Model Answers

Course: MBA – 4th Semester

SUBJECT- Organization Change and Intervention Strategies
Paper code: 7394

SECTION-A: Short questions carrying 2 marks each.Attempt all questions.

Q. i)Explain the OCTAPAC Model of climate survey.

Ans. OCTAPACE is an acronym for a kind of culture that is desirable for an
organization to have. It was conceptualised by Prof. Udai Pareek. It stands for:
OPENESS
CONFRONTATION
TRUST
AUTONOMY
PRO-ACTIVITY
AUTHENCITY
COLLABORATION
EXPERIMENTATION

Q. ii) Clarify the role of action research in OD.

Ans. The action research model focuses on planned change as a cyclical process
in which initial research about the organization provides information to guide
subsequent action. Then the results of the action are assessed to provide
further information to guide further action, and so on. This iterative (iterate
means to repeat) cycle of research and action involves considerable
collaboration among organization members and OD practitioners. It places
heavy emphasis on data gathering and diagnosis prior to action planning and
implementation, as well as careful evaluation of results after action is taken.
Action research is traditionally aimed both at helping specific organizations to
implement planned change and at developing more general knowledge that
can be applied to other change and settings. Although action research was
originally developed to have this dual focus on knowledge, it has been adapted
to OD efforts in which the major emphasis is on planned change.
Q.iii) Explain the various stages of team development?
Ans. Following are the stages:-
Stage 1: Forming
Stage 2: Storming
Stage 3: Norming
Stage 4: Performing
Stage 5: Adjourning

Q.iv) Explain the various steps of any proactive OD intervention

Ans. The following are the different kinds of organizational development
interventions:
• Sensitivity training
• Survey feedback
• development discussion
• Goal setting and planning
• Team building and management objective.
• Managerial grid
• Job enrichment, participative management and quality circles.
• Process consultation intervention
• Inter-group Team-Building Interventions
• Third-Party Peacemaking Interventions
• Structural Interventions
Survey feedback intervention: various steps in survey feedback-
a. Provides data and information to all the managers.
b. Information related to the attitude, structure, working conditions will be
included in the survey.
c. Managers analyze the data pertaining to each and every employee and
takes appropriate action.
d. They try to analyze the problem, evaluate the result and correct the
problem.
Q.v) Discuss the barriers of communication with reference to teamwork?
Ans- the barriers that teams need to overcome are:

1. Unclear or unproductive communication

2. Different approaches result in individual being un-trusting of others
3. The team can’t make consensus decisions when required
4. Team doesn’t understand their other team member’s roles
5. Team is not clear and bought into the common goal

Q.vi) What is meant by work re-design?

Ans- Work redesign means restructuring the elements including tasks, duties
and responsibilities of a specific job in order to make it more encouraging and
inspiring for the employees or workers.
Q.vii) What is meant by Process oriented change?
Ans- Organizations may need to reengineer processes to achieve optimum
workflow and productivity. Process-oriented change is often related to an
organization's production process or how the organization assembles products
or delivers services. The adoption of robotics in a manufacturing plant or of
laser-scanning checkout systems at supermarkets are examples of process-
oriented changes.

Q.viii) Discuss Lewin’s model of change.

Ans- Kurt Lewin proposed a three stage theory of change commonly referred to
as Unfreeze discard old behaviours by shaking up the equilibrium linking
rewards with willingness to change and punishment with unwillingness to
change. Change changing or moving efforts are made to substitute new
attitudes, values, and behaviour for old ones is another process of changing
particular behaviour becomes his usual or routine behaviour Refreeze new
attitudes, values, and behaviour are established as the new status quo. Ensure
the organisational compatibility so that the new behaviour is repeated again
and again this calls for reinforcement of new behaviour to make it one’s usual
or status quo behaviour.

Q. ix) Define Instrumented training

Ans- Instrumented training is a vision, focus, direction and action planning
document for training and development in an organization that requires
implementation to achieve success. It is a strategy that needs to support the
optimization of the human resource capital in the organization..

Q. x) Describe any two reasons for organization level resistance to change.

Ans- Following are the two reasons-
 (1) Loss of status or job security in the organization.
(2) Surprise and fear of the unknown.
(3) Organization-level resistance includes resistance to change due
to power and conflict, differences in functional orientation,
mechanistic structure, and organizational culture.
(4) Power and Conflict - Resistance to change due to power and
conflict occurs when a change may benefit one department
within the organization while harming another department
within the organization.
(5) Functional Orientation - Resistance to change due to
differences in functional orientation occurs because
employees or departments with different functions will see
problems and issues differently, thus making it harder to come
to an agreement regarding change.
SECTION-B:
Questions carrying 10 marks each. Attempt any five questions.

