What is OD?

Organization Development (OD) is a field of research, theory, and practice dedicated to expanding the knowledge and effectiveness of people to accomplish more successful organizational change and performance.  OD involves planned activities, processes, and efforts made to improve the effectiveness, productivity, profitability, and quality of work life within an organization. OD, today, focuses on aligning organizations with their rapidly changing and complex environments through organizational learning, knowledge management, and transformation of organizational norms and values. OD holistically examines teams, groups, and departments since the relevant behavior of individuals in organizations and groups is generally a product of the influences of the organization rather than of individual personalities.

Key OD Areas of Inquiry Include:

Organizational Climate: the unique “personality” of an organization, which includes attitudes and beliefs that influence members’ collective behavior

Organizational Culture: the deeply-seated norms, values and behaviors that members share

 Organizational Strategies: how an organization identifies problems, plans action, negotiates change, and evaluates progress

Components of Successful OD Efforts:

Change Agent: The change agent is a behavioral scientist who knows how to get people in an organization involved in defining and solving their own challenges.

Process Consultation: An Action Research process approach consists of analysis, diagnosis, collecting data, feedback of the data to the client, data exploration, identifying initiative audiences, action planning based on data, launch initiatives, and evaluate for effectiveness.

Sponsor: The client, sponsor, must actively seek help in finding a solution to challenges. This indicates commitment to accept help, and assures the teams that management is actively involved.

Systems Context: OD holistically examines a total system (or subsystems) including its relevant environment. Parts of systems are not considered in isolation; the principle of interdependency — that change in one part of a system affects the other parts — is fully recognized.