The Nature of Contemporary Organization Development

Anne Clare Gillon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351106795
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The nature of contemporary Organisation Development (OD) is often written about by both scholars and practitioners, yet there is little evidence of these descriptions (or debates on key issues) having been based on reliably collected data. This book compares academic and practitioner perspectives on the profession of OD in the UK and how it has evolved over four decades. The research which informs this book was designed to investigate similarities and differences in the perspectives between these two communities. Where practitioners and academics views varied in the data, reasons for this are explored in this book, through the theory lens of Institutionalism, Fashions, Fads and the Dissemination of Management Ideas.

The empirical data in how OD has evolved in the UK in the underpinning research to this text was gathered through content analysis of job advertisements from over a four-decade period. This provided information on changes in the magnitude in the take up of the profession in the UK as well as significant developments in the content of the job roles over the period.

It will not come as a surprise to find that American thinking dominates in OD as it does in many other domains of management. What is a surprise is the extent to which OD practice in the UK is so very different from what the academics tell us it is.

This book also identifies the extent to which institutional theory is at play in the development of professions; with agency is a driver in shaping professions. This manifests itself in terms of the perceived interests of what will give leverage for success in practitioner and academic careers.

The Nature of Contemporary Organization Development is key reading for researchers, scholars an practitioners alike of Organizational change and development, organizational studies, management philosophy and related disciplines

1 The Beginnings of a Puzzle

The Beginnings of a Puzzle

As with all research, the investigations which led to this book were iterative in nature. I first became motivated to study the difference between academic and practitioner perspectives on the development of the OD profession in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2008. This resulted from my experience of a move from a practitioner to academic career in 2007, and I was keen to identify a subject of personal interest and relevance for research.

I had previously held a senior practitioner job role which had both Human Resource (HR) and OD in the title. Whilst I had had formal post graduate education and professional development in HR and Human Resources Development (HRD), I was less confident on having had such a firm and comprehensive education in and foundation on theory from the field of OD. I often thought:

I do hope nobody asks me what OD actually is, because I am not sure that I can give a correct answer. I am very confident in my skills in leading on Change Management projects, but if anyone tests the theory on which I am basing my work, then my professional credibility could be questioned.

No one ever did question me, so in that regard I was safe but for my own satisfaction, I wanted to make sure I would close this gap in my knowledge. Therefore, OD seemed to be an ideal topic for research.

My first impression had been OD was deemed by practitioners to be a particularly important and influential specialist area within HR. I was therefore keen to understand the academic perspective on OD and as a first step took a random sample of HR texts from library bookshelves. I examined book indexes for reference to OD, and was surprised and perplexed to find no references to OD. This did not correspond with my perception of the importance of OD in the HR practice world, and aroused my curiosity. I carried out a small-scale exploratory study to confirm my perceptions of the importance of OD amongst practitioners using content analysis data from 2008, and subsequently published in 2011 (Gillon, 2011).

After commencing the research contained within this text, in late 2009 I again examined the prevalence and importance of OD roles in HR practice, by initially examining a small sample of job advertisements through the online job search facility on the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) website. In this search, six relevant advertisements were identified that had OD in the job title. Two of the job roles were for Head of function roles, one of which was for a Director of Organizational Development with a Salary: £105000—£110000 per annum + excellent package. In 2009, this was arguably a very high salary for a professional role, indicating that irrespective of the status of OD amongst HR scholars, some organizations did consider it to be valuable and important.

I subsequently repeated the survey of library literature in preparation for a presentation to practitioners, by searching a selection of HR core textbooks. On this occasion, the search was less random and titles were specifically chosen as being expected to include reference to OD, such as Human Resource Management Theory and Practice (Bratton and Gold, 2012), The Strategic Managing of Human Resources (Leopold and Harris, 2009) and Contemporary Human Resource Management Text and Cases (Redman and Wilkinson, 2009). However, again no index listings for OD were found in any of these textbooks. In The Strategic Managing of Human Resources, the Quakers made the reference list. So it appeared to have been judged that the Quaker Movement was deemed of relevance to Strategic HR, but OD was not! How puzzling was that?

Research Aims and Research Questions for the Study

Research Aims

In the early stages of the research the broad aim was to investigate the nature of the profession of OD in the UK, and whether this had changed over the period of forty years between 1970 and 2010. As part of the work for this research, the content analysis data from the first tranche of the main study was written up and published (Gillon et al., 2014). This tranche of research focused on a comparison between the evolution of the OD profession in the UK and the United States of America (US). The data on the magnitude (i.e. extent) of the presence of job roles with OD in the title, between 1970 and 2010, fed directly into the findings of the research study contained within this book. Following the publication of that research, the focus reverted to the exploration of the evidence of variance in the academic and practitioner perspectives on the UK form of the OD profession.

Having found indication of a difference between academic perspectives on, and practice of, OD the initial broad aim was developed to include an investigation of how the profession had developed in UK; why it had developed in that way; and what and who had influenced change(s). The two communities whose perspective on these issues was of interest were OD professionals and OD academics. Additionally, the study aimed to apply theoretical perspectives to identify the forces of influence in operation in the development of the profession in the UK.

Research Questions for the Study

From this research aim, the following research questions were developed:

1. 1 To what extent is there a difference between the academic literature and practitioners’ perspective of the development of the OD profession in the UK?
2. 2 What does the empirical data of this study evidence on the development of the OD profession in the UK in respect of its form, magnitude and perceived importance?
3. 3 What are the forces at work which influence the development of the OD profession in the UK?

