Introduction to OD

Dr.Yogananthan

Content

Definition
History of OD
Characteristics
Qualities of an effective org
5 rules
OD goals

Definitions
Thomas Cummings- organization development
is a system-wide process of applying behavioralscience knowledge to the planned change and
development of the strategies, design
components, and processes that enable
organizations to be effective.
OD may be defined as a systematic, integrated
and planned approach to improve the
effectiveness of the enterprise. It is designed to
solve problems that adversely affect the
operational efficiency at all levels (Koontz
ET. Al. 1980).

Definitions
Richard Beckhard (1969- an effort [that
is] (1) planned, (2) organization-wide, and
(3) managed from the top, to (4) increase
organization effectiveness and health
through (5) planned interventions in the
organizations processes, using
behavioral-science knowledge

OD is an effort.which is

planned,
organization-wide, and
managed from the top,
to increase organization effectiveness and
health through
planned interventions

HISTORY OF OD
In a little over 50 years, 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.

Social processes

The earliest applications of OD involved helping organizations improve

social processes including relationships among members, communication,
group decision-making, and leadership.
ODs response to these social problems started in the late 1940s with the
work of Kurt Lewin and his colleagues in laboratory training. It began with a
training program for community leaders which included both cognitive
learning about leadership as well as informal feedback about participant
behavior (Bradford, 1967). This led to the development of laboratory
training, commonly called a T-group, where a small, unstructured group of
participants learn from their own interactions about group dynamics,
leadership, interpersonal relations, and personal growth.
They led to an impressive array of interventions for improving social
processes in organizations, such as team building (Patten, 1981; Dyer,
1987), process consultation (Schein, 1969, 1987, 1998), organization
confrontation meeting (Beckhard, 1967), and, more recently, large-group
interventions such as search conferences and open-space meetings
(Bunker & Alban, 1997).

 It showed how feeding back that information to

members can motivate and guide them to create
meaningful change (Mann, 1962). It provided evidence
that participative systems of management were more
effective than traditional authoritative or benevolent
systems (Likert, 1967).

Work designs
Traditionally, work was designed to
promote technical rationality, resulting in
jobs that were highly specified,
fragmented, and repetitive. (in 1960s)
Employees complained that work was
boring and meaningless; they felt
alienated from their jobs and the
organizations that employed them.

Eric Trist & Colleagues- The socio-technical approach, which

originated in Europe and Scandinavia in the 1950s, structured work
to better integrate technology and people. It resulted in work
designs that enhance both productivity and employee satisfaction.
Socio-technical systems also showed that when tasks are highly
interdependent and require significant decision-making, teams
comprised of multi-skilled members who can make relevant
decisions are the most effective work design (Cummings &
Srivastva, 1977). Today, such self-managed work teams are the
cornerstone of work design in many organizations.
Fredrick Herzberg & Colleagues- job enrichment aimed to make
work more productive and humanly rewarding. It approached work
redesign from a motivational perspective, showing how traditional
jobs could be enriched to make them more motivating and
satisfying.

Human Resources 1970s

human resource practices needed to produce at higher levels at

lower costs.
Because people generally do those things for which they are
rewarded, rewards can play a powerful role in promoting
performance.
Unfortunately, many of the reward systems in use at the time were
not linked closely to performance; employees were typically paid for
a particular job level, time at work, or seniority.
Edward Lawler and his colleagues,- made interventions aimed at
making rewards more contingent on performance.
Gain sharing
Profit sharing
Flexible schemes

Organisational structure
organizations have increasingly faced complex,
rapidly changing environments that often
demand radical changes in how they compete
and design themselves (Mohrman et al., 1989).
This typically includes a so-called SWOT
analysis where the organizations strengths and
weakness are compared to opportunities and
threats in its competitive environment.
These include: high-involvement organizations
that push decision-making, information and
knowledge, and rewards downward to the lowest
levels of the organization (Lawler, 1986);

 boundary less organizations that seek to

eliminate unnecessary borders between
hierarchical levels, functional departments, and
suppliers and customers (Ashkenas et al.,
1995); and
virtual organizations that focus on the
organizations core competence while
outsourcing most other functions to other
organizations who do them better (Davidow &
Malone, 1992).

