OD Approaches

Approaches to problem Diagnosis

The phases of OD programmes are as follows:

1. Entry

2. Contracting

3. diagnosis

4. Feedback

5. planning change

6. Intervention

7. Evaluation

Entry represents the initial contact between consultant and client; this includes exploring the situation that led the client to seek a consultant and determining whether there is a good match between the client, the consultant, and the problem atic situation.

Contracting involves establishing mutual expectations; reaching agreement on expenditures of time, money, and resources; and generally clarifying what each party expects to get and give to the other.

Diagnosis is the fact-finding phase, which produces a picture of the situation through  interviews, observations, questionnaires, examination of organization documents, and the like. This phase has two steps: collecting information and analyzing it.

Feedback represents returning the analyzed information to the client system. In this phase, the clients explore the information for understanding,clarification, and accuracy; they own the data as their picture of the situation and their problems and opportunities.

Planning change involves the clients’ deciding what actions to take on the basis of information they have just learned. Alternatives are explored and critiqued; action plans are selected and developed.

Intervention involves implementing sets of actions designed to correct the problems or seize the opportunities.

Evaluation represents assessing the effects of the program: What changes occurred? Are we satisfied with the results?

Cummings and Worley also explore implementation issues. They identify five sets of activities required for effective management of OD and OT programs:

(1)  Motivating change,

(2)  Creating a vision,

(3)  Developing political support,

(4)  Managing the transition,

(5)  Sustaining momentum.

These activities include specific steps for the consultant to take to ensure effective implementation. For example, motivating change involves creating readiness for change and overcoming resistance to change.

Creating a vision involves providing a picture of the future and showing how individuals and groups will fit into that future, as well as providing a road map and interim goals. Developing political support involves obtaining the support of key individuals and groups and influencing key stakeholders to move the change effort for ward. Managing the transition means planning the needed transition activities, getting commitments of people and resources, and creating necessary structures and milestones to help people locomote from “where we are” to “where we want to be.”

Sustaining momentum involves providing resources for the change effort, helping people develop new competencies and skills, and reinforcing the desired new behaviors. These are the details consultants and leaders must attend to when implementing organization development and transformation programs.

Strategies of organization development implementation:

Trust building :

Scholars have widely acknowledge that trust can lead to cooperative behavior among individuals, groups, and organizations. Today, in an era when organizations are searching for new ways to promote cooperation between people and groups to enhance the value they create, it is not surprising that interest in the concept of trust and, in particular, how to promote or actualize it is increasing. For example, many organizations have sought to increase cooperation between people and groups by reengineering their structures into

flatter, more team-based forms, in which authority is decentralized to “empowered” lower-level employees.

Creating readiness for change :

Readiness, which is similar to Lewin’s (1951) concept of unfreezing, is reflected in organizational members’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions regarding the extent to which changes are needed and the organization’s capacity to successfully make those changes. Readiness is the cognitive precursor to the behaviors of either resistance to, or support to the behaviors of either resistance to, or support for, a change effort. Schein (1979) has argued “the reason so many change efforts run into resistance or outright failure is usually directly traceable to their not providing for an effective unfreezing process before attempting a change induction”

Models of organization development

The most commonly considered expression of power in organization research and practice in downward power, which is the influence of a superior over a subordinate. This kind of influence in the form of one having power over another is a central focus in much of our traditional leadership research and training, such as Theory X versus Theory Y or task oriented versus people oriented style. Upward power refers to attempts by subordinates to influence their superiors. Until recently, subordinates were considered relatively powerless. But a small and growing body of research indicates that subordinates can and do influence their superiors in subtle ways. A third direction, sideways power, refers to influence attempts directed at those people who are neither subordinates nor superiors in one’s immediate reporting chain of authority. Horizontal power, interdepartmental power, external relationships, and lateral relationships are all terms that reflect expressions of sideways power.

T – Group training

Efforts to improve group functioning through training have traditionally emphasized the  training of group leadership. And frequently this training has been directed toward the improvement of the skills of the leader in transmitting information and in manipulating groups.

Impact of Organizational Intervention

As our knowledge increases, it begins to be apparent that these competing change strategies are not really different ways of doing the same thing-some more effective and some less effective-but rather that they are different ways of doing different things. They touch the individual, the group, or the organization in different aspects of their functioning. They require differing kinds and amounts of commitment on the part of the client for them to be successful, and they demand different varieties and levels of skills and abilities on the part of the practitioner. Strategies which touch the more deep, personal, private, and central aspects of the individual or his relationships with others fall toward the deeper end of this continuum. Strategies which deal with more external aspects of the individual and which focus on the more formal and public aspects of role behavior tend to fall toward the surface end of the depth dimension. This dimension has the advantage that it is relatively easy to rank change strategies upon it and to get fairly close consensus as to the ranking.