History of Organization Development

Like a Mangrove tree OD has four important trunk stems:-

1. The laboratory training stem

2. The survey research and feedback stem

3. The action research stem

4. The socio-technical and socio-clinical stem

Laboratory training stem

The T-group: it is an unstructured small-group situations in which participants learn from their own actions.

An Inter-group Relations workshop held at State Teachers College in New Britain, Connecticut in 1946.

T-Group consisted of Kurt Lewin, Kenneth Benne, Leland Bradford and Ronald Lippitt.

Robert Tannenbaum

Some of the early sessions of what would now be called “team building” were conducted by him in 1952 and 1953.

According to him, term vertically structured groups was used with groups dealing with “personal topics” as interpersonal relations and organizational topics as responsibilities etc.

Douglas McGregor

He was the first to talk about the transfer problem and to talk systematically about implementation of T-group skills in complex organizations.

He along with others established a small internal consulting group which used behavioural science knowledge to help line managers and their subordinates learn how to be more effective in groups.

Herbert Shepard and Robert Blake

After initiating a series of two week laboratory, they emphasized on intergroup as well as interpersonal relations.

Although working on interpersonal problems affecting work performance was clearly an organizational effort, but between group problem solving had even greater organizational development implications because it involved a broader and more complex segment of the organization.

Survey Research and Feedback stem

It is specialized form of action research, the history of this stem revolves around the techniques and approaches developed over a period of years.

Survey Research Center was founded by Rensis Likert, who is also famous for giving us the five point rating scale also known as Likert scale.

Action Research stem

It is a collaborative, client-consultant inquiry. Out of the five versions, participant action

research is used most frequently in OD.

Socio-technical and socio-clinical stem Bion, Rickman and others had been involved

with a six-week “Northfield Experiment” at a military hospital during world war II. In this experiment each soldier was required to join a group that performed some task such as handicrafts as well as discuss feelings, interpersonal relations.

Eric Trist in1947 visited a British coal mine, and observed that the teams that the workers themselves have organized was different and the result of the team approach was remarkable in safety and productivity both.

Second Generation OD

Organizational Transformation Organizational Culture Learning Organization Intensified Interest in Teams Total Quality Management Visioning and Future Search

Interest in Organizational Transformation

“second-order change (organizational transformation) is a multi-dimensional, multi-level, qualitative, discontinuous, radical organizational change involving a pragmatic shift.” (Amir Levy and Uri Merry)

Increasingly, OD professionals distinguish between the more modest, or evolutionary efforts towards organization improvement such as: transitions, fundamental large-scale change in the organization etc.

Interest in Organizational Culture

Schein in particular has written extensively about culture, he has devised interventions to help leaders and employees identify those cultural assumptions that will assist the organization in attaining its goal and those that hinder goal attainment.

The intervention may involve exploration of artifacts, values and assumptions as well as use of questionnaires to identify old norms and form new ones.

Interest in Learning Organizations

Senge writes extensively about the importance of systems thinking and also about learning disabilities that plague organizations.

Some of the learning disabilities faced by the organizations are focusing on one's own job with little sense of collective product, another is blaming the “enemy out there”, Senge developed workshops, exercises and games to create awareness of these disabilities.

Intensified interest in teams

The recent years have seen a widening and deepening interest in teams specially high-performing teams, cross-functional teams, self-managed teams.

TQM

The past decade has seen a mushrooming interest in total quality management world-wide.

“ Total Quality is typically a companywide effort seeking to install and make permanent a climate where employees continuously improve their ability to provide on demand products and services that customers will find of particular value”

Visioning and Future Search

In this approach interventions have been designed to help organizational members look to the future.

Marvin Weisbord has developed a “future search conferences” in which organizational members work together on data by analyzing and drawing conclusions for future action steps.

Extent of Application

Business and industry are not the only kind of institutions involved.

From public schools to medical schools, social welfare agencies, police departments, government units all are using the OD interventions.

The rage of occupational roles that have been involved in OD is limitless ranging form managers, soldiers, psychologist, teachers, engineers, lawyers etc.

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