Oregon State University Crossroad Case Study

Read the Crossroads Center case stated at the end of chapter 13, and then answer the following

questions.A. How would you summarize the current situation at the Crossroads Center?B. What is the client looking to accomplish? What challenges exist for the client inaccomplishing his objectives?C. How would you design an engagement that uses dialogic OD practices to assist thisclient? Organization Development
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Organization Development
The Process of Leading Organizational Change
Fourth Edition
Donald L. Anderson
University of Denver
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FOR INFORMATION:
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Copyright © 2017 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
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Brief Contents
1. Preface
2. Acknowledgments
3. 1. What Is Organization Development?
4. 2. History of Organization Development
5. 3. Core Values and Ethics of Organization Development
6. 4. Foundations of Organizational Change
7. 5. The Organization Development Practitioner and the OD Process
8. 6. Entry and Contracting
9. 7. Data Gathering
10. 8. Diagnosis and Feedback
11. 9. An Introduction to Interventions
12. 10. Individual Interventions
13. 11. Team Interventions
14. 12. Whole Organization and Multiple Organization Interventions (Part 1)
15. 13. Whole Organization and Multiple Organization Interventions (Part 2)
16. 14. Sustaining Change, Evaluating, and Ending an Engagement
17. 15. Global Issues in Organization Development
18. 16. The Future of Organization Development
19. References
20. Author Index
21. Subject Index
22. About the Author
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Detailed Contents
Preface
Exercises and Activities
Ancillaries
Acknowledgments
1. What Is Organization Development?
Organization Development Defined
Making the Case for Organization Development
What Organization Development Looks Like
What Organization Development Is Not
Who This Book Is For
Overview of the Book
Analyzing Case Studies
Summary
2. History of Organization Development
Laboratory Training and T-Groups
Action Research, Survey Feedback, and Sociotechnical Systems
Management Practices
Quality and Employee Involvement
Organizational Culture
Change Management, Strategic Change, and Reengineering
Organizational Learning
Organizational Effectiveness and Employee Engagement
Summary
3. Core Values and Ethics of Organization Development
Defining Values
Why Are Values Important to the OD Practitioner?
Core Values of Organization Development
Changes to OD Values Over Time and the Values Debate
Challenges to Holding Organization Development Values
Statement of Organization Development Ethics
Summary
Appendix
Case Study 1: Analyzing Opportunities for Organization Development Work at Northern County
Legal Services
4. Foundations of Organizational Change
Levels and Characteristics of Organizational Change
Models of Organizational Change: Systems Theory and Social Construction Approaches
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Organizations as Systems
Organizations as Socially Constructed
Summary
5. The Organization Development Practitioner and the OD Process
The Consulting Relationship and Types of Consulting
The Organization Development Consulting Model
OD Practitioners: Who Are They and Where Do They Work?
The Organization Development Consulting Profession
The OD Consulting Process and Action Research
A Dialogic Approach to OD
Summary
6. Entry and Contracting
Entry
Contracting
Summary
7. Data Gathering
The Importance of Data Gathering
Presenting Problems and Underlying Problems
Data Gathering Process
Data Gathering Methods
Creating a Data Gathering Strategy and Proposing an Approach
Ethical Issues With Data Gathering
Summary
Case Study 2: Proposing a Data Gathering Strategy at TLG Solutions
8. Diagnosis and Feedback
Diagnosis: Discovery, Assessment, Analysis, and Interpretation
Finding Patterns by Analyzing Data
Interpreting Data
Selecting and Prioritizing Themes
Feedback
Resistance
Ethical Issues With Diagnosis and Giving Feedback
Summary
Case Study 3: Sorting Through the Data From Logan Elementary School
9. An Introduction to Interventions
Interventions Defined
Why Interventions Fail
Considerations in Selecting the Right Intervention Strategy
Structuring and Planning Interventions for Success
The Change Agent’s Role in the Intervention
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Ethical Issues With Interventions
Overview of Intervention Techniques
Summary
10. Individual Interventions
Individual Change and Reactions to Change
Individual Instruments and Assessments
Coaching
Mentoring
360 Feedback
Career Planning and Development
Summary
Case Study 4: Individual Type Styles at the Parks Department
11. Team Interventions
Defining Teams
What Makes a Successful Team?
Special Types of Teams
Team Development
Team-Building Interventions
Intergroup Interventions
Summary
Case Study 5: Solving Team Challenges at DocSystems Billing, Inc.
12. Whole Organization and Multiple Organization Interventions (Part 1)
Characteristics of Contemporary Large-Scale Interventions
Organizational Culture Assessment and Change
Organization Design and Structure
Directional Interventions
Summary
Case Study 6: Reorganizing Human Resources at ASP Software
13. Whole Organization and Multiple Organization Interventions (Part 2)
Quality and Productivity Interventions
Interventions in Mergers and Acquisitions
Transorganization or Interorganization Development
Dialogic OD Consultation and Interventions
Summary
Case Study 7: The Future of the Crossroads Center
14. Sustaining Change, Evaluating, and Ending an Engagement
Sustaining Change After the Intervention
Evaluation
Ending an Engagement: Separation and Exit
Summary
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15. Global Issues in Organization Development
OD’s Challenges in a Global Environment
Dimensions of Global Cultural Difference
OD Values, Interventions, and Culture
Case Examples and Research Findings
Advice for the Global OD Practitioner
Summary
Case Study 8: A Global Partnership at GFAC Consulting
16. The Future of Organization Development
Increasing Complexity of Change
Changing Workforce Demographics
Changing Nature of Work
The Current State of OD: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Opportunities
Conclusion: The Future of OD
Summary
References
Author Index
Subject Index
About the Author
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Preface
It seems that every few years, the field of organization development (OD) finds itself at a crossroads. Some
feel that the field has strayed too far from its founding humanistic values of democracy, diversity, autonomy,
collaboration, and choice. They argue that OD is in danger of being diluted or collapsed into human resources
roles, leadership development, and talent management. Others feel that the “touchy feely” old values deserve a
fresh update and that OD practitioners have a great deal to contribute to organizational efficiency,
effectiveness, and enhanced performance. They see the role of the practitioner as a business adviser who can
incorporate humanistic values without being hypocritical.
I wrote (and continue to update) this book because I firmly believe that OD as a field of research and practice
has much to offer to people in contemporary organizations who are struggling with an incredible amount of
change. Old management styles no longer fit the needs of today’s workplace and workers. New organizational
forms are emerging to cope with the increasing pace of change, globalization, digitization and the latest
technologies, economic pressures, and the expectations of the contemporary workforce. Managers struggle to
engage employees despite ever-present threats of downsizing and outsourcing. In such an environment, many
employees find work to be less personally satisfying than they did before.
Skilled OD practitioners understand the dynamics of human systems and can intervene to encourage a
healthy, engaging, and productive environment. Unfortunately, it has been challenging for many students to
develop these skills. It generally requires “breaking in” to an OD department, finding a (hopefully skilled)
mentor, and learning as much as possible through academic courses or self-discovery. While they are regularly
tested on the job, managers and executives have few opportunities to develop their skills as change agents as
well. Project managers, IT professionals, educators, and health care administrators all report that the skills of
OD are applicable to their jobs.
My hope is that this book will provide theoretical and practical background in OD to give you an introduction
to the basic processes of organization development and change. It will also give you a chance to practice in a
safe environment where you can develop your skills. I hope you find the book to be readable but rigorous—
practical and relevant but with a solid academic foundation—and comprehensive enough without being
exhausting.
For this fourth edition, I have updated many sections of the book to reflect recent research and advances in
practice while retaining classic approaches and foundational theories with which most practitioners ought to
be familiar. Highlights of this new edition include the following:
A new case study after Chapter 7 that can be used as a multipart case (additional parts are located on the
companion website)
Additional examples of global issues in organization development
Enhanced coverage of recent theory and practice in dialogic approaches to OD
Discussion questions at the end of each chapter
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Activities, exercises, and role plays following most chapters
New readings at the end of each chapter, where appropriate
My continued thanks to the students at the University of Denver as well as the clients who share with me
their struggles in achieving change at work. As always, I am grateful to my family and friends, especially my
wife, Jennifer, whose encouragement means everything.
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Exercises and Activities
Many chapters contain exercises, activities, and role plays that can be used to practice skills and apply concepts
developed in several chapters of the book. This chart details which exercises and activities accompany which
chapter and topic.
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Ancillaries
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Instructor Teaching Site
A password-protected instructor’s manual is available at study.sagepub.com/andersonod4e to help instructors
plan and teach their courses. These resources have been designed to help instructors make the classes as
practical and interesting as possible for students.
An Overview for the Instructor offers the author’s insights on how to most effectively use this book in a
course on organization development and change.
PowerPoint Slides capture key concepts and terms for each chapter for use in lectures and review.
Case Epilogues provide additional information about the organizations or scenarios featured in the text.
Discussion Questions suggest additional topics to engage students during classroom discussions and
activities.
Sample Course Syllabi provide models for structuring your course.
A Test Bank includes multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay exam questions for each chapter.