1. What do you understand by process consultation? Explain its process.

Ans- Student is expected to define and narrate the process of Process
Consultation. PC is the creation of a relationship with the client that permits
the client to perceive, understand, and act on the process events that occur in
the client’s internal and external environment in order to improve the
situation as defined by the client.
The PC model can also be understood through the list of ten major principles
of the model, which can further help to understand the philosophical stance
of this approach:
1. Always try to be helpful
2. Always stay in touch with the current reality
3. Access your ignorance
4. All acts are interventions
5. Client owns the problem and the solution
6. Go with the flow
7. Timing is crucial
8. Be constructively opportunistic with confrontive interventions
9. Everything is data; your own errors particularly
10. When in doubt, share the problem

2. Discuss historical background of the organizational development?

Ans-Examinee should write the HISTORY OF OD which comprises its origin and
evolutionary trend that should cover the following.
In a little over five decades, OD has evolved a complex and diverse body of
knowledge and practice. Because this expertise derives mainly from helping
organizations change and improve themselves, the history of OD can be
understood in terms of the kinds of changes that organizations have
implemented over this time period. These include
Changes aimed at:
(1) Social processes; (2) work designs; (3) human resources; and (4)
organization structures. Although these changes are interrelated, each
represents a distinct background in the growth of OD.

3. What are the ethical standards in OD? Discuss their role in OD?
Ans-Examinee is expected to narrate the concept of ethical standards in OD. How
to maintain a balance between different goals, values, skills and abilities He
should examine their performance at the time of OD practice. What kind of ethical
dilemmas are faced by OD expert has to be narrated.
To its credit, the field of OD always has shown concern for the ethical conduct of its
practitioners. There have been several articles and symposia about ethics in OD. In addition,
statements of ethics governing OD practices have been sponsored by the Organization
Development Institute, the American Society for Training & Development and a consortium of
professional associations in OD.
The antecedent conditions include an OD practitioner and a client system with different goals,
values, needs, skills and abilities. During the entry and contracting phase these differences
may or may not be addressed and clarified. If the contracting process is incomplete, the
subsequent intervention process or role episode is subject to role conflict and role ambiguity.
Neither the client nor the OD practitioner is clear about respective responsibilities. Each party
is pursuing different goals, and each is using different skills and values to achieve those goals.
Values have played an important role in organization development from its beginning.
Traditionally, OD professionals have professional have promoted a set of values under a
humanistic framework, including a concern for inquiry and science, democracy and being
helpful. They have sought to build trust collaboration; to create an open, problem-solving
climate; and to increase the self-control of organization members. More recently, OD
practitioners have extended those humanistic values to include a concern for improving
organizational effectiveness (for example, to increase productivity or to reduce turnover) and
performance (for example, to increase profitability). They have shown an increasing desire to
optimize both human benefits and production objectives.

Although adherence to statements of ethics helps prevent the occurrence of ethical

problems, OD practitioners still can encounter ethical dilemmas.
Ethical Dilemmas:

White & Wooten see 5 categories of ethical dilemmas in OD:

 Misrepresentation and collusion
 Misuse of Data
  Manipulation and coercion
 Value and goal conflicts
 Technical Ineptness

4. Discuss the OD practices in Indian Organizations?

Ans- Concept of OD in Indian organization
In India, O.D. and planned change started in the early 1960s. A group of Indian
professionals trained at the National Training Laboratories (NTL) at Bethel, Maine,
USA, brought out a good deal of O.D. technology in India. Grid programs were
initiated and widely used in the Small Industries Extension Training (SIET)
Institute, Hyderabad, State Bank of India and in the Indian Institute of
Management (UM) programs in the mid 1960s. Unfortunately these remained
isolated efforts and did not take O.D. to its logical conclusions.
In the mid-1970s, O.D. was first introduced in India in Larsen and Toubro as a
formal and structured part of the HRD department. It was expected that the
change process would get institutionalized and more O.D. specialists would be
developed. Unfortunately, this did not happen as the corporate sector in the
country has a very protected and secure environment and there were very few
compulsions to change. Hence O.D. remained mostly in academic institutions -
the forte of a few specialists and largely limited to T-group training and other
training based interventions. That it has a slow growth is indicated by the fact that
even after 25 years of existence, the Indian Society for Applied Behavioral Science
(ISABS), an associate of NTL, produced less than 100 process specialists in the vast
country.
There have been several efforts to apply O.D. approach and associated techniques
in India but it has not created the desired impact. According to Srinivas (1994),
one plausible explanation for this is that O.D. as it has emerged to date is culture
specific, that it cannot be simply applied to locations outside the US. The issue of
non-transferability of OD technology to cultures such as India has arisen because
of the fear or distrust of its techniques of confrontation. The general practitioner
or the change agent style of informality and an attitude of openness is also not
suited to the Indian context. However, a deeper examination of values embedded
in Indian religion and psycho-philosophy suggests that the cultural values are
indeed largely supportive of organizational renewal and change. The rich cultural
heritage also contains a paradigm of change, based on which new approaches and
designs of O.D. interventions may be possible. And such designs are likely to be
accepted more readily in the country.
The scenario has changed thanks to an increasing number of applied behavioral
scientists and T-group trainers, the HRD movement and establishment of HRD
departments, contributions of multinationals in India and the influence of
Western education. Professional bodies such as ISABS (Indian Society for Applied
Behavioral Sciences), Indian Society for Individual and Social Development (ISISD),
Indian Society for Training & Development (ISTD), and the HRD Network, and
academic institutions such as the IIMs (Indian Institute of Management) have
further facilitated this. In the post liberalization period, everyone has been forced
to seek change. As a result, the application of O.D. technology has increased.
ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTIONS APPLIED BY INDIAN
ORGANISATIONS:
1. Training
2. Action research
3. Survey feed back
4. Human resources development and its audit
5. Role focused interventions
6. Person focused interventions

