Organization development facts for kids

Organization development (OD) is about helping groups and organizations change and grow. It's a way to study and use practices, systems, and techniques that make an organization better. The main goal is to improve how a group or company performs and its overall culture. These changes are usually started by the people who have a big interest in the group, like its owners or leaders.

OD started in the 1930s when experts realized that how an organization is set up affects how its workers behave and what motivates them. It helps businesses create and keep a new, better way of working. Key ideas in OD include:

• Organizational climate: This is like the "mood" or "personality" of a company. It includes the attitudes and beliefs that influence how people act together.
• Organizational culture: These are the deep-seated rules, values, and behaviors that everyone in the company shares.
• Organizational strategies: This is how a company finds problems, plans what to do, makes changes, and checks its progress.

A big part of OD is looking at a company's identity, which is how it sees itself and how others see it.

What is Organization Development?

Organization development is an ongoing, step-by-step process. It helps make effective changes in a company. OD is both a field of study and a practical way to manage change. It combines ideas from many different subjects. These include sociology, psychology (especially about work and organizations), and theories about what makes people act the way they do.

Newer fields like systems thinking (looking at how all parts of something work together) and organizational learning (how companies learn) also play a role. Experts in these areas help companies change and improve.

History of OD

Kurt Lewin (1898–1947) is often called the "founding father" of OD. He came up with ideas like group dynamics (how groups interact) and action research. These ideas are key to how OD works. Lewin started the "Research Center for Group Dynamics" at MIT. After he passed away, his colleagues helped create the National Training Laboratories (NTL). This is where "T-groups" (training groups) and group-based OD began.

During World War II (1939-1945), Lewin tried out a new way of making changes. He worked with a group, planning, taking action, and then checking the results. This was the start of action research, which is still important in OD today. Lewin also created a learning method called laboratory training, or T-groups.

After Lewin's death in 1947, his friends helped develop survey methods at the University of Michigan. These surveys became a big part of OD. In the 1950s, Douglas and Richard Beckhard first used the term "organization development" (OD). They used it to describe a new way of making changes from the bottom up in a company.

Early training often happened in "stranger groups." These groups had people from different companies. But it was hard for people to use what they learned back in their own workplaces. This led to applying the training to "family groups," which are groups within the same organization. This shift helped the idea of organization development grow.

Core Values of OD

OD is built on values that focus on people. Experts Margulies and Raia (1972) explained these values:

• Giving people chances to be human beings, not just workers.
• Helping every person and the organization itself reach their full potential.
• Trying to make the organization better at reaching all its goals.
• Creating a workplace where people can find exciting and challenging work.
• Giving people a say in how they work and how they connect with the organization.
• Treating each person as an individual with many needs, all important to their work and life.

Goals of OD

The main goals of OD are:

• To increase trust among employees.
• To make employees happier and more dedicated.
• To face problems instead of ignoring them.
• To handle disagreements well.
• To increase teamwork and cooperation among employees.
• To improve how the organization solves problems.
• To set up ways to keep improving the organization all the time.

OD programs are often made to fit specific situations. But generally, they all try to:

• Help employees understand the company's vision.
• Encourage employees to solve problems.
• Strengthen trust, teamwork, and communication.
• Encourage everyone to help with planning.
• Create a work environment where employees want to work and participate.
• Replace strict rules with personal knowledge and skills.
• Help people accept changes and break old habits.
• Create a trusting environment so employees welcome change.

OD gives managers tools to make changes in a planned way. This leads to better results for individuals, groups, and the whole organization.

The Change Agent

A "change agent" in OD is not just a technical expert. They are a behavioral scientist. This means they understand how people act and how to help them solve their own problems. A change agent's main strength is knowing a lot about human behavior. They also use special techniques to help.

A change agent can be from outside the company or work inside it. An internal change agent is usually a staff member who knows about behavioral science and OD methods. Some companies even train their own employees to be change agents. Researchers at the University of Oxford found that leaders can be good change agents if they are committed to "knowledge leadership." This means they actively share and use new ideas to develop the organization.

The Sponsoring Organization

OD programs often start when an organization has a problem or expects one. This means that the top leaders know there's an issue and want help solving it. Just like someone seeking therapy, the company must want help. This shows the company is willing to accept help and that its leaders care.

Using Behavioral Science

One special thing about OD is that it's based on a "helping relationship." The change agent doesn't just tell the company what to do. Instead, they use ideas and methods from sciences like psychology, sociology, and economics. Their main job is to help the organization figure out and solve its own problems. The main method used is called action research.

Looking at the Whole Organization

OD looks at the entire organization as one big system. It also looks at smaller parts, like departments or workgroups, but always in the context of the whole system. OD understands that if one part of a system changes, it affects all the other parts. So, OD efforts focus on the whole culture and how things work in organizations. They also focus on groups, because how individuals behave in a company is often shaped by their groups.

Better Organizational Performance

The goal of OD is to make an organization better at handling its internal and external activities. This means improving how people interact, how groups work, and how well they communicate. It also means getting better at solving all kinds of organizational problems. OD helps improve decision-making, leadership styles, and how to deal with conflicts. It also aims to build more trust and cooperation among employees.

These goals come from a belief that people can achieve great things in a supportive environment. OD also uses a scientific approach: asking questions, looking for causes, testing ideas, and checking results.

Self-managing workgroups are teams where members manage, control, and monitor all parts of their work. This includes hiring new employees and deciding when to take breaks. In these groups, employees:

• Take personal responsibility for their work results.
• Check their own performance and ask for feedback.
• Manage their performance and fix things if needed.
• Ask for help and resources from the organization when they need them.
• Help other team members and groups improve their work and the company's overall success.