Video Resources for each chapter help launch class discussion.
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Student Study Site
An open-access student study site can be found at study.sagepub.com/andersonod4e. The site offers videos of
the author discussing the major stages of organization development, Web links to additional tools, and
Learning From SAGE Journal Articles, with access to recent, relevant, full-text articles from SAGE’s leading
research journals. Each article supports and expands on the concepts presented in the book. This feature also
provides discussion questions to focus and guide student interpretation.
This text is accompanied by Cases and Exercises in Organization Development & Change, Second Edition (ISBN
978-1-5063-4447-8), which follows the same chapter organization as this text. A bundle of this text with the
cases and exercises book is also available.
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Acknowledgments
SAGE Publishing would like to thank the following reviewers for their contributions to the manuscript:
Gerald D. Bouey, Lewis University
Carol A. Gravel, Binnacle Organizational and Learning Development, LLC
Michael A. Guerra, Lincoln University
Georgia L. Hampton, Jefferson County Public Schools
Melinda M. Howard, University of Oklahoma
Allen I. Kraut, Baruch College, CUNY
Helen Muyia, Texas A&M University, College Station
Tom J. Sanders, University of Montevallo
Jeffrey M. Zimmerman, Northern Kentucky University
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Chapter 1 What Is Organization Development?
Think for a moment about the organizations to which you belong. You probably have many to name, such as
the company where you work, a school, perhaps a volunteer organization, or a reading group. You are
undoubtedly influenced by many other organizations in your life, such as a health care organization like a
doctor’s office or hospital, a church group, a child’s school, a bank, or the local city council or state
government. Using an expansive definition of organization, you could name your own family or a group of
friends as an organization that you belong to as well. With just a few moments’ reflection, you are likely to be
able to name dozens of organizations that you belong to or that influence you.
Now consider an organization that you currently do not belong to, but one that you were dissatisfied with at
some point in the past. What was it about that organization that made the experience dissatisfying? Perhaps
you left a job because you did not have the opportunity to contribute that you would have liked. Maybe it was
a dissatisfying team atmosphere, or you were not appreciated or recognized for the time and energy that you
dedicated to the job. It could have been a change to your responsibilities, the team, or the organization’s
processes. Some people report that they did not feel a larger sense of purpose at work, they did not have
control or autonomy over their work, or they did not find an acceptable path to growth and career
development. Perhaps you’ve witnessed or been part of an organization that has failed for some reason.
Perhaps it went out of business or it disbanded because it could no longer reach its goals.
You’ve likely had some excellent experiences in organizations, too. You may have had a job that was especially
fulfilling or where you learned a great deal and coworkers became good friends. Maybe your local volunteer
organization helped a number of people through organized fundraisers or other social services activities.
Perhaps you joined or started a local community group to successfully campaign against the decision of your
local city council or school board.
All of this is to demonstrate what you already know intuitively, that we spend a great deal of our lives working
in, connected to, and affected by organizations. Some of these organizations function quite well, whereas
others struggle. Some are quite rewarding environments in which to work or participate, but in others,
organizational members are frustrated, neglected, and disengaged.
The purpose of this book is to introduce you to the field of organization development, an area of academic
study and professional practice focused on making organizations better—that is, more effective and productive
and at the same time more rewarding, satisfying, and engaging places in which to work and participate. By
learning about the field of organization development and the process by which it is conducted, you will be a
more effective change agent inside the organizations to which you belong.
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Organization Development Defined
Organization development (OD) is an interdisciplinary field with contributions from business,
industrial/organizational psychology, human resources management, communication, sociology, and many
other disciplines. Not surprisingly, for a field with such diverse intellectual roots, there are many definitions of
organization development. Definitions can be illuminating, as they point us in a direction and provide a
shared context for mutual discussion, but they can also be constraining, as certain concepts are inevitably left
out, with boundaries drawn to exclude some activities. What counts as OD thus depends on the practitioner
and the definition, and these definitions have changed over time. In a study of 27 definitions of organization
development published since 1969, Egan (2002) found that there were as many as 60 different variables listed
in those definitions. Nonetheless, there are some points on which definitions converge.
One of the most frequently cited definitions of OD comes from Richard Beckhard (1969), an early leader in
the field of OD:
Organization development is an effort (1) planned, (2) organizationwide, 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. (p. 9)
Beckhard’s definition has many points that have survived the test of time, including his emphasis on
organizational effectiveness, the use of behavioral science knowledge, and the inclusion of planned
interventions in the organization’s functions. Some critique this definition, however, for its emphasis on
planned change (many organizational changes, and thus OD efforts, are in response to environmental threats
that are not so neatly planned) and its emphasis on the need to drive organizational change through top
management. Many contemporary OD activities do not necessarily happen at the top management level, as
increasingly organizations are developing less hierarchical structures.
A more recent definition comes from Burke and Bradford (2005):
Based on (1) a set of values, largely humanistic; (2) application of the behavioral sciences; and (3)
open systems theory, organization development is a systemwide process of planned change aimed
toward improving overall organization effectiveness by way of enhanced congruence of such key
organizational dimensions as external environment, mission, strategy, leadership, culture, structure,
information and reward systems, and work policies and procedures. (p. 12)
Finally, I offer a third:
Organization development is the process of increasing organizational effectiveness and facilitating
personal and organizational change through the use of interventions driven by social and behavioral
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science knowledge.
These definitions include a number of consistent themes about what constitutes organization development.
They propose that an outcome of OD activities is organizational effectiveness. They also each stress the
applicability of knowledge gained through the social and behavioral sciences (such as sociology, business and
management, psychology, and more) to organizational settings.
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Making the Case for Organization Development
Perhaps the point on which most definitions agree is that the backdrop and purpose of organization
development is change. As you have no doubt personally experienced, large-scale organizational change is
rarely simple and met without skepticism. As Peter Senge and colleagues (1999) write, “Most of us know
firsthand that change programs fail. We’ve seen enough ‘flavor of the month’ programs ‘rolled out’ from top
management to last a lifetime” (p. 6). Because of its impact on the organizational culture and potential
importance to the organization’s success, organizational change has been a frequent topic of interest to both
academic and popular management thinkers. With change as the overriding context for OD work, OD
practitioners develop interventions so that change can be developed and integrated into the organization’s
functioning. Significant changes today are facing organizations and their teams and individual employees.
To become effective, productive, and satisfying to members, organizations need to change. It will come as no
surprise to any observer of today’s organizations that change is a significant part of organizational life. Change
is required at the organizational level as customers demand more, technologies are developed with a rapidly
changing life cycle (especially high-tech products; Wilhelm, Damodaran, & Li, 2003), and investors demand
results. As Rita McGrath (2013) writes, “Music, high technology, travel, communication, consumer
electronics, the automobile business, and even education are facing situations in which advantages are copied
quickly, technology changes, or customers seek other alternatives and things move on” (p. 7). This requires
that organizations develop new strategies, economic structures, technologies, organizational structures, and
processes.
Change is required of team members, who now are likely to work virtually in collaboration with members
from around the globe. Cultural differences, changes in communication technologies, and a changing diverse
workforce all combine to complicate how team members work together. Role conflict and confusion in
decision processes and decision authority are common when members who have never worked together are
thrown into an ad hoc team that is responsible for rapid change and innovation.
Change is also required of individuals. Employees learn new skills as jobs change or are eliminated.
Organizational members are expected to quickly and flexibly adapt to the newest direction. Best-selling
business books such as Who Moved My Cheese? teach lessons in ensuring that one’s skills are current and that
being comfortable and reluctant to adapt is a fatal flaw. Leaders today need to adapt to matrix organizational
structures and new participative styles of leadership rather than old hierarchical patterns and command and
control leadership (Holbeche, 2015). For organizational members, change can be enlightening and exciting,
and it can be hurtful, stressful, and frustrating.
Whether or not we agree with the values behind “change as a constant,” it is likely to continue for the
foreseeable future. Whereas some decry an overabundance of change in organizations (Zorn, Christensen, &
Cheney, 1999), others note that it is the defining characteristic of the current era in organizations and that
becoming competent at organizational change is a necessary and distinguishing characteristic of successful
organizations (Lawler & Worley, 2006).
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There are, however, more and less effective ways to manage change. Creating and managing change in order
to create higher-performing organizations in which individuals can grow and develop is a central theme of the
field of OD. When we speak of organization development, we are referring to the management of certain
kinds of these changes, especially how people implement and are affected by them.
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What Organization Development Looks Like
It may be easiest to understand what organization development is by understanding what forms it takes and
how it is practiced. The following are five examples of published case studies of OD in action.
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Example 1: Increasing Employee Participation in a Public Sector
Organization
Public sector organizations, it has been noted (Coram & Burns, 2001), often face additional special challenges
in the management of change. Bureaucratic structures, interfaces with regional governments and legislatures,
political pressures, and legislative policies all complicate the implementation of new processes and changes to
organizational practices. In the Republic of Ireland, a special initiative aimed to reduce bureaucracy in the
public sector to gain efficiency, improve customer service, and improve interdepartmental coordination
(O’Brien, 2002). Many programs of this type have been launched in other organizations as top-down
mandates from senior management, causing frustration and decreased commitment among staff members who
resisted the mandated changes.
