesson - 25 : Organisational Development (OD)

Objectives

After reading this lesson, you should able to:

ӹӹDefine What Organizational Development Is And Its Characteristics;

ӹӹSpell Out The Objectives, Benefits And Cost Of The Od;

ӹӹExplain Approaches To Od; And

ӹӹUnderstand Od Programs.

Lesson Outline

ӹӹDefinition Of Od And Its Characteristics

ӹӹProcess, Benefits And Limitations Of Od

ӹӹApproaches Of Od

ӹӹOd Programs And Techniques

ӹӹReview Questions

As a logical extension of the previous lesson which focused on organizational change, this lesson deals with OD as an applied, macro-level approach to planned change and development of organizations. Definitions of OD, its characteristics, benefits and costs, OD approaches and techniques are discussed in that order.

A few Definitions on OD:

Keith Davis defines OD “as an integrated strategy that uses group process to focus on the whole culture of organization in order to bring about planned change. It seeks to change beliefs, attitudes, values, structures, and practices so that the organization can better adapt to technology and live the fast pace of change”.

According to Fred Luthans, OD represents “an applied, macro-level approach to planned change and development of complex organizations”.

Characteristics of OD: OD characteristics are implied in its definitions. They differ substantially from those of a typical training program which are summarized in the following lines.

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Focus on the whole organization: in OD attempts are made to develop the whole organization so that it can be responding to changes effectively. In contrast, traditional training programs tend to focus quite narrowly on specific jobs or small work groups.

Systems organization: OD is concerned with structure, process as well as attitudes. It lays emphasis on how parts relate, not on the parts themselves.

Problem solving: OD seeks to solve problems rather than to discuss theoretically. This focus on real ongoing problems, not artificial ones, is called action research. This characteristic of OD is so important that OD is sometimes defined as “organizational improvement through action research.”

Experiential learning: OD offers experiential learning which means participants learn by experiencing in the training environment the kind of human problems they actually face on the job.

Contingency orientation: OD is said to be situational or contingencyoriented. Unlike traditional training approaches which emphasize one best way to solve the problems, OD is flexible and pragmatic, adapting actions to fit particular needs.

Team building: OD’s general role is to build better team work throughout the organization. OD attempts to integrate four elementspeople, structure, technology and environment.

Feed back: OD relies on data feedback to participants who made decisions using it

Process, Benefits and Costs of OD

OD process: A typical complete OD program includes the following steps.

Initial diagnosis: OD program is decided after the consultant meets the top management. By means of interviews with various persons the consultant seeks necessary inputs.Data collections and surveys may be made to know the organizational climate and organizational behavioral problems. By meeting the groups away from work, the consultant develops information, from issues pertaining to conditions that contribute most to job effectiveness, conditions that interfere with job effectiveness and the changes in the way the organization operates at present.

Action planning and problem solving: groups use the data to develop specific recommendations for change. Their discussion focuses on problems in the organization. Plans made are specific pinpointing who is responsible and by what time the action shall have been completed.

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Team building: during the group meetings the consultant encourages groups to examine how they work as a team. He also helps them to see the value of open communication and trust as pre-requisites for improved group functioning.

Intergroup Development: first small group teams are developed followed by development of large groups comprises several teams.

Evaluation and followup: the consultant helps the organization evaluate results of OD efforts and develops additional programs in areas where additional results are needed.

If the organization expects to gain the full benefits of OD, all the steps in the process are to be applied.

Benefits of OD: primaryadvantageofODasausefulmethodoforganizational intervention is that it tries to deal with change in the whole organization or major unit of it. Hence, it ensures widely dispersed improvement. Other benefits include high motivation, productivity, quality of work, job satisfaction and conflict resolution. OD also reduces negative factors such as absenteeism and labour turnover.

Limitations (or problems) of OD: It is time consuming and expensive. Since benefits of OD require long pay-off periods, organizations may not prefer waiting that long. There are problems of invasion of privacy and psychological harm in some of the OD techniques. Criticism against OD is that participants in OD programs are coerced to group attitudes and thereby to conformity. Yet another criticism is that OD emphasizes too much on behavioral processes rather than on job performance. Group processes are given priority over needs of the organization.

Approaches to OD

OD development can be traced back to the application of behavioral science and social psychology and to subsequent efforts to apply laboratory training survey-feedback insights into social system. Krut Lewin was instrumental in both the approaches namely laboratory training and survey feedback.

Two important ways of theorizing for OD according to Burke and Litwin, are organizational functioning and organizational change. To them both transformational and transactional factors affect motivation which in turn affects performance. Transformational changes occurring in response to external environment directly affects organizational mission and strategy leadership and culture. In turn, transactional factors such as structure, system, management practices and climate are affected.

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