Organization Change & Development

The organization might be successful yet have room for

improvement.
The organization might be facing impending environmental
conditions that necessitate a change in how it operates.

The organization could be experiencing particular problems:

Poor product quality
High rate of absenteeism
Dysfunctional conflicts among departments

Here comes the role of OD Practitioner! The term applies to

three sets of people:
Individuals specializing in OD as a profession.
People from related field who have gained
competence in OD.
Managers, having the necessary skills necessary to
change and develop their organization or
departments.

This includes four kinds of background:

Intrapersonal skills
Interpersonal skills
General Consultation Skills and
Knowledge of OD theory

Most importantly, Values play a key role in OD & traditional

values promoting trust, collaboration and openness have been
supplemented recently with concerns for improving
organizational effectiveness and productivity.

Ethical issues in OD involve how practitioners perform their

helping role with clients. Several ethical codes have been
employed by various professional bodies and associations.
Ethical dilemmas in OD arise around:
Misrepresentation and Misuse of data
Coercions
Value and Goal Conflict
Technical ineptness

They involve defining in a preliminary manner the

organizations:
Problems
Opportunity for development and
Ability to establish a collaborative relationship
between the members of the client system and OD
practitioner to work out the problems.
Entering and Contracting can vary in complexity and
formality depending upon the situation.

Entering and Contracting helps to define:

What issues will be addressed by those activities
Who will carry them out and
How they will be accomplished.
Entering and Contracting requires collecting primary information to
help define the problematic or developmental issues by the OD
Practitioner.
Entering and Contracting could be done:
Informally if the arrangement is internal by sitting
together and work out the modalities to reach to a
common goal.
Formally if the arrangement is external

Entering & Contracting needs to be very carefully done.

Unless there is clarity and agreement about what issues
to work on who will address them and how they will be
accomplished and most importantly what timetable will
be followed is not specified:
OD process is likely to be confusing and
ineffective!

An OD Process generally starts when a member of an

organization or unit contacts an OD Practitioner about
potential help in addressing organizational issues.
The organization member may be:
A Manager
A Staff Specialist or
Some other key participant

The practitioner may be an OD professional from inside or

outside of the organization.
Entering in OD relationship typically involves:
Clarifying the nature of the organizations
current functioning and the issues to be
addressed.
The relevant client system for that issue.
The appropriateness of the particular OD
Practitioner.

In helping assess these issues:

The OD Practitioner may need to collect preliminary
information and data about the organization.
Similarly:
The organization may need to collect information about
the practitioners competence and experience.
This knowledge will help both the parties to determine whether
they should proceed to develop a contract for working together.

Clarifying the organizational issues

When seeking help from an OD Practitioner, organization typically
starts with a presenting problem the issue that has caused them to
consider an OD process.
The issues may be specific:
decreased market share
increased absenteeism or
The issues may be general:
we are growing too fast.
we need to prepare for changes.

Gaining a clearer perspective on the organizational issue may

require collecting preliminary date.
OD Practitioner often examine:
Company Records
Interview a few key members to gain an introductory
understanding of the organization.
Its Context and
The nature of presenting problems.
These data are collected from few hours to 2-3 days

The relevant client includes those organization members

who can directly impact the change issue, whether it is
solving a problem or improve an already successful
organization or department.
Unless these members are identified and included in the
entering and contracting process, they may withhold their
support and commitment to the OD Process.

Determining the client may vary in complexity depending

on the situation (eg. Inclusion if union, to improve
decision making process.. the manager and team would be
the relevant client. )

Determining the client may be complex when the issue

cannot be addressed in a single unit. (members from
multiple units; hierarchical levels; even outside the
organization).

Someone who has the expertise and experience to work

with members on organizational issues.
Though no systematic information is available on how to
choose a competent OD practitioner (whether from inside
or outside the organization).
To counter this organizations may request the
consultancies and OD Practitioners to submit a detailed
proposal.

Key elements of a Proposal may include:

Project goals or Goals of proposed effort.
Outlines of Recommended Action Plans or Implementation
Plans.
A list of Roles and Responsibilities or Specifications of
Responsibilities.
Recommended Interventions or Strategies for achieving the
desired state

Proposed Fees, Expenses, Terms and Conditions

Certainly, OD Consulting is as much a person

specialization as it is a task specialization.
An OD Practitioner
Needs not only a repertoire of technical skills.
But also the personality and interpersonal
competence to use him/herself as an instrument of
change.

An OD Practitioner must be able to:

Maintain boundary position.
Co-ordinate among various units, departments .
Mix disciplines, theories, technology and
Research finding in a systematic way.
The OD Practitioner is potentially the most important OD
technology available.

The activities of entering an OD relationship are a necessary

prelude to developing an OD contract.
Contracting is a natural extension of the entering process and
clarifies how the OD process will proceed

Contracting typically establishes:

The expectations of the parties;
The time and resources that will be expended and
The ground rules under which the parties will operate.

Diagnosis is the process of understanding a systems current functioning.

Diagnosis provides the systematic knowledge of the organization needed
to design appropriate interventions.
Thus, OD derives from Diagnosis and includes specific actions intended
to improve organizational functioning.

In other words, Diagnosis involves:

Collecting pertinent information about current operations.
Analyze those data and
Drawing conclusions for potential change and improvement.

Diagnosis generally follows from successful entry and

contracting, setting the stage for successful diagnosis.
Diagnosis helps OD practitioners and client members jointly
determine:
Organizational issues to focus on
How to collect and analyze data to understand them &
How to work together to develop action step from the
diagnosis.