One department wanted to do things differently. The offices were in the division of Social Welfare Services, a
community welfare organization of 4,000 employees. Two Dublin offices (50 employees each) became the
focus of this case. These offices chose to involve employees in the development of an initiative that would
improve working conditions in the department as well as increase the employees’ capacity for managing
changes. A project steering team was formed, and it began by administering an employee survey to inquire
about working relationships, career development, training, technology, and management. Follow-up data
gathering occurred in focus groups and individual interviews. The tremendous response rate of more than 90
percent gave the steering team a positive feeling about the engagement of the population, but the results of the
survey indicated that a great deal of improvement was necessary. Many employees felt underappreciated,
distrusted, and not included in key decisions or changes. Relationships with management were also a concern
as employees indicated few opportunities for communication with management and that jobs had become
routine and dull.
The steering team invited volunteers (employees and their management) to work on several of the central
problems. One team worked on the problem of communication and proposed many changes that were later
implemented, including a redesign of the office layout to improve circulation and contact among employees.
As the teams continued discussions, they began to question standard practices and inefficiencies and to
suggest improvements, eventually devising a list of almost 30 actions that they could take. Managers listened
to employee suggestions, impressed by their insights. As one manager put it, “I have learned that a little
encouragement goes a long way and people are capable of much more than given credit for in their normal
everyday routine” (O’Brien, 2002, p. 450).
The joint management–employee working teams had begun to increase collaboration and interaction among
the two groups, with each reaching new insights about the other. As a result of the increased participation,
“There appeared to be an enhanced acceptance of the change process, coupled with demands for better
communications, increased involvement in decision making, changed relationships with supervisors and
improved access to training and development opportunities” (O’Brien, 2002, p. 451).
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Example 2: Senior Management Coaching at Vodaphone
Vodaphone is a multibillion-dollar global communications technology company headquartered in the United
Kingdom and was an early leader in the mobile telephone market (Eaton & Brown, 2002). Faced with
increasing competition, the company realized that in order to remain innovative and a leader in a challenging
market, the culture of the organization would need to adapt accordingly. Specifically, senior management
realized that its current “command and control” culture of blame and political games would hinder the
collaboration and mutual accountability needed to succeed in a competitive environment. Instead, the
company wanted to encourage a culture of empowered teams that made their own decisions and shared
learning and development, speed, and accountability.
Several culture initiatives were implemented, including the development of shared values, the introduction of
IT systems that shared and exchanged information across major divisions that had hindered cross-functional
learning, and the establishment of teams and a team-building program.
To support the initiatives and encourage a new, collaborative management style, Vodaphone implemented a
leadership coaching program. Top managers attended the program to learn skills in conducting performance
reviews, helping employees set goals, and coaching teams. Following the program, managers had one-on-one
coaching sessions with a professional coach who worked with participants to help them set coaching goals and
reflect on how successfully they were able to implement the skills learned in the program.
As a result of the program, managers began to delegate more as teams started to solve problems themselves.
Teams began to feel more confident in their decisions as managers trusted them. Eaton and Brown (2002)
attribute several subsequent company successes to the program, noting that it was critical that the coaching
program was integrated with the other culture change initiatives that it supported. “Cultural change takes
time,” they note, and “traditional attitudes to management do not die away overnight” (p. 287). However,
they point out that a gradual evolution took place and the new cultural values are now the standard.
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Example 3: Team Development in a Cancer Center
Health care workers who have the challenge of caring for critically ill patients experience stress, emotional
exhaustion, and burnout at very high rates compared with workers in other fields. Without social support
from friends or other coworkers, many workers seek to leave the field or to reduce hours to cope with the
emotional exhaustion of such a demanding occupation. Consequently, many researchers have found that
health care workers in particular need clear roles, professional autonomy, and social support to reduce burnout
and turnover.
In one Canadian cancer center (Black & Westwood, 2004), a senior administrator sought to address some of
these needs by creating a leadership team that could manage its own work in a multidisciplinary team
environment. Team members would have professional autonomy and would provide social support to one
another. Leaders volunteered or were chosen from each of the center’s main disciplines, such as oncology,
surgery, nursing, and more. Organization development consultants were invited to lead workshops in which
the team could develop cohesive trusting relationships and agree on working conditions that would reduce the
potential for conflict among disciplines.
In a series of three 2-day workshops over 3 months, the team participated in a number of important activities.
Members did role play and dramatic exercises in which they took on one another’s roles in order to be able to
see how others see them. They completed surveys of their personal working styles to understand their own
communication and behavior patterns. The team learned problem-solving techniques, they clarified roles, and
they established group goals.
Three months after the final workshop was conducted, the facilitators conducted interviews to assess the
progress of the group. All of the participants reported a better sense of belonging, a feeling of trust and safety
with the team, and a better understanding of themselves and others with whom they worked. One participant
said about a coworker, “I felt that [the workshops] connected me far differently to [a coworker] than I would
have ever had an opportunity to do otherwise, you know, in a normal work setting” (Black & Westwood,
2004, p. 584). The consultants noted that participants wanted to continue group development on an ongoing
basis.
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Example 4: A Future Search Conference in a Northern California
Community
Santa Cruz County is located in Northern California, about an hour south of San Francisco. In the 1960s, the
county had approximately 25,000 residents in an agricultural region and in a small retirement community. In
the late 1960s, the University of California, Santa Cruz, opened its doors, and in the following years the
county began to experience a demographic shift as people began to move to the area and real estate prices
skyrocketed. By 1990, the population had reached 250,000 residents, and increasingly expensive real estate
prices meant that many residents could no longer afford to live there. Affordable housing was especially a
problem for the agricultural community. A local leadership group had convened several conferences but could
never agree on an approach to the housing problem.
In the mid-1990s, a consortium of leaders representing different community groups decided to explore the
problem further by holding a future search conference (Blue Sky Productions, 1996). They invited 72 diverse
citizens to a 3-day conference not only to explore the problem of affordable housing but also to address other
issues that they had in common. The citizen groups represented a cross-section of the community—from
young to old, executives to farmworkers—and social services agencies. Attendees were chosen to try to mirror
the community as a “vertical slice” of the population. They called the conference “Coming Together as a
Community Around Housing: A Search for Our Future in Santa Cruz County.”
At the conference, attendees explored their shared past as individuals and residents of the county. They
discussed the history of the county and their own place in it. Next, they described the current state of the
county and the issues that were currently being addressed by the stakeholder groups in attendance. The
process was a collaborative one; as one attendee said, “What one person would raise as an issue, another
person would add to, and another person would add to.” There were also some surprises as new information
was shared. One county social services employee realized, “There were a couple of things that I contributed
that I thought everyone in the county knew about, and [I] listen[ed] to people respond to my input, [and say]
‘Oh, really?’” Finally, the attendees explored what they wanted to work on in their stakeholder groups. They
described a future county environment 10 years out and presented scenarios that took a creative form as
imaginary TV shows and board of supervisors meetings. Group members committed to action plans,
including short- and long-term goals.
Eighteen months later, attendees had reached a number of important goals that had been discussed at the
conference. Not only had they been able to increase funding for a farmworkers housing loan program and
create a rental assistance fund, but they were on their way to building a $5.5 million low-income housing
project. Participants addressed a number of nonhousing issues as well. They embarked on diversity training in
their stakeholder groups, created a citizen action corps, invited other community members to participate on
additional task forces, and created a plan to revitalize a local downtown area. “Did the future search
conference work?” one participant wondered. “No question about it. It provided a living model of democracy.”
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Example 5: A Long-Term Strategic Change Engagement
ABA, a German trading company with 15,000 employees, embarked on a major strategic change initiative
driven by stiff competition (Sackmann, Eggenhofer-Rehart, & Friesl, 2009). A global expansion prompted
the company to reorganize into a three-division structure. A decentralized shared services model, comprising
14 new groups, was created for administrative departments that would now support internal divisions. To
support the culture of the new organization, executives developed a mission and vision statement that
explained the company’s new values and asked managers to cascade these messages to their staffs. This effort
was kicked off and managed from the top of the organization.
The director of the newly formed shared services centers contacted external consultants, suspecting that a
simple communication cascade to employees would not result in the behavioral changes needed in the new
structure. The new administrative groups would have significant changes to work processes, and the lead
managers of each of the 14 new groups would need assistance to put the new values and beliefs into practice.
The consultants proposed an employee survey to gauge the beliefs and feelings of the staff and to provide an
upward communication mechanism. Survey results were available to managers of each center, and the external
consultants coached the managers through an interpretation of the results to guide self-exploration and
personal development. Internal consultants worked with the managers of each of the new centers to facilitate a
readout of the survey results with employees and take actions customized to the needs of each group.
Consultants conducted workshops for managers to help them further develop personal leadership and
communication skills, topics that the survey suggested were common areas of improvement across the
management team. Over a period of 4 years, the cycle was repeated, using variations of the employee survey
questions, a feedback step, and management development workshops covering new subjects each time.