These questions will be revisited in the Chapter 7 (The Puzzle Solved but not Resolved).

The Research Methods Adopted and the Theoretical Proposition

Three methods were adopted to address the research questions. The first comprised content analysis of job advertisements with OD in the title over a period between 1970 and 2010, in order to assess representation of changes in the magnitude and form of the OD profession in the UK. This data was collected with the purpose of providing a comparator with the depiction of OD in the academic literature.

The second method was a bibliometric search, which aimed to provide a quantitative measure of who had publishing journal articles, reports and books with OD in the title, when they were published, and as far as possible to clarify the national context of the work. It was intended that this data would identify sources of authority in the development of OD and any changes in trend on that influence.

The third method utilized semi-structured interviews with OD, HR and Human Resource Development (HRD) subject experts. A range of academics, senior practitioners, business leaders and leading influencers were interviewed to gain an understanding of variance in perspectives from these different communities, and the data compared with scholarly work on OD.

Institutional theory and the diffusion of ideas, fashions and fads in management were selected through which to analyze the data and understand the forces at work in the development of OD. In terms of my objective to achieve the aims of the study, the context of Whittington and Mayer’s (2000: 4) proposition was applied: ‘Between the extremes of universalism and contextualism, we conclude for the value of a modestly generalizing social science of management’.

It is not contended that this research will result in an objective and generalizable truth on the development and form of OD in the UK. Nevertheless, it is intended is that through the adoption of these methods the study will produce a modestly generalizable understanding of the development of the OD profession in the UK.

Evidence on the Nature of Practitioner OD—Content Analysis

In order to carry out the analysis of job advertisements (to determine the nature of how OD practice developed in the UK), various forms of media were scoped and investigated. In terms of the viability of media sources, the CIPD trade press publication People Management, and its predecessors, were selected as the most suitable source. As a trade publication, it is automatically sent to all CIPD members; has good geographical coverage across the UK profession; and has carried job advertisements since 1967.

All issues of the publication between 1967 and 2010 were searched with the first advertisement with OD in the job title being found in 1972. The search terms for the job roles which would be included in the study were defined as all job advertisements which had OD, Organization Development or Organizational Development (and the same terms with UK spelling). The count was logged for each month of publication and this data is presented in Chapter 3 to show the growth in OD job roles.

A sampling mechanism was applied to select job advertisements for content analysis, with a resulting 220 job advertisements subject to analysis of their content. A coding dictionary had been developed in an exploratory phase of this research (Gillon, 2011), and this was further developed and applied in this latter phase of the research study. Through the application of content analysis, the form of OD as it developed through each decade between 1970 and 2010 is presented in Chapter 3.

Bibliometric Searches: Understanding the Academic Perspective of OD

To establish the field of writing on OD, with a view to then understanding the influence and impact of that work on developments within the profession, a bibliometric search was conducted.

The bibliometric search first identified the databases to search, and three of these were selected for search for academic and practitioner sources. The databases and libraries selected for search were the Web of Science, Copac and the CIPD library. The Web of Science was used to identify relevant academic journal articles and Copac was used to identify relevant academic texts. The CIPD library holds an extensive collection of books, academic and practitioner journals, and materials of interest to the practitioner community. The CIPD practitioner library catalogue was searched using the same search terms used for the job advertisement and academic publication searches, which were: Organization Development, Organizational Development, Organization Development, Organizational Development and OD. The findings from the bibliometric search are presented in Chapter 4.

Subject Expert Views

The method adopted for garnering subject expert views was semi structured interviews. A primary purpose of the interviews conducted with these experts was to compare academic and practitioner perspectives on the nature and development of UK OD between 1970 and 2010, and to explore the sources of influence in the dissemination of changes in practice. Exploring the views of the professional association (in this case the CIPD) and identifying leading thinkers was also important.

To achieve a degree of comparison of perspectives, a broadly similar number of academic (n=8) and practice/business leader interview subjects (n=10) were selected and a smaller number (n=3) of leading influencers. More interviewees were selected in the practice than academic group, as the practitioner group included two types of interviewee; subject practitioners and business leaders.

Initially, a broad target of twenty-five interviews was set. However, saturation (Bryman, 2012) was reached after twenty-one interviews, with no new themes arising from interviews. The number of interviews was deemed sufficient (Mason, 2012). As reported above, the final number of subject expert Interviews, by type of subject expert is shown in the Table 1.1 below.

In selecting experts for interview, an attempt was made to gain access to interviewees from a variety of sectors and experience bases, ensuring an element of stratification (Saunders et al., 2012).

Significant consideration was given to whether interviewees should be given prior information on OD to prompt their responses (Cassell, 2009). However, it was decided that to avoid leading or influencing interviewees, no information would be provided on the findings from the content analysis prior to interview. The order of questions in the interview was arranged to build rapport, with time for critical incident, probing and follow up questions fitting with the aims of the project (Silverman, 2011). The interview was designed to ensure the inclusion of introductory questions and questions to interpret and clarify meaning (Bryman and Bell, 2011), with pauses and silences included to allow the interviewee ti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• What Exactly Is Organization Development?
• 1 The Beginnings of a Puzzle
• 2 Academic Perspectives of OD
• 3 Evidence on the Nature of Practitioner OD
• 4 The Evolution of Published Work on OD
• 5 Subject Expert Views
• 6 Comparing the Literature on OD with the Evidence
• 7 A Puzzle Solved but not Resolved
• Index