5. Discuss the various theories about the sources of social power and their
influence in OD process?
Ans- concept of organizational politics and power- Politics is often regarded as
a fact of life in organizations. The premise that every organization is
composed of people who have varied task, career, and personal interests
(Morgan, 1998) allows us to understand an organization as a political entity. “
Hardy and Clegg (1996) present two different perspectives on organizational
power: the functionalist perspective and the critical perspective. The
functionalist perspective indicates that power is exercised during the decision-
making arena as a part of a deliberative strategy to achieve intended
outcomes, and it is also used to control access to the decision-making arena
and hence to ensure compliance through decision (Hardy & Leiba-O’Sullivan,
1998). On the other hand, from the critical perspective, “power is
conceptualized as domination, and actions taken to challenge it constituted
resistance to domination” (Hardy & Clegg, 1996, p. 626). Critical theory
asserts that the dominant group in an organization attempts to exercise
power to manipulate discourses of an organization on behalf of itself.
Sources of Power in Organizations-
 Legitimate Power
 Reward Power
 Coercive Power
 Expert Power
 Referent Power
Power is the ability to influence others. One of the most influential theories of
power comes from the work of French and Raven, who attempted to
determine the sources of power leaders use to influence others. French and
Raven identified five sources of power that can be grouped into two
categories: organizational power (legitimate, reward, coercive) and personal
power (expert and referent). Generally, the personal sources of power are
more strongly related to employees’ job satisfaction, organizational
commitment, and job performance than are the organizational power
sources. One source of organizational power—coercive power—is negatively
related to work outcomes. However, the various sources of power should not
 be thought of as completely separate from each other. Sometimes leaders use
them together in varying combinations depending on the situation. A new
concept of power, referred to as “empowerment,” has become a major
strategy for improving work outcomes.
6. Discuss the various issues and problems in OD research?
Ans- Examinee should make analytical statement of various issues and
problems commonly faced by OD researchers.
The problems confronted being identified and need elaboration are:
(1) Difficulties in using control groups;
(2) Insufficient longitudinal research after an intervention;
(3) Limitations of research designs that restrict the measurement of change;
(4) Inadequate schema for classifying training outcomes;
(5) lack of standardization in training experiences;
(6) Improper timing for the collection of pre-test data;
(7) Difficulties in eliminating the influence of experimenter-participant
relationships in laboratory settings; and
(8) Statistical difficulties associated with measuring change.

7. Explain the Weisbord’s (Six Box) model for organizational diagnosis.

Ans- Student is expected to elucidate various components Weisbord’s Six
Boxmodel. The six-box model is a framework developed by the American
analyst Marvin Weisbord to assess the functioning of organizations. It is a
generic framework and is intended for use across a wide variety of
organizations. It is based mainly on the techniques and assumptions of the
field of organizational development.
The six-box model is comprised of the following components (boxes):
 A. Purposes: What 'businesses' are we in?
B. Structure: How do we divide up the work?
C. Relationships: How do we manage conflict (coordinate) among people with
our technologies?
D. Rewards: Is there an incentive for doing all that needs doing?
E. Leadership: Is someone keeping the boxes in balance?
F. Helpful mechanisms: Have we adequate coordinating technologies?

8. T-groups are probably the oldest OD intervention. Explain the advantages

and disadvantages of using T- groups.
Ans- Concept of T-group OD intervention.
Merits of T-group training
 The trainee learn more about themselves, specially their weakness and
emotions. They understand that how they react to others and how others
react to them
 They discover how the groups work and identify human relation
problems
 Find out how to behave more effectively in inter-personal relationship
and manage people through means rather than power.
 Developed more capable and genuine relations in which feelings are
expressed openly.
 Confront interpersonal problems directly to find out solution instead of
avoiding them.
 After training, trainees usually become more sensitive to others and open.
Such training can also result in improved performance and increased
company’s profit.
The demerits T-group training
 During the training, the trainer often create stressful situation. In such
situation, the training may do a job of tearing apart people instead of
bringing them together.
 The changes trainees acquire during the training are tend to face out when
trainee returns to c insensitive environment of workplace.
 This training may make the management trainee as sensitive towards
others that they become unwilling to take necessary hard decisions.
 T group training proved less effective when it is applied ob technical
professional.
 Such training may make people frustrated and upset as many stressful
situations are created