Interviews and surveys conducted late in the process showed that employees had a positive feeling about
change in general. Leaders reported noticing a more trusting relationship between employees and their
managers characterized by more open communication. Center managers took the initiative to make regular
and ongoing improvements to their units. Sackmann and colleagues (2009) noted the need for a major change
like this one to include multiple intervention targets. This organization experienced “changes in strategy,
structure, management instruments, leadership, employee orientation, and the organization’s culture context”
(p. 537), which required a broad set of surveys, coaching, and workshops to support. “These change
supporting activities helped implement the change with lasting effect” (p. 537), they conclude.
As you can see from this and the previous examples, OD is concerned with a diverse variety of issues to
address problems involving organizations, teams, and individuals. OD is also conducted in a diverse variety of
organizations, including federal, state, and local governments (which are among the largest employers in the
United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), public sector organizations around the world,
health care organizations, educational settings, and nonprofit and private enterprises. Interventions can
involve a single individual, a small team (such as the cancer center team described earlier), multiple teams, or a
whole organization. It can also consist of multiple targets of change, such as in the Vodaphone initiative that
involved not only large-scale culture change but also the implementation of teams and individual coaching.
32
OD can also deal with multiorganization efforts, such as in the case of Santa Cruz County, or it can involve
multiple national governments. The target of change can be something as seemingly simple as increasing
employee involvement or developing coworker relationships, or it can be as potentially large as creating the
vision or strategy of an entire organization or documenting the 10-year future of a large county.
33
What Organization Development Is Not
Despite this seemingly expansive definition of what organization development is and what issues and
problems it addresses, it is also limited. OD is not any of the following.
34
Management Consulting
OD can be distinguished from management consulting in specific functional areas such as finance, marketing,
corporate strategy, or supply chain management. It is also distinguished from information technology
applications. Yet OD is applicable to any of these areas. When organizations attempt a conscious change,
whether it involves implementing a new IT system; making changes in strategy, goals, or direction; or
adapting to a new team leader, OD offers relevant processes and techniques to make the change function
effectively. An OD practitioner would not likely use expertise in one of these content areas (for example, best
practices in financial structures of supplier relationships or contemporary marketing analysis) to make
recommendations about how an organization does this activity. Instead, an OD practitioner would be more
likely to assist the organization in implementation of the kinds of changes that management consultants
would advise them to make. Thus, OD makes a distinction between partnerships with a client where the
consultant offers content advice and those where the consultant offers process advice. Consulting where the
practitioner offers content advice falls under the heading of management consulting, whereas OD offers
consultation on the process used to reach a desired goal. Most management consulting also is not based on
OD’s set of foundational values (a topic that we will take up in detail in Chapter 3). In Chapter 5 we will
discuss OD consulting in particular and differentiate it from management consulting activities with which you
may be familiar.
35
Training and Development
While individual and organization learning is a part of OD and a key value we will discuss in a later chapter,
OD work is not confined to training activities. OD is not generally the context in situations in which learning
is the sole objective, such as learning a new skill, system, or procedure. OD deals with organizational change
efforts that may or may not involve members of the organization needing to learn specific new skills or
systems. Many training and development professionals are gravitating toward OD to enhance their skills in
identifying the structural elements of organizations that need to be changed or enhanced for training and new
skills to be effective. Other aspects of the training and development profession, however, such as needs
assessment, course development, the use of technology, or on-the-job training, are not central to the job of the
OD practitioner.
In addition, most training programs are developed for a large audience, often independent of how the
program would be applied in any given organization. While some OD interventions do incorporate training
programs and skill building, OD is more centrally concerned with the systemic context that would make a
training program successful, such as management support, job role clarification, process design, and more. As
Burke (2008) writes, “Individual development cannot be separated from OD, but to be OD, individual
development must be in the service of or leverage for system-wide change, an integral aspect of OD’s
definition” (p. 23).
36
Short Term
OD is intended to address long-term change. Even in cases in which the intervention is carried out over a
short period (such as the several-day workshops conducted at the cancer center described earlier), the change
is intended to be a long-term or permanent one. OD efforts are intended to develop systemic changes that are
long lasting. In the contemporary environment, in which changes are constantly being made, this can be
particularly challenging.
37
The Application of a Toolkit
Many OD practitioners speak of the OD “toolkit.” It is true that OD does occasionally involve the application
of an instrumented training or standard models, but it is also more than that. To confuse OD with a toolkit is
to deny that it also has values that complement its science and that each OD engagement has somewhat
unique applications. As Feyerherm and Worley (2008) write,
Too many clients ask, “How do I do x?” or “What tools are available to change y?” and too many
OD practitioners, in an effort to be helpful, give the client what they want instead of what they
need. The “tool” focus ignores assessment and risks, providing a band-aid in organizations without
attacking core problems. (p. 4)
Students of OD who seek out tools without being knowledgeable about the OD process and the reasons for
the use of the tools are likely to find themselves having learned how to use a hammer and enthusiastically go
around looking for nails (only to realize that not every problem looks like the same nail). As Schein (1999)
puts it,
Knowledge of many different kinds of interventions does not substitute for the knowhow of sensing
what is needed “right now.” . . . In fact, having a skillset of interventions “at the ready” makes it
harder to stay in the current reality because one is always looking for opportunities to use what one
believes oneself to be good at. (p. 245)
OD is more than a rigid procedure for moving an organization, team, or individual from point A to point B.
It involves being attuned to the social and personal dynamics of the client organization that usually require
flexibility in problem solving, not a standardized set of procedures or tools. In Chapter 3 we will discuss the
values that underlie OD to better understand the fundamental concepts that explain how and why OD
practitioners make the choices they do.
38
Who This Book Is For
This book is for students, practitioners, and managers who seek to learn more about the process of
organizational change following organization development values and practices. We will use the term
organization development, as most academic audiences prefer, over the term organizational development, which
seems to dominate spoken and written practitioner communication. We will also refer to the organization
development practitioner, consultant, and change agent in this book as a single general audience, because these
terms emphasize that OD is practiced by a large community that can include more than just internal and
external paid OD consultants.
OD includes (and the book is written for) anyone who must lead organizational change as a part of his or her
role. With the magnitude and frequency of organizational change occurring today, this encompasses a wide
variety of roles and is an increasingly diverse and growing community. The OD practitioner can include the
internal or external organization development consultant, but also managers and executives; human resources
and training professionals; quality managers; project managers and information technology specialists;
educators; health care administrators; directors of nonprofit organizations; leaders in state, local, and federal
government agencies; and many more. We will also more frequently discuss organizational members than
employees, which is a more inclusive term that includes volunteers in nonprofit groups and others who are
connected to organizations but may not have an employment relationship with them. The term also is
intended to include not just leaders, executives, and managers but also employees at all levels.
39
Overview of the Book
This book provides an overview of the content of organization development, including theories and models
used by change agents and OD practitioners. It also explores the process by which OD is practiced. The
objective of the book is to acquaint you with the field of OD and the process of organization development
consulting. The goal is to develop your analytic, consulting, and practitioner skills so that you can apply the
concepts of OD to real situations. We will simulate these consulting situations through detailed case studies,
which follow many of the skill development chapters, in which you will be able to immediately practice what
you have learned in the chapter.
Chapters 2 through 5 will explore the foundations of the field, including its history, values, and an overview of
the key concepts and research in organizational change. In these chapters you will learn how OD began as a
field, how it has evolved over the past decades, and how most practitioners think of the field today. In
Chapter 3 we will discuss the underlying values and ethical beliefs that influence choices that practitioners
must make in working with clients. Chapter 4 provides a foundation in research into organizational change
from a systems perspective, a common way of thinking about organizations. We will also discuss a social
construction perspective on organizational change. In this chapter you will be exposed to models of
organizational systems and organizational change that have influenced the development of many OD
interventions. In Chapter 5 we will define the role of the OD consultant, differentiating the OD consultant
from other kinds of consultants, and describing the specific advantages and disadvantages to the OD
consultant when the consultant is internal or external to the organization.
Beginning with Chapter 6, the book follows an action research and consulting model (entry, contracting, data
gathering, data analysis/diagnosis, feedback, interventions, and evaluation). We will discuss the major actions
that practitioners take in each of these stages and describe the potential pitfalls to the internal and external
consultant. Chapter 6 describes the early stages of the consulting engagement, including entry and
contracting. You will learn how a consultant contracts with a client and explores what problems the client is
experiencing, how those problems are being managed, and how problems can be (re)defined for a client. In
Chapter 7 we will cover how practitioners gather data, as well as assess the advantages and disadvantages of
various methods for gathering data about the organization. Chapter 8 describes what OD practitioners do
with the data they have gathered by exploring the dynamics of the feedback and joint diagnosis processes.
This stage of the consulting process is especially important as it constitutes the point at which the client and
consultant define what interventions will best address the problems that have been described.