Unfortunately, the term diagnosis can be misleading when

applied to organizations.
It suggests a model of change analogous to medicine.

An organization (patient) experiencing problems seeks help

from an OD practitioner (doctor); the practitioner examines
the organization, finds the causes of the problems and
prescribes a solution.

First, Diagnosis in OD does not accept the implicit

assumption that something is wrong with the organization.
Second, the value and ethical beliefs that underlie OD
suggests that both organization members and change agents
should be involved in discovering the determinants of current
organizational effectiveness.

Diagnosis is used more broadly than medical definition would

suggest. It is a collaborative process between members and
the OD consultant to collect pertinent information, analyze it
and draw conclusions for action planning and intervention.

To diagnose an organization, OD practitioners and members need

to have an idea about what information to collect and analyze.
Chances about what to look for invariably depends on how
organizations are perceived. Such perceptions can vary from
intuitive hunches to scientific explanations of how organization
functions.

Conceptual frameworks that people use to understand

organizations are referred to as diagnostic models.
They describe the relationships among different features of the
organization, its context and its effectiveness.

As a result, diagnostic models point out what areas to examine and what
questions to ask in assessing how organization is functioning.
However all models represent simplifications of reality and therefore
choose certain features as critical.
Model of Kert Lewin
Birke & Litwin Model
Systems Theory
Nadler and Tushmanns Congruence Model
Socio-Technical Systems and Systems Thinking
Empowerment Model
Parallel Learning Structures
Teams and Group Model
Normative Re-educative Strategy
Behaviour Science Model

As a result, diagnostic models point out what areas to examine and what
questions to ask in assessing how organization is functioning.
However all models represent simplifications of reality and therefore
choose certain features as critical.
Model of Kert Lewin
Birke & Litwin Model
Systems Theory
Nadler and Tushmanns Congruence Model
Socio-Technical Systems and Systems Thinking
Empowerment Model
Parallel Learning Structures
Teams and Group Model
Normative Re-educative Strategy
Behaviour Science Model

Collection of Diagnostic Information

Questionnaires
Closed ended questionnaire
Open ended questionnaire
Interview
Individual or Group
Structured (closed): specific questions on major
components of diagnostic models.
Unstructured (open-ended): includes general and broad
questions about organization functioning.

Collection of Diagnostic Information

Observation Method
observing organizational behaviour in their functional
settings.
can be done casually, looking around, number of times
one behaves similarly.
Participant: OD practitioner becomes someone like
them and operates
Non-Participant: OD Practitioner is out but uses
recordings of behaviour, films, video footage and other
methods etc.

Collection of Diagnostic Information

Unobtrusive Measures
data not collected directly from respondents but from
secondary sources such as company records, archives.
These data are generally available in organizations and includes:
Records of Absenteeism or Tardiness
Grievances
Quantity and Quality of Production or Service
Financial Performance
Meeting Minutes
Correspondence with key customers, suppliers or
governmental agencies

Analyzing of Diagnostic Information

Data Analysis Techniques fall into two broad classes:

Qualitative Techniques
Quantitative Techniques
Qualitative Tools
Content Analysis
Force-Field Analysis
Quantitative Tools
Means, SD and Frequency Distributions
Scattergrams and Correlations
Difference Tests (t tests, z tests)

Perhaps the most important stem in the diagnostic process is feeding

back diagnostic information to the client organization
Although data is collected with clients help, the OD practitioner
usually is responsible for organizing and presenting them to the
client.
Properly analyzed and meaningful data can have an impact on
organizational change only if organization members can use the
information to devise appropriate action plan.
Key objective of the feedback process is to be sure that the client has
ownership of the data.

Determining the content of feedback: effective characteristics of effective feedback data:

(a)

Relevant

(b)

Understandable

(c)

Descriptive

(d)

Verifiable

(e)

Timely

(f)

Limited

(g)

Significant

(h)

Comparative

(i)

Unfinalized

Characteristics of the Feedback Process

1. Motivation to work with the data

2. Structure for the meeting
3. Appropriate Attendance
4. Appropriate Power
5. Process Help

Survey Feedback

Is a process of collecting and feeding back data from an

organization or department through the use of a questionnaire
or survey.
Data are analyzed, fed back to organization members, and
used by them to diagnose the organization and to develop
interventions to improve it.
Because questionnaires often are used in organization
diagnosis and it is a powerful intervention to get data
feedback.

Is a major technique in the history and development of OD.

Trend has been to combine with other OD interventions
including work design, structural change, large-group
interventions and intergroup relations.
These change methods are outcome of planning and
implementation phase following from survey feedback.

Step 1:

Members of the organization, including those at

the top, are involved in preliminary planning of
the survey.

Step 2:

The survey instrument is administered to all

members of the organization or department.

Step 3:

The OD consultant usually analyzes the survey

data, tabulates the results, suggests approaches
to diagnosis, and trains client members to lead
the feedback process.

Step 4:

Data feedback usually begins at the top of the

organization and cascades downwards to groups
reporting to managers at successively lower
levels.

Step 5:

Feedback meetings provide an opportunity to

work with the data.

Ambiguity of Purpose
Distrust
Unacceptable Topics
Organizational Disturbance

An OD intervention is a sequence of activities,actions and

events intended to help an organization improve its
performance and effectiveness.
Intervention design, or action planning, derives from careful
diagnosis and is meant to resolve specific problems and to
improve particular areas of organizational functioning
identified in the diagnosis.