Organizational Self-Renewal

The main aim of OD experts is to help the company learn to help itself. They want to leave the company with the tools, behaviors, and plans to check its own health and make changes for its own improvement. This is like a system that can fix itself. OD experts use tools like simulations in workshops to help companies learn this.

The study of how well organizations perform and how to improve them has grown alongside leadership development. This often focuses on programs that help individuals become better leaders.

Understanding Organizations

Weisbord created a "six-box model" to help understand organizations:

• Purposes: Are people clear about the company's mission and goals? Do they support them?
• Structure: How is the work divided? Does the structure fit the company's purpose?
• Relationship: How do individuals and departments work together? How do people fit their jobs?
• Rewards: What does the company officially reward or punish people for?
• Leadership: Leaders need to keep an eye on all parts and keep them balanced.
• Helpful mechanisms: What procedures does the company need to survive and do well? This includes planning, budgeting, and information systems.

Modern Development

Recently, people have started to question if OD is still relevant for managing change in today's companies. Some of its founders even talk about "reinventing" the field.

With this call for change, experts have started looking at OD from an emotional point of view. For example, deKlerk (2007) wrote about how emotional stress can hurt performance. Things like job cuts, outsourcing, and mergers can make employees feel anxious, fearful, or angry. This can lower their performance. de Klerk suggests that to heal this stress, OD experts must:

• Recognize that the stress exists.
• Provide a safe place for employees to talk about their feelings.
• Help employees understand and put the stress in perspective.
• Allow and deal with emotional responses.

One way to do this is by having employees draw pictures of their feelings and then discuss them. Drawing can help express emotions that are hard to put into words.

New technologies and globalization have also changed OD. Roland Sullivan (2005) described OD as a "transformative leap to a desired vision." This means aligning strategies and systems with local culture, using innovative leadership, and high-tech tools. Bob Aubrey (2015) introduced "Key Development Indicators" (KDIs) to help companies align strategy, organizations, and individuals. He argued that new challenges like robotics and artificial intelligence will lead to a new era for OD.

Action Research

Wendell L French and Cecil Bell once defined OD as "organization improvement through action research." This idea is central to OD's way of thinking. Kurt Lewin believed that people are more likely to accept new ways if they are involved in decisions that affect them. He said that good social management moves in a cycle: planning, taking action, and then checking the results of that action.

Figure 1: How Action Research Works

Lewin described the process of change in three steps:

• Unfreezing: People realize they need to change because of a problem or new information.
• Changing: The situation is looked at, and new ways of behaving are tried out.
• Refreezing: The new behavior is checked. If it works and is helpful, it becomes a regular part of how things are done.

Figure 1 shows these steps. Action research is a cycle of change. It starts with planning, where the company and the change agent work together. This includes figuring out the problem, gathering information, sharing the results, and planning actions. This is the "input" stage, where the company realizes it has problems and might need help.

The second stage is "action." This involves learning activities and making changes in the company. If needed, the plan can be adjusted based on feedback (Feedback Loop A in Figure 1). After training or learning, these actions are put into practice.

The third stage is "results." This is where you see the actual changes in behavior. More information is gathered to see how things are going. Small adjustments can be made (Feedback Loop B). Bigger changes might mean going back to the planning stage. This cycle of planning, action, and checking results helps the company learn and improve continuously.

Action research focuses on problems, the client (the company), and taking action. It involves the company in finding and solving its own problems. Information is shared openly, and the company and change agent work together to find problems, understand their causes, and plan solutions. It's a scientific approach, even if not as strict as in a lab. Action research also helps the company develop its own tools for self-analysis and continuous improvement.

OD Interventions

"Interventions" are the main learning activities in the "action" stage of OD (see Figure 1). They are planned activities used by members of a company to improve how they work or interact. A change agent might introduce them, or the company might use them later to check its health or make changes. These activities can be things like exercises, surveys, interviews, group discussions, or even informal meetings. Any action that helps improve a company's program can be called an intervention.

There are many intervention strategies. They are based on certain ideas about how organizations work. Richard Beckhard listed six such ideas:

• The basic parts of an organization are groups (teams). So, groups are the main units of change, not just individuals.
• A constant goal is to reduce unhealthy competition between parts of the organization and encourage more teamwork.
• In a healthy organization, decisions are made where the information is, not just by someone in a high position.
• Organizations, their parts, and individuals constantly work towards goals. Checks are just temporary measurements, not the main way to manage.
• A healthy organization aims for open communication, mutual trust, and confidence across all levels.
• People support what they help create. People affected by a change must be able to actively participate and feel like they own the plan and its execution.

Interventions can focus on individuals, teams, how different groups work together, or the whole organization. Some focus on "task issues" (what people do), while others focus on "process issues" (how people do it). Interventions also emphasize different things like feedback, new cultural norms, communication, conflict, or learning new skills.

One of the hardest jobs for a change agent is to create a safe environment for learning and change in the company. In a good environment, learning builds on itself. But if people feel threatened, learning can stop. It can be hard to try new things if employees feel it's not safe to share their true feelings. This means important feedback might not be given. Trying new ways might also seem risky because it goes against old rules.

The change agent must deal with these challenges. Things that help them succeed are:

• A real need for change in the company.
• True support from the company's leaders.
• The change agent setting a good example by listening and being supportive.
• A strong understanding of human behavior.
• Knowing how systems work.
• Believing that people are smart and can learn better ways to do things.

Some examples of interventions include team building, coaching, large group meetings, mentoring, performance appraisals, and leadership development.

See also