Chapter 9 begins by describing the most visible aspect of an OD engagement—the intervention. We will
discuss the components of interventions and describe the decisions that practitioners must make in grappling
with how to structure them for maximum effectiveness. Chapters 10 through 13 address the traditional OD
practices with which most practitioners ought to be familiar, including interventions such as organization
design, strategic planning, quality interventions, team building, survey feedback, individual instruments, and
coaching and mentoring. These chapters also incorporate practices such as appreciative inquiry, future search,
and Six Sigma. These interventions are organized according to the target of the intervention, whether it be
40
the whole organization, multiple groups, single groups, or individuals. In Chapter 14 we will conclude our
discussion of the OD process by exploring how organization development practitioners separate themselves
from client engagements and evaluate the results of their efforts. In Chapter 15 we will examine the practice
of OD in different cultures and geographies by discussing how globalization impacts organization
development. The book concludes in Chapter 16 with a discussion of the future of OD, where we will discuss
the applicability and relevance of OD to contemporary organizations, given trends in demographics, working
conditions, and organizational environments.
Following trends in the corporate world, ethical issues in OD are gaining the attention of academics, clients,
and practitioners. While we will discuss values and ethics in Chapter 3, rather than leave ethical dilemmas to
that chapter alone, we will also discuss ethical issues in organization development at relevant points
throughout the book, when appropriate for the stage in the OD process being described.
Many chapters begin with an opening vignette and thought questions to set the stage for the topics covered in
those chapters. Some of these vignettes present published case studies of successful and unsuccessful OD
efforts. As you read the vignette and the chapter, consider what factors made the case more or less successful
and what lessons the practitioner may have learned from the experience. You may wish to find the published
case and read it for additional details not presented in the vignette. Reading published cases can help you
develop a deeper appreciation for the complexities of OD work and learn from the successes and struggles that
others have experienced. At the end of each chapter you will find questions for discussion, exercises, activities,
and/or role-play simulations that can help you develop your OD skills through realistic scenarios where you
can practice in a safe environment.
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Analyzing Case Studies
The case studies included in this book are intended to help you learn the role and thought process of an OD
consultant or change agent through realistic examples. By reading and analyzing case studies, you will actively
participate in applying the theory and concepts of OD to complex, real-life situations that consultants find
themselves in every day. These cases are all based in practitioners’ real experiences—names and some details
have been changed to protect the client’s and practitioner’s anonymity. By stepping into a practitioner’s shoes,
you will be challenged to make the tradeoffs and choices that managers and consultants are asked to make.
The cases will help you develop the problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that are central to the value
that a practitioner brings to a client. Ideally you can discuss these cases with others who have analyzed them as
well, and together you can identify the central issues in the cases and debate the most appropriate response. In
this way, you will be assimilating knowledge that you have about organizations, change, human dynamics, and
the concepts and theories of OD. You will learn the logic behind the choices that managers and practitioners
make, and you will gain practice in making your thought processes explicit. The cases in the book will build
on one another in complexity, so you will need to integrate what you have learned from previous chapters as
you analyze each case.
The case studies in this book are written as mini-plays or scenes to provide a richly detailed scenario in which
you can imagine yourself playing a part, in contrast to many commonly published case studies in which a few
short paragraphs provide all of the detail available for analysis. Since a good deal of OD and change
management involves noticing and responding to the human and relational dynamics of a situation in addition
to the task and content issues, the scenes in this book provide both in order to give you practice in becoming
an observer of people during the process of organizational change. The cases in this book also are situated in a
number of diverse types of organizations in which OD is practiced, including educational environments,
health care and nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses. Each of these types of organizations brings
with it unique challenges and opportunities for the OD practitioner.
Each case provides a slice of organizational life, constructed as a brief scene in which you can imagine yourself
playing a part, but which will require your conscious thinking and reflection. Cases present situations with
many options. As Ellet (2007) writes, “A case is a text that refuses to explain itself” (p. 19). It requires you to
take an active role to interpret it and discover its meaning. Fortunately, unlike the passage of time in real life,
in written cases time is momentarily paused to give you the chance to consider a response. While you do not
have the opportunity to gather additional data or ask questions of participants, you do have the ability to flip
back a few pages, read the situation again, and contemplate. You can carefully consider alternate courses of
action, weigh the pros and cons of each, and clarify why you would choose one option over another.
As a result of having to make these choices, you will hone your ability to communicate your rationale for your
decisions. Classmates will make different choices, each with his or her own well-reasoned rationales. Through
discussion you will sharpen your ability to solve problems, understanding the principles behind the decisions
that you and your classmates have made. You will learn about how your own experiences shape your
assumptions and approaches to problems. You will be challenged to develop your skills to provide evidence for
42
your reasoning, defend your analyses, and explain your thinking in clear and concise ways for fellow
practitioners and clients alike. You may find that these discussions prompt you to change your mind about the
approach you would take, becoming convinced by a classmate’s well-reasoned proposal, or you may find that
your reasoning persuades others that your approach has the greater advantages.
Regardless, you will learn that there is no single right answer at the back of the book or to be shared by your
instructor after you have struggled. For some of the cases in this book, your instructor may share with you
what happened after the case concluded. This information may provide support for the approach you would
have taken, or it may make you think that your approach was incorrect. Instead of seeking the right or wrong
answer, however, asking yourself whether your proposal was well reasoned given the circumstances is more
important than knowing the exact outcome of the case. While you have the opportunity to do so, use the
occasion of the case study and the discussion to play with various alternatives. Here, the process may be more
important than the outcome.
The following tips will help you get started with case study analysis:
1. Read the entire case first, and resist the temptation to come to any conclusions the first time you read it.
Allow yourself to first gather all of the relevant data about the situation before you propose any solutions
or make any judgments about what is happening or what the client needs to do.
2. Use the tools and methods outlined in each chapter to help you think through the issues presented by
the case. You will find worksheets, models, principles, and outlines that can assist you in identifying and
categorizing problems, selecting and prioritizing interventions, and organizing ideas to respond to the
client. Use charts and diagrams to map out organizational structures and underline key phrases and
issues. Write questions that come to mind in the margins. Read the case multiple times to ensure that
you have not missed a key detail that would indicate to a client that you had not been paying close
attention.
3. Realize that like real life, case studies contain many extra details and describe multiple issues.
Organizational life is messy and complex, and not all of these details are helpful or necessary to the
consultant or change agent. A consultant helping a team redefine roles and responsibilities may be doing
so in an environment in which the company has acquired a competitor or quarterly results were
disappointing. Part of the practitioner’s role is to sort the useful primary information from the
unnecessary secondary information (or information that is unnecessary for the immediate problem).
This is part of the value of these case exercises and a logic and intuition that you will develop as your
skills and experience grow. Ask yourself what the client is trying to achieve, what he or she has asked of
you, and what the core issues and central facts are.
4. Similarly, in any response to a client or reaction to a case, resist the temptation to comment on
everything. An OD practitioner can help to prioritize the most pressing issues and help the client sort
through the complexities of organizational life. It could be that part of the reason the client has asked
for help is that the number of possibilities for action are too overwhelming to decide what to do next.
5. When you are prepared to write a response or an analysis, ask yourself whether you have addressed the
central questions asked by the case and whether you have clearly stated the issues to the client. Once
43
your response is written, could you send that, in its present form, to the client described in the case? In
that regard, is the analysis professionally written and well organized to communicate unambiguously to
the client? Will the client understand how and why you reached these conclusions?
6. As you write your analysis, ask yourself how you know any particular fact or interpretation to be true and
whether you have sufficiently justified your interpretation with actual data. Instead of boldly stating that
“managers are not trained for their roles,” you could write, “Only 2 of 10 managers had attended a
management training course in the past 5 years, leading me to conclude that management training has
not been given a high priority.” The latter uses data and makes the interpretation explicit; the former is
likely to invite criticism or defensiveness from a client. This does not mean that directness is not
appropriate, only that it must follow from the evidence. We will describe the considerations of the
feedback process in depth in this book.
7. When you have finished your own thinking and writing about the case, and after you have had the
opportunity to discuss the case and options for action with classmates, take the time to write down your
reflections from the experience (Ellet, 2007). What did you learn? What principles might apply for the
next time you are confronted with these choices?
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Summary
Today’s organizations are experiencing an incredible amount of change. Organization development is a field
of academic study and professional practice that uses social and behavioral science knowledge to develop
interventions that help organizations and individuals change successfully. It is a field practiced in almost all
kinds of organizations that you can imagine, from education to health care, from government to small and
large businesses. Changes that OD practitioners address are diverse as well, including organizational
structures and strategies, team effectiveness, leadership coaching, and much more. OD is not management
consulting or training and development, and it is neither short term nor the mere application of a standard
procedure or toolkit. OD practitioners can include many kinds of people for whom organizational change is a
priority, such as managers and executives, project managers, and organizational members in a variety of roles.
45
Questions for Discussion
1. Think of a job that you have held. It may be your current job, or it may be a job that you had in the past. Now take a few moments
and write down several reasons why you found that job or work environment to be a positive or rewarding experience, or several
reasons why you found it to be a negative or unrewarding experience. Share your ideas with a classmate. Did you note any
similarities or differences? What OD interventions discussed in Chapter 1 do you think might have been helpful in this
organization?
