Practicing Organization Development

Leading Transformation and Change

William J. Rothwell, Jacqueline M. Stavros, Roland L. Sullivan, William J. Rothwell, Jacqueline M. Stavros, Roland L. Sullivan

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781118947715
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Personalmanagement

Get on the cutting edge of organization development

Practicing Organization Development: Leading Transformation and Change, Fourth Edition is your newly revised guide to successful organization development. This edition has been updated to explore the cutting edge of change management, leadership development, organizational transformation, and society benefit. These concepts are explored through emerging and increasingly accepted strengths-based approaches such as: appreciative inquiry, emotionally and socially intelligent leadership, positive organization development, and sustainable enterprises. This edition offers both theoretical concepts and guides to practical applications, providing you with the knowledge, techniques, and tools to put organizational development to effective use in the workplace.

Organization development is an evolving field focused on understanding and positively impacting the human system processes of groups, teams, organizations, and individual leaders. Thorough organization development results in increased effectiveness, improved health, and overall success. This book shows how to attain positive change by: identifying contemporary themes in organization development, executing organization development approaches, as well as elevating and extending research agenda. This book also illustrates how to influence organizational stakeholders, and how to use this influence to enact key organization development practices. This new edition is enhanced by:

• Updated chapter-by-chapter lesson plans, sample syllabi, and workshop agendas
• Revised sample exercises, a test bank, and additional case studies
• Expanded online appendices that cover regional organization development concepts from around the globe, as well as overviews of additional special issues

Organization development is quickly becoming an important aspect of MBA curricula. Practicing Organization Development: Leading Transformation and Change, Fourth Edition gives graduate and doctorate program participants a comprehensive overview of organization development, the resources to learn the field, and the tools to apply their knowledge.

Part One

Foundations

Chapter One
Organization Development, Transformation, and Change

William J. Rothwell, Jacqueline M. Stavros, and Roland L. Sullivan

What are organization development (OD), transformation, and change? Why should you care about them? What key terms are associated with OD, transformation, and change? What is systems thinking, and why is it important to OD practitioners? This first chapter addresses these concepts and related questions.

What Are Organization Development, Transformation, and Change?

Organization development (OD) helps people in organizations plan how to deal with changes in their environment. Before we define it more precisely, try the following exercise. Get paper and write down the first thing that comes to your mind in response to each question:

1. Who should be involved in an organization change effort, and how should they be involved?
2. Who should decide about how a change effort of any kind is launched? Implemented continually? Evaluated?
3. What do you believe about change in the world and today's organizations?
4. What does transformation mean to you?
5. What do you believe are the biggest challenges facing decision makers in organization change efforts?
6. What do you believe are your strengths and developmental needs in enacting the role of helper to others in a change effort? What do you do especially well? What do you wish to develop to become a more effective change agent? On what basis do you believe as you do?
7. When do you believe that a group of people might need an external facilitator in a change effort?
8. Why should OD, transformation, and change be a focus for managers? Other groups?
9. How should change be defined? Marketed? Launched? Implemented? Evaluated?
10. How have you reacted or felt in the past to change in an organization in which you have been employed or to which you have been a consultant?

Now identify a few professional peers or colleagues and pose these questions to them. Use this activity as a warm-up exercise to focus your thinking and understanding about OD, transformation, and change. When you finish, continue reading because many of your answers may change.

Organization Development Defined

Over the years, OD has been defined by many scholars, and each definition has a different emphasis. A few definitions are presented chronologically as follows:

Organization development is “an effort (1) planned, (2) organization-wide, and (3) managed from the top, to (4) increase organization effectiveness and health through (5) planned interventions in the organization's ‘processes,’ using behavioral-science knowledge” (Beckhard 1969, 9).

Warner Burke said, “Most people in the field agree that OD involves consultants who work to help clients improve their organizations by applying knowledge from the behavioral sciences—psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, and other related disciplines. Most would also agree that OD implies change; and, if we accept that shifts in the way an organization functions suggest that change has occurred, then, broadly defined, OD is analogous to organizational change” (Burke 1982, 3).

Organization development is “a system-wide application and transfer of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development, improvement, and reinforcement of the strategies, structures, and process that lead to organization effectiveness” (Cummings and Worley 2015, 2).

These definitions imply several key themes. First, OD is long-range in perspective. Second, OD works best when supported by senior leadership. Third, OD effects change primarily, although not exclusively, through education. Fourth, OD emphasizes employee participation in assessing the current state and in planning for a positive future state; making free and collaborative choices on how implementation should proceed; and, empowering the system to take responsibility for creating and evaluating results.

What Organization Development Is Not

OD is not a toolkit filled with canned tricks, piecemeal programs, gimmicks, techniques, and methodologies. As Cummings and Worley (2015) write, “The human resource function tends to provide change management skills through traditional training programs, not through a learning-by-doing process that has been so effective in OD” (145). OD involves people in change and does not coerce them into doing that which they vehemently oppose. Ideas for what and how to change come from everyone and not just managers.

OD is not a mindless application of someone else's best practice. It uses one's whole self, encountering the full and quantum living system. Living systems comprise vibrant communities and changing networks (formal and informal) that practice feedback, self-organization, continuous change, and learning. OD is not about short-term manipulation to achieve immediate financial gains. Instead, OD is interactive, relational, participative, and engaging.

Effective trainers are often understood to be in control of a management development effort. But facilitators of organization change are not in control of the change effort. Instead, they facilitate collaboration with internal partners. Facilitators learn, shift, and change with the organization. Successful change efforts require an ebb and flow.

Transformation and Change Management Defined

Transformation means to transcend from a static state. The translation of trans means to transcend or rise above. When an organization transforms, it is going through a transformation process that is “primarily the performance of the organization that is mediated via the performance of both groups and individuals” (Palmer, Dunford, and Akin 2009, 128). Noel Tichy and Mary Anne Devanna, in their classic work of 1986, outline a three-step process for transforming organizations: (1) revitalize, (2) create a new vision, and (3) institutionalize the change. Transformation brings about dynamic change in an organization. Hence, there is a connection to OD and transformation. Transformation is viewed in more detail in Chapters 4 and 5.

Change is part of organizational life, and the sustainability and growth of an organization depends on change and transformation. Change management means the process of helping individuals, groups, or organizations change. The word “management” implies an effort to best manage and implement the change. Warner Burke (2008) believes, “The change that occurs in organization is, for the most part, unplanned and gradual” (1).

Burke further states, “Planned organization change, especially on a large scale, affecting the entire system, is unusual; not exactly an everyday occurrence” (1). Planned change has always been a key component of OD (Marshak 2006). Change can happen at any level, and this is examined in Part Three of this book. Many of the most popular OD interventions, techniques, and methods involving the whole system are presented throughout this book.

Why Care About OD and Change?

According to the Greek philosopher Heraclitus, “There is nothing permanent but change.” By that he meant that everything is always in flux.

The recent radical changes in global markets and national economies show that the world is becoming more interconnected and economies and industries are global. We will likely experience more change during the next few decades than has been experienced since the beginning of civilization. We can expect more confusion in our organizations attempting to cope with change than at any other time in history.

Why Is Change Occurring So Fast?

The challenge of the future is to help people learn to ride the waves of transformation and change in real-time and as events unfold. Time has become important precisely because changing technology provides strategic advantages to organizations that understand the importance of timely action. Today, the organization that makes it to market first often seizes the lion's share of the market and is likely to keep it. And, organizations that miss technological innovations that increase production speed or improve quality lose out to global competitors who function in a world where differences in labor costs can easily be taken advantage of because of the relative ease of international travel and communication.

Changing technolog...