Organizational Change And Development

8 Pages 1946 Words

ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT AND INTERVENTIONS
What is organization development? “Organization development is a process that applies behavioral science knowledge and practices to help organizations achieve greater effectiveness”. (Cumming and Worley, 2001). The purpose of organization development is basically to help the company grow and develop as an organization. “Organization development is an effort, planned organization wide and managed from the top to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization’s processes, using behavioral science knowledge”. (Rouda and Kusy, 1995). In other words organization development is a system and or effort that are set up in a specific way. In the table shown below is the “planed system of change” (Jacobs, 1994).
TABLE 1
• Planned. OD takes a long-range approach to improving organizational performance and efficiency. It avoids the (usual) "quick-fix".
• Organization-wide. OD focuses on the total system.
• Managed from the top. To be effective, OD must have the support of top-management. They have to model it, not just espouse it. The OD process also needs the buy-in and ownership of workers throughout the organization.

2

• Increase organization effectiveness and health. OD is tied to the bottom-line. Its goal is to improve the organization, to make it more efficient and more competitive by aligning the organization's systems with its people.
• Planned interventions. After proper preparation, OD uses activities called interventions to make system wide, permanent changes in the organization.
• Using behavioral-science knowledge. OD is a discipline that combines research and experience to understanding people, business systems, and their interactions.
There are several ways organizations go about change efforts, examples are technological innovation, training and development or new product development. These ways a...