2. Without looking back at the definitions in this chapter, how would you describe organization development to a friend, colleague,
or potential client? Now compare your description to the definitions in the chapter. How is your definition different?
3. Have you ever participated in an organization development project or intervention? What was your experience?
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For Further Reading
Beckhard, R. (1969). Organization development: Strategies and models. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Burke, W. W. (2008). A contemporary view of organization development. In T. G. Cummings (Ed.),
Handbook of organization development (pp. 13–38). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Egan, T. M. (2002). Organization development: An examination of definitions and dependent variables.
Organization Development Journal, 20(2), 59–71.
Marshak, R. J. (2006). Organization development as a profession and a field. In B. B. Jones & R. Brazzel
(Eds.), The NTL handbook of organization development and change: Principles, practices, and perspectives (pp. 13–
27). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
47
Chapter 2 History of Organization Development
If you have just heard the term organization development (OD) used recently, you may be surprised to learn
that the practice of OD is now into its seventh decade (even though the term itself first began to be used in
the 1960s; see Sashkin & Burke, 1987). Like the business and organizational environments where it is
practiced, OD has grown and changed significantly during this time. This chapter highlights different strands
of research and practice to illustrate how each of these traditions of OD can be seen, explicitly and implicitly,
in how it is practiced today. Eight major traditions of OD research and practice are described here, though
these blend together and intersect one another, and the themes in these eight traditions can be seen
throughout later chapters. These trends follow one another more or less historically, though there is
significant overlap and influence among each of them.
By becoming aware of the history of OD, you will be more aware of how it has been defined throughout its
life, as well as the changes that the field has undergone from its historical roots. In addition, you will better
understand how today’s practice of OD has undergone many years of research and practice to reach its current
state.
The eight strands of OD research and practice discussed in this chapter are as follows:
1. Laboratory training and T-groups
2. Action research, survey feedback, and sociotechnical systems
3. Management practices
4. Quality and employee involvement
5. Organizational culture
6. Change management, strategic change, and reengineering
7. Organizational learning
8. Organizational effectiveness and employee engagement
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Laboratory Training and T-Groups
By most accounts, what has come to be known as organization development can be traced back to a training
laboratory effort that began in 1946–1947 in Bethel, Maine, at what was then known as the National
Training Laboratory (NTL) in Group Development. The laboratory’s founders, Kenneth Benne, Leland
Bradford, and Ronald Lippitt, were inspired to develop NTL by the dedicated work of a fourth scholar and
their predecessor, Kurt Lewin. A German immigrant who had arrived in the United States in the early 1930s
to escape the sociopolitical environment of his home country, Lewin was a social psychologist on the faculty at
the University of Iowa. His interest was in studying patterns of group behavior, social problems, and the
influence of leadership on a group. At its core, Lewin’s work was an effort to understand and create personal
and social change, with the objective of building and growing democracy in society (see Benne, 1964; L. P.
Bradford, 1974; Hirsch, 1987; Kleiner, 1996).
In the 1940s, with his graduate student, Ron Lippitt, Lewin studied boys’ clubs, specifically boys’ reactions to
different styles adopted by group leaders. Among the research findings, they noted that group leadership
significantly influenced the boys’ patterns of behavior observed in their groups, and when the group leader’s
style changed, so did the behavior patterns in the groups after a short adjustment period (Kleiner, 1996).
Spurred on by the consequences of these results, in 1945 Lewin established a Research Center for Group
Dynamics (a phrase Lewin invented; see L. P. Bradford, 1974) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT).
In the summer of 1946, a significant and unexpected finding occurred that dramatically changed the research
and practitioner landscape at the time. It was at this time that the practices that became the T-group were
discovered by Lewin and his students. The Connecticut Interracial Commission had asked Kurt Lewin to
develop a workshop for community leaders in association with the Commission on Community Interrelations
of the American Jewish Congress. The objective of the workshop was to assist community leaders in
developing solutions to problems that they faced in their communities, specifically addressing problems in the
implementation of the Fair Employment Practices Act. Participants included not only community leaders but
also businesspeople, social workers, teachers, and other interested citizens. Instead of making attendees
passively sit through lengthy lectures, speeches, and presentations by experts, which many of them had been
expecting, organizers developed a workshop in which participatory group discussion, role playing, and
teamwork would be the primary activities (Hirsch, 1987). Group leaders debated whether subgroups should
be homogeneous (e.g., all teachers, all social workers) or mixed (Lippitt, 1949). These two considerations
(group participation and composition) continue as key questions for the OD practitioner today.
For the researchers at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, it was an unusual opportunity to observe
group processes and to understand how participants learned from their experiences in order to develop new
skills that they could use when they returned to their communities. In addition, the workshop fit with the
values that the researchers had espoused at the time. Kenneth Benne would later say,
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I saw it was an effort to help volunteers from various parts of Connecticut to begin to see themselves
as agents of change in their responsible roles as citizens. . . . It seemed to me that this was research
designed to serve both the purposes of social action and the purposes of more refined and powerful
methods of training people for action. (quoted in L. P. Bradford, 1974, p. 19)
As a workshop designed for both social change and social research, each subgroup had a researcher assigned to
it for note-taking and observation purposes.
Each evening, following the discussion session, the researchers convened to discuss the day’s events to
document observations, code interaction, and interpret group behavior. A few of the participants in the day
workshops learned of these researcher meetings and asked if they could sit in and observe. The researchers
agreed and opened the sessions to other participants who were free to attend if they wished.1 The researchers
continued their process of reflecting on and interpreting the participants’ actions during the day while the
participants listened. At one point, one of the researchers stated that he had seen one woman, who had been a
cautious and quiet participant earlier, become a more lively contributor that day as a result of being assigned to
a leadership role during a role-playing activity. Rather than allowing this observation to pass without
comment, the researchers invited the woman (who was present at that evening’s discussion, listening to the
observation being shared) to discuss the hypothesis and to share her own interpretation. The woman agreed
that, yes, it had been more enjoyable to participate as a result of being assigned to the leadership role. She
found herself surprised by how much she was energized by the discussion and how much she changed from
initially being uncomfortable participating to being disappointed when the discussion came to an end (Lippitt,
1949). This exchange led to a promising new pattern in which researchers reported on their observations and
the participants listened, reflected, and shared their own interpretations of their own behavior.
Attendance at the evening sessions soared in subsequent days, with almost all participants attending, and this
led to the researchers’ conclusion:
Group members, if they were confronted more or less objectively with data concerning their own
behavior and its effects, and if they came to participate nondefensively in thinking about these data,
might achieve highly meaningful learnings about themselves, about the responses of others to them,
and about group behavior and group development in general. (Benne, 1964, p. 83)
Lewin seemed to know instinctively that this was a potentially powerful finding, remarking that “we may be
getting hold of a principle here that may have rather wide application in our work with groups” (quoted in
Lippitt, 1949, p. 116). The training group (or T-group) was born.
The following year, 1947, the first T-group session took place at the National Training Laboratory in Bethel,
Maine. T-group sessions were designed to last 3 weeks and comprised approximately 10 to 15 participants
and one or two trainers. The trainers were not leaders of the group, but facilitators and observers of the
group’s processes. They posed questions and suggested activities, but remained listeners who encouraged
50
participation and truthfulness rather than directing group activity (Hirsch, 1987). The content and topic of
the group’s work was developed out of its own chosen goals and objectives; no specific problem-solving tasks
were mandated in the T-group’s unstructured format. In open and honest sessions in which authenticity and
forthright communication were prized, group members spent time analyzing their own and others’
contributions, as well as the group’s processes. Regardless of whatever process the groups followed, the
common objective of each T-group was to create interpersonal change by allowing individuals to learn about
their own and others’ behavior, so that this education could be translated into more effective behavior when
the participants returned home. As the word spread about the effectiveness of the T-group laboratory method,
managers and leaders began to attend to learn how to increase their effectiveness in their own organizations.
Attendance was aided by a BusinessWeek article in 1955 that promoted “unlock[ing] more of the potential” of
employees and teams (“What Makes a Small Group Tick,” 1955, p. 40). By the mid-1960s, more than 20,000
businesspeople had attended the workshop (which had been reduced to a 2-week session), in what may be
considered one of the earliest fads in the field of management (Kleiner, 1996).
The research that Lewin began more than 70 years ago had a significant influence on OD and leadership and
management research. His research on leadership styles (such as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire)
profoundly shaped academic and practitioner thinking about groups and their leaders. His influence on his
students Benne, Bradford, and Lippitt in creating the National Training Laboratory has left a legacy that lives
on today as NTL continues to offer sessions in interpersonal relationships, group dynamics, and leadership
development. The fields of small-group research and leadership development owe a great deal to Lewin’s
pioneering work in these areas. Though the T-group no longer represents mainstream OD practice, we see
the roots of this method today in organization development in team-building interventions (a topic addressed
in detail in Chapter 11). Lewin’s research also influenced another tradition in the history of organization
development—action research and survey feedback.