CHARACTERISTICS OF
OD
1. There is a planned program involving the whole
system.
2. The top of the organization is aware of and committed
to the program and to the management of it.
3. It is related to the organizations mission.
4. It is a long-term effort.
5. Activities are action-oriented.
6. It focuses on changing attitudes and/or behavior.
7. It usually relies on some form of experienced-based
learning activities.
8. OD efforts work primarily with groups.

Qualities of effective orgs

a. The total organization, the significant subparts, and individuals

manage their work against goals and plans for achievement of these
goals.
b. Form follows function (the problem, or task, or project determines how the human resources are organized).
c. Decisions are made by and near the sources of information
regardless of where these sources are located on the organization
chart.
d. The reward system is such that managers and supervisors are
rewarded (and punished) comparably for:
short-term profit or production performance,
growth and development of their subordinates,
creating a viable working group.

e. Communication laterally and vertically is relatively undistorted.

People are generally open and confronting. They share all the
relevant facts including feelings.

f. There is a minimum amount of inappropriate win/lose activities

between individuals and groups. Constant effort exists at all levels to
treat conflict situations as problems subject to problem-solving
methods
g. There is high con.ict (clash of ideas) about tasks and projects,
and relatively little energy spent in clashing over interpersonal
difficulties because they have been generally worked through.
h. The organization and its parts see themselves as interacting with
each other and with a larger environment. The organization is an
open system.
i. There is a shared value and management strategy to support it, of
trying to help each person (or unit) in the organization maintain his
(or its) integrity and uniqueness in an interdependent environment.
j. The organization and its members operate in an action- research
way. General practice is to build in feedback mechanisms so that
individuals and groups can learn from their own experience.

5 rules to be effective org

The first rule is that the organization must have an
effective program for the recruitment and development of
talent.
The second rule for the organization capable of
continuous renewal is that it must be a hospitable
environment for the individual.
The third rule is that the organization must have built-in
provisions for self-criticism.
The fourth rule is that there must be liquidity in the
internal structure.
The fifth rule is that the organization must have some
means of combating the process by which men become
prisoners of their procedures (Gardner, 1965).

OD - Goals
1. To develop a self-renewing, viable system that
can organize in a variety of ways depending on
tasks.
2. To optimize the effectiveness of both the
stable (the basic organization chart) and the
temporary systems (the many projects,
committees, etc., through which much of the
organizations work is accomplished) by built-in,
continuous improvement mechanisms.
3. To move toward high collaboration and low
competition between interdependent units.

 4. To create conditions where con.ict is brought

out and managed. One of the fundamental
problems in unhealthy (or less than healthy)
organizations is the amount of energy that is
dysfunctionally used trying to work around, or
avoid, or cover up, con.icts which are inevitable
in a complex organization.
5. To reach the point where decisions are made
on the basis of information source rather than
organizational role.

Sociotechnical systems
A sociotechnical system is the term usually given to any
instantiation of socio and technical elements engaged in
goal directed behaviour.
Sociotechnical systems are a particular expression of
sociotechnical theory, although they are not necessarily
one and the same thing.
Sociotechnical systems (STS) in
organizational development is an approach to complex
organizational work design that recognizes the
interaction between people and technology in
workplaces.
The term sociotechnical systems was coined in the
1960s by Eric Trist and Fred Emery, who were working
as consultants at the Tavistock Institute in London.

 Sociotechnical systems theory is theory

about the social aspects of people and
society and technical aspects of
organizational structure and processes.
Sociotechnical refers to the
interrelatedness of social and technical
aspects of an organisation. Sociotechnical
theory therefore is about joint optimization.

Sociotechnical theory - two main principles:

One is that the interaction of social and technical factors creates the
conditions for successful (or unsuccessful) organizational
performance. This interaction is comprised partly of linear cause
and effect relationships (the relationships that are normally
designed) and partly from non-linear, complex, even unpredictable
relationships (the good or bad relationships that are often
unexpected). Whether designed or not, both types of interaction
occur when socio and technical elements are put to work.
The corollary of this, and the second of the two main principles, is
that optimization of each aspect alone (socio or technical) tends to
increase not only the quantity of unpredictable, un-designed
relationships, but those relationships that are injurious to the
systems performance.