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Action Research, Survey Feedback, and Sociotechnical Systems
Recall that Kurt Lewin had founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics in 1945 at MIT to develop
research findings and translate them into practical, actionable knowledge that could be used by practitioners to
improve groups and solve their problems. Lewin called this model action research to capture the idea that the
research projects at their core always had both pragmatic and theoretical components, and that rigorous
scientific methods could be used to gather data about groups and to intervene in their processes
(Cunningham, 1993). Two important developments during this time were a survey feedback process and the
field of sociotechnical systems.
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Survey Feedback
While Lewin and his colleagues were developing the T-group methodology, an effort was taking place at the
University of Michigan, where a Survey Research Center was founded in 1946 under the direction of Rensis
Likert. In his PhD dissertation at Columbia in 1932, Likert had developed a 5-point scale for measuring
attitudes (a scale known today as the Likert scale). One of the first “clients” brought to Michigan was that of
the Office of Naval Research, which was “focused on the underlying principles of organizing and managing
human activity and on researching techniques to increase productivity and job satisfaction” (Frantilla, 1998, p.
21). The contract with the Office of Naval Research provided needed and important funding for Likert’s work
on management practices in particular, culminating in a 1961 book, New Patterns of Management, which
reported the results of his funded research. (These findings are discussed in the next section.)
The Survey Research Center’s goal was to create a hub for social science research, specifically with survey
research expertise. Sensing an opportunity to improve their organizations, derive economic success, and
develop a competitive advantage, some organizations proposed survey research projects to the center but were
denied because the center aimed to focus on larger projects of significant importance beyond a single
organization and to share the results publicly. These two criteria (addressing questions of larger significance
and making the results known to other researchers and practitioners) formed the core of the action research
process. One such project that met these criteria was a survey feedback project at Detroit Edison.
Members of the Survey Research Center conducted a 2-year study at Detroit Edison from 1948 to 1950. The
survey of 8,000 employees and managers was administered to understand perceptions, opinions, and attitudes
about a variety of aspects of the company, such as career progression and opportunities for advancement,
opinions about managers and colleagues, and the work content and work environment itself. The survey also
asked supervisors specifically about their opinions about managing at the company, and invited senior leaders
and executives to offer additional perceptions from the perspective of top management. The researchers
sought to understand not only how employees at Detroit Edison felt about the organization but also how the
results of this project could be used to understand, instigate, and lead change in other organizations. There
were four objectives of the research project:
1. To develop through first-hand experience an understanding of the problems of producing change
2. To improve relationships
3. To identify factors that affected the extent of the change
4. To develop working hypotheses for later, more directed research. (Mann, 1957, p. 158)
Following the initial data collection, feedback was given to leaders and organizational members about the
survey results. Mann (1957) described the process of sharing this feedback as an “interlocking chain of
conferences” (p. 158) in which initially the results were shared with the top management, assisted by a
member of the research team. At this meeting, participants discussed the results, possible actions, and how the
results would be shared with the next level of the organization. Next, each of those participants led a feedback
discussion with his or her team about the research results, also conducting action planning and discussing how
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the results would be shared with the next level. This pattern continued throughout the organization. At each
level, the data relevant to that specific group were discussed. Mann noted that the leaders in each case had the
responsibility of presenting the data, prioritizing tasks, taking action, and reporting to their supervisors when
they had reached an impasse and needed additional assistance to produce change. The researchers observed
that this series of feedback meetings had a very positive influence on initiating and leading change in the
organization, but they had been unable to substantiate this observation with data.
In 1950 that changed with a second study conducted in eight accounting departments at Detroit Edison that
had participated in the first survey. For this stage of the research, managers reviewed the two sets of survey
results with employees (those from the first 1948 survey and those from this second 1950 survey) and again
conducted action planning. One difference from the first round, however, was that a natural field experiment
was set up. In four of the eight departments, after the initial feedback meeting, no action was taken based on
the survey results (two intentionally as “control” departments; two due to personnel changes that made it
impossible to continue to include them in the experiment). In the four departments that did take action,
managers developed action planning programs that differed significantly from one another. Some programs
took as long as 33 weeks, while others took 13; some departments met as frequently as 65 times, while others
met as few as 9. Some department action programs involved all employees, while others were limited to the
management team. Almost 2 years after the programs were initiated, a third survey was conducted in 1952 to
assess the impact of the programs that the managers had developed. Thus, the experiment allowed the
researchers to compare the 1950 and 1952 data for groups that had taken significant action and those that had
taken no action.
The researchers found that among the groups that had taken action based on the survey results, employees
reported a positive change in perceptions about their jobs (such as how important it was and how interested
they were in the job), their supervisors (such as the manager’s ability to supervise and give praise), and the
company work environment (such as opportunities for promotion or the group’s productivity) compared to the
groups that had taken no action. Moreover, Mann (1957) reported,
Employees in the experimental departments saw changes in (1) how well the supervisors in their
department got along together; (2) how often their supervisors held meetings; (3) how effective
these meetings were; (4) how much their supervisor understood the way employees looked at and
felt about things. (p. 161)
Mann added that the change was even stronger in groups that involved all levels and employees in the action
planning process. The researchers then could conclude that the conference feedback model they had
developed was an effective one, in which data were collected and fed back to organizational members who
took action to initiate changes based on the data and discussion of it.
Today, action research, following a model similar to what was done at Detroit Edison, is the foundation and
underlying philosophy of the majority of OD work, particularly survey feedback methodologies. This model
forms the basis of the OD process that we will discuss in greater detail in Chapter 5. Employee surveys are
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now a common strategy in almost all large organizations, and action research feedback programs have become
one of the most prevalent OD interventions (Church, Burke, & Van Eynde, 1994). We will discuss the use of
survey methodologies specifically as a data gathering strategy again in Chapter 7.
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Sociotechnical Systems
Sociotechnical systems (STS) was developed in the 1950s, driven by the action research philosophy described
earlier, at about the same time as the Detroit Edison survey research project was taking place. The concept of
sociotechnical systems is generally traced to a study of work groups in a British coal mine reported by Trist
and Bamforth (1951), and was further pioneered at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London by
Fred Emery (1959). The Trist and Bamforth study outlined social and psychological changes in work groups
that occurred during a transition to more mechanized (versus manual) methods of extracting coal. They write
that the study of coal workers shows that there is both a technological system (the mechanics) and a social
system (relationships in work groups) in organizations that exert forces on an individual worker, and that the
health of the system must take into account these two factors. The technological system consists of not just
information technology as we might think of it today, but the skills, knowledge, procedures, and tools that
employees use to do their jobs. The social system consists of the relationships between coworkers and
supervisors, communication and information flow, values and attitudes, and motivation. In STS, OD
interventions examine more than the social system, but in addition “arrangements of people and technology
are examined to find ways to redesign each system for the benefit of the other in the context of the
organizational mission and needs for survival” (Pasmore, Francis, Haldeman, & Shani, 1982, p. 1182).
Cherns (1976), in describing and summarizing common sociotechnical design principles, acknowledged that
those involved in work design often focused heavily on only one of the two systems, writing “that what they
are designing is a sociotechnical system built around much knowledge and thought on the technical and little
on the social side of the system” (p. 784).
Importantly, the technological system and social system interact with one another. An important principle of
STS is that of joint optimization, which explains that “an organization will function optimally only if the
social and technological systems of the organization are designed to fit the demands of each other and the
environment” (Pasmore et al., 1982, p. 1182). One method by which joint optimization can be achieved is
through an autonomous or semiautonomous work group, where members have some degree of ownership,
control, and responsibility for the tasks that need to be performed. To jointly optimize both the social and
technical systems of the organization requires an understanding of
1. the social processes that occur in organizations and the variety of theories and methods that exist to
make more efficient use of human resources;
2. the technological processes used by the organization and the constraints that it places on the design and
operations of the social system;
3. the theory of open systems, because no two organizations are exactly alike or are faced with the same
environmental demands; and
4. the mechanics of change, both in the execution of the initial sociotechnical system design and in
provision for the continual adaptation of the organization to new environmental demands. (Pasmore &
Sherwood, 1978, p. 3)
Once a thorough diagnostic stage is completed to understand the social and technical system, the practitioner
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might propose interventions that could include “restructuring of work methods, rearrangements of technology,
or the redesign of organizational social structures” (Pasmore & Sherwood, 1978, p. 3). As we will learn about
more in the next section, findings of studies conducted at the time provided empirical evidence that
involvement and participation in both the social and technical systems contributed to employee motivation
and productivity.
Sociotechnical systems theory and practices are followed today by OD practitioners. Several global versions or
variants have been developed as North American STS, Scandinavian STS, Australian STS, and Dutch STS,
all with foundationally similar yet distinct approaches and philosophies (van Eijnatten, Shani, & Leary, 2008).
Despite the fact that early studies of STS may have concentrated on manufacturing or physical production
environments, there is increasing recognition that STS concepts have an important role to play today in our
understanding of knowledge work, or how information technology and automation combine with social
collaboration practices to affect our work environments.
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Management Practices
Based in part on findings from survey feedback and sociotechnical systems projects, several research programs
in the 1960s prompted researchers and practitioners to adopt different ways of thinking about management
practices. The aim of these research programs was to offer alternative ways of managing in contrast to the
dominant methods of the time. Four notable research programs include (1) MacGregor’s Theory X and
Theory Y, (2) Likert’s four systems of management, (3) Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid, and (4)
Herzberg’s studies of worker motivation.
Douglas MacGregor, a scholar at MIT and a colleague of Lewin’s during his time there, significantly affected
thinking about management practices in 1960 with the publication of his book The Human Side of Enterprise.
In it, he suggested that “the theoretical assumptions management holds about controlling its human resources
determine the whole character of the enterprise” (p. vii). He believed that managers held implicit and explicit
assumptions (or “espoused theories”) about people, their behavior, and the character of work, and he noted
that it was quite easy to hear how those theories influenced managers. In fact, he gave each of his readers an
assignment:
Next time you attend a management staff meeting at which a policy problem is under discussion or
some action is being considered, try a variant on the pastime of doodling. Jot down the assumptions
(beliefs, opinions, convictions, generalizations) about human behavior made during the discussion
by the participants. Some of these will be explicitly stated (“A manager must himself be technically
competent in a given field in order to manage professionals within it”). Most will be implicit, but
fairly easily inferred (“We should require the office force to punch time clocks as they do in the
factory”). It will not make too much difference whether the problem under discussion is a human
problem, a financial or a technical one. Tune your ear to listen for assumptions about human
behavior, whether they relate to an individual, a particular group, or people in general. The length
and variety of your list will surprise you. (MacGregor, 1960, pp. 6–7)
MacGregor argued that managers often were not conscious of the theories that influenced them (remarking
that they would likely disavow their theories if confronted with them), and he noted that in many cases these
theories were contradictory. Not only do all actions and behaviors of managers reflect these theories,
MacGregor believed, but the then-current literature in management and organizational studies also echoed
these assumptions. He categorized the elements of the most commonly espoused assumptions about people
and work and labeled them Theory X and Theory Y.
Theory X can be summarized as follows:
1. The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if [possible].
2. Because of this human characteristic of dislike of work, most people must be coerced, controlled,
directed, threatened with punishment to get them to put forth adequate effort toward the achievement
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of organizational objectives.
3. The average human being prefers to be directed, wishes to avoid responsibility, has relatively little
ambition, wants security above all. (MacGregor, 1960, pp. 33–34)
In contrast to the assumptions about personal motivation inherent in Theory X, Theory Y articulates what
many see as a more optimistic view of people and work:
1. The expenditure of physical and mental effort in work is as natural as play or rest.
2. External control and the threat of punishment are not the only means for bringing about effort toward
organizational objectives. [People] will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives
to which [they are] committed.
3. Commitment to objectives is a function of the rewards associated with their achievement.
4. The average human being learns, under proper conditions, not only to accept but to seek responsibility.
5. The capacity to exercise a relatively high degree of imagination, ingenuity, and creativity in the solution
of organizational problems is widely, not narrowly, distributed in the population.
6. Under the conditions of modern industrial life, the intellectual potentialities of the average human being
are only partially utilized. (MacGregor, 1960, pp. 47–48)
MacGregor wrote that adopting the beliefs of Theory Y was necessary to bring about innovative advances in
products, technologies, and solutions to existing problems, and that managers would need to shed some of
their existing assumptions about controlling people in favor of a more expansive and humanistic orientation to
human behavior in organizations. His work went on to recommend several ways to put Theory Y assumptions
into practice, including documenting job descriptions, restructuring the performance appraisal process, and
more effectively managing salary increases and promotions.
At about the same time as MacGregor was arguing for a new set of assumptions about management, Likert
(1961, 1967) studied four alternative ways of managing, the foundations of which correlate strongly with
MacGregor’s work. He agreed with MacGregor’s assessment of the current state of management, writing that
“most organizations today base their standard operating procedures and practices on classical organizational
theories. These theories rely on key assumptions made by well-known practitioners of management and reflect
the general principles they expound” (Likert, 1967, p. 1). Likert conducted a study in which he asked
managers to think of the most productive and least productive divisions in their organizations and to place
them on a continuum reflecting their management practices, which he labeled as Systems 1 through 4:
System 1: Exploitative authoritative. Managers use fear, threats, and intimidation to coerce employees to
act. Information flow is downward and comprises orders being issued to subordinates. Upward
communication is distorted due to fear of punishment. Decisions are made at the top of the
organization. No teamwork is present.
System 2: Benevolent authoritative. Managers occasionally use rewards but also punishment. Information
flow is mostly downward. Most decisions are made at highest levels, but some decision making within a
narrow set of guidelines is made at lower levels. Some teamwork is present.
System 3: Consultative. Managers use rewards and occasional punishment. Information flow is both
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downward and upward. Many decisions are made at the top but are left open for decision making at
lower levels. Teamwork is frequently present. Goals are set after discussion of problems and potential
solutions.
System 4: Participative group. Managers involve groups in setting and measuring goals. Information flow
is downward, upward, and horizontal. Decision making is done throughout the organization and is
characterized by involvement and participation. Teamwork is substantial. Members take on significant
ownership to set rigorous goals and objectives.
Likert (1961, 1967) found that managers reported that the most productive departments were run using a
participative group management style, and that the least productive departments were led by managers who
modeled an exploitative authoritative style. Despite this finding, Likert reported that most managers adopted
the latter, not the former, style. To stress the point more forcefully, Likert (1967) followed up this perception
data with quantitative data that showed a rise in productivity after a manager began to increasingly adopt the
System 4 behaviors of participative management.
A third research program attempting to demonstrate a new set of management values and practices was that
of Blake and Mouton. In The Managerial Grid, Blake and Mouton (1964) noticed that management practices
could be plotted on a chart where the manager demonstrated a degree of “concern for production” and a
“concern for people.” Each of these could be mapped on a grid, with a score from 1 (low) to 9 (high). A high
concern for production but a low concern for people was referred to as a “9,1 style.” A manager adopting this
style would demonstrate behaviors such as watching and monitoring employees, correcting mistakes,
articulating policies and procedures, specifying deadlines, and devoting little time to motivation or employee
development. Blake and Mouton advocate a 9,9 approach to management in which managers demonstrate
both a high concern for production and a high concern for people, noting that one value of this style is that
there is no inherent conflict between allowing the organization to reach its goals and demonstrating a concern
for people at the same time. The 9,9 style, they argue, creates a healthier environment, because “people can
work together better in the solutions of problems and reach production goals as a team or as individuals when
there is trust and mutual support than when distrust, disrespect, and tensions surround their interactions”
(Blake & Mouton, 1964, pp. 158–159). Blake and Mouton’s grid OD program, detailed in subsequent
volumes (Blake & Mouton, 1968, 1978), defined a five-phase intervention program in which managers are
trained on the grid concept and complete team-building activities, work on intergroup coordination, and build
and implement the ideal organization.
As a fourth example of research in management practices, in a research program beginning in the late 1950s,
Frederick Herzberg began to explore the attitudes that people had about their jobs in order to better
understand what motivates people at work. A number of studies had sought to answer the question “What do
workers want from their jobs?” throughout the previous decades, with contradictory results. In interpreting the
studies, Herzberg suspected that job satisfaction was not the opposite of job dissatisfaction. In other words, he
believed that different factors might be at play when workers were satisfied with their jobs than when they
reported being dissatisfied with their jobs.
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Through a series of in-depth interviews, Herzberg and a team of researchers set out to investigate. They asked
people to reflect on important incidents that had occurred to them in their jobs—both positive and negative—
and asked participants to explain what it was about that event that made them feel especially good or bad
about the job.
The results showed that people are made dissatisfied by bad environment, the extrinsics of the job.
But they are seldom made satisfied by good environment, what I called the hygienes. They are made
satisfied by the intrinsics of what they do, what I call the motivators. (Herzberg, 1993, pp. xiii–xiv)
In the initial 1959 publication and through subsequent studies, Herzberg explained the key motivators that
contributed to job enrichment, in what has been called his motivation-hygiene theory:
Achievement and quality performance
Recognition for achievement and feedback on performance
Work itself and the client relationship
Responsibility
Advancement, growth, and learning
At the same time, Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman (1959) point out that hygiene factors will not
necessarily contribute to job satisfaction, but can cause job dissatisfaction. “When feelings of unhappiness
were reported, they were not associated with the job itself but with conditions that surround the doing of the
job” (p. 113), such as
Supervision
Interpersonal relationships
Physical working conditions
Salary
Company policies and administrative practices
Benefits
Job security
Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman explain that their research on motivation illustrates why contemporary
managers had such a difficult time motivating employees. Then-popular management programs for
supervisors and wage incentive programs addressed hygiene factors of supervision and monetary
compensation, but did little to address the factors such as achievement and work itself that truly motivated
employees.
The work of MacGregor, Likert, Blake and Mouton, and Herzberg is illustrative of an era of research in
which scholars and practitioners be…