STS theory principle components

Responsible autonomy Adaptability- restore fitness & complexity
Whole tasks -A whole task has the advantage of placing
responsibility for the [] task squarely on the shoulders of a single,
small, face-to-face group which experiences the entire cycle of
operations within the compass of its membership.[

Meaningfulness of tasks-for each participant the

task has total significance and dynamic closure

Socio technical systems

approach

Job enrichment
Job enlargement
Job rotation
Motivation
Process improvement
Task analysis
Work design

Job enrichment
Job enrichment in organizational development,
human resources management, and
organizational behavior, is the process of giving
the employee a wider and higher level scope of
responsibilitiy with increased decision making
authority. This is the opposite of job
enlargement, which simply would not involve
greater authority. Instead, it will only have an
increased number of duties.[12]

Job enlargement
Job enlargement means increasing the scope of
a job through extending the range of its job
duties and responsibilities. This contradicts the
principles of specialisation and the
division of labour whereby work is divided into
small units, each of which is performed
repetitively by an individual worker. Some
motivational theories suggest that the boredom
and alienation caused by the division of labour
can actually cause efficiency to fall.

Job rotation
Job rotation is an approach to management
development, where an individual is moved through a
schedule of assignments designed to give him or her a
breadth of exposure to the entire operation.
Job rotation is also practiced to allow qualified
employees to gain more insights into the processes of a
company and to increase job satisfaction through job
variation.
The term job rotation can also mean the scheduled
exchange of persons in offices, especially in public
offices, prior to the end of incumbency or the legislative
period.

Motivation
Motivation in psychology refers to the initiation,
direction, intensity and persistence of behavior.
Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state that
should not be confused with personality or
emotion. Motivation is having the desire and
willingness to do something.
A motivated person can be reaching for a longterm goal such as becoming a professional
writer or a more short-term goal like learning
how to spell a particular word.

Process improvement
Process improvement in organizational
development is a series of actions taken
to identify, analyze and improve existing
processes within an organization to meet
new goals and objectives. These actions
often follow a specific methodology or
strategy to create successful results.

Task analysis
Task analysis is the analysis of how a task is
accomplished, including a detailed description of both
manual and mental activities, task and element
durations, task frequency, task allocation, task
complexity, environmental conditions, necessary clothing
and equipment, and any other unique factors involved in
or required for one or more people to perform a given
task. This information can then be used for many
purposes, such as personnel selection and training, tool
or equipment design, procedure design (e.g., design of
checklists or decision support systems) and automation.

Work design
Work design or job design in
organizational development is the
application of sociotechnical systems
principles and techniques to the
humanization of work. The aims of work
design to improved job satisfaction, to
improved through-put, to improved quality
and to reduced employee problems, e.g.,
grievances, absenteeism.

Backwards & Forwards

Summing up: Today we covered centuries in job
design from the craft era to modern times. Along
the way we reviewed the era of scientific
management, job rotation and enlargement and
the Job Characteristics Theory
Looking Ahead: Next time we continue with job
design and consider some contemporary
approaches as well as the implications of
modern manufacturing and information
technologies on job design.

Reference

Eric Trist & K. Bamforth (1951). Some social and psychological

consequences of the longwall method of coal getting, in: Human
Relations, 4, pp.3-38. p.7-9.
Siebold, G. L. (1991). "The evolution of the measurement of
cohesion". In: Military Psychology, 11(1), 5-26.
P.V.R. Carvalho (2006). "Ergonomic field studies in a nuclear power
plant control room". In: Progress in Nuclear Energy, 48, pp. 51-69
A. Rice (1958). Productivity and social organisation: The
Ahmedabad experiment. London: Tavistock.
R. Carvajal (1983). "Systemic netfields: the systems paradigm
crises. Part I". In: Human Relations 36(3), pp.227-246.
Sitter, L. U., Hertog, J. F. & Dankbaar, B., From complex
organizations with simple jobs to simple organizations with complex
jobs, in: Human Relations, 50(5), 497-536, 1997. p. 498