od intervention sid
TRANSCRIPT
A STUDY
ON
“ORGANIZATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
INTERVENTION”
BY
SIDDHARTH DHAMIJA
Enrollment number- 261091119
YEAR: 2009-2011
Submitted to:Prof. ASHA DEB
INInstitute of Management & Development,
New Delhi
INDEXInstitute of Management and Development Page 1
CONTENTS: Page no.
Organization Development……………………………………… 3
Characteristics of Organizational Development………………. 4
Organization Development Intervention………………………. 5
Selecting an OD Intervention…………………………………… 6
Classification of OD Intervention………………………………. 8
Conclusion……………………………………………………….. 16
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ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT:
Organization Development (OD) is a planned, organization-wide effort to increase an
organization's effectiveness and viability. Warren Bennie has referred to OD as a
response to change, a complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs,
attitudes, values, and structure of organization so that they can better adapt to new
technologies, marketing and challenges, and the dizzying rate of change itself. OD is
neither "anything done to better an organization" nor is it "the training function of the
organization"; it is a particular kind of change process designed to bring about a
particular kind of end result. OD can involve interventions in the organization's
"processes," using behavioral science knowledge as well as organizational reflection,
system improvement, planning, and self-analysis.
OD is a prescription for process of planned change in an organization in which the key
prescriptive elements relate to:
The nature of the effort or program.
The nature of the change activities.
The target of the change activities.
The desired outcomes of the change activities.
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CHARACTERISTICS OF
ORGANIZATIONAL EVELOPMENT:
OD is planned strategy to bring about organizational change.
OD always involves a collaborative approach to change.
OD program include an emphasis on ways to improve and enhance
performance.
OD relies on a set of Humanistic values about people and organizations.
OD represents a systems approach.
OD is based upon scientific approaches to increase organizational
effectiveness.
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OD INTERVENTION
Organization Development Intervention
The term ‘interventions’ is currently being used in several different ways. On
the one hand, this seems to be due to the confusion and lack of definitions; on
the other hand, it is due to the fact that it quite accurately refers to several
orders of meaning in terms of level of abstraction. Is the OD intervention
something that someone does to an organization, or is it something that is
going on, that is, an activity? It is both.
"Interventions" are principal learning processes in the "action" stage of
organization development. Interventions are structured activities used
individually or in combination by the members of a client system to improve
their social or task performance. They may be introduced by a change agent as
part of an improvement program, or they may be used by the client following
a program to check on the state of the organization's health, or to effect
necessary changes in its own behavior. "Structured activities" mean such
diverse procedures as experiential exercises, questionnaires, attitude surveys,
interviews, relevant group discussions, and even lunchtime meetings between
the change agent and a member of the client organization. Every action that
influences an organization's improvement program in a change agent-client
system relationship can be said to be an intervention.
SELECTING AN
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OD INTERVENTION
In selecting a specific OD Technique, the consultant and the client consider a
number of factors, including the nature of the problem, the objectives of the
change efforts, the culture norms of the client system, and the expected degree
of resistance. Selecting a technique involves comparing and testing possible
intervention techniques against some criteria. There are 3 broad factors in
selecting an appropriate intervention:
1. The potential results of the technique:
• Will it solve the basic problem?
• Does it have any additional positive outcome?
• Are any potentially negative consequences likely to occur?
2. The potential implementation of the technique:
• Can the proposed technique really work in a practical
application?
• What are the actual monetary and human costs of this technique
and the impact of cost upon the human system?
• How does estimated cost of the technique compare with the
expected results i.e., cost vs. benefits?
3. The potential acceptance of the technique:
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• Is the technique acceptable to the client system?
• Is the technique adequately developed and tested?
• Has the technique been adequately explained and communicated to
members of the client system?
These important factors should be considered prior to making a final decision
on the selection of a technique. The selection of any given technique is usually
a trade-off between advantages and disadvantages because there is no precise
way to answer these entire question in advance. After comparing the
advantages and disadvantages, a specific technique is selected for the action
phase of the OD programs.
CLASSIFICATION OF Institute of Management and Development Page 7
OD INTERVENTION
The inventory of OD interventions is quite extensive. We will explore several
classification schemes here to help you understand how interventions "clump"
together in terms of
(1) The objectives of the interventions and
(2) The targets of the interventions.
Becoming familiar with how interventions relate to one another is useful for
planning the overall OD strategy. As we see it, the following are the major
"families" of OD interventions.
1. DIAGNOSTIC ACTIVITIES :
Fact-finding activities designed to ascertain the state of the system,
the status of a problem, the "way things are”. Available methods
range from projective devices such as "build a collage that represents
your place in this organization" to the more traditional data collection
methods of interviews, questionnaires, surveys, meetings,
and examining organizational records.
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2. TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES :
Activities designed to enhance the effective operation of system
teams. These activities focus skills and resources needed to
accomplish tasks, the quality of relationship among the team
members or between members and the leader, and how well the team
gets its job done. In addition, one must consider different kinds of
teams, such as formal work teams, temporary tasks force teams,
newly constituted teams, and cross- functional teams.
3. INTERGROUP ACTIVITIES:
Activities designed to improve the effectiveness of interdependent
groups- groups that must work together to produce a common output.
They focus on joint activities and the output of the group as
considered as a single system rather than as two subsystems. When
two groups are involved, the activities are designated intergroup or
interface activities; when more than two groups are involved, the
activities are called organizational mirroring.
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4. SURVEY FEEDBACK ACTIVITIES:
Activities that rely on questionnaire surveys to generate information
that is then used to identify problems and opportunities. Groups
analyze the data regarding; their performance and design action plans
to correct problems.
5. EDUCATION AND TRAINING ACTIVITIES:
Activities designed to improve individuals' skills, abilities, and
knowledge. Several activities are available and several approaches
possible. For example, the individual can be educated in isolation
from his or her own work group (say, in a T-group consisting of
strangers), or one can be educated in relation to the work group(say,
when a work team learns how better to manage
interpersonal conflict). The activities may be directed toward
technical skills required for performing tasks or may be directed
toward improving interpersonal competence. The activities may be
directed toward leadership issues, responsibilities and functions of
group members, decision- making, problem solving, goal setting and
planning, and so forth.
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6. TECHNO STRUCTURAL OR STRUCTURAL ACTIVITIES :
Activities designed to improve the effectiveness of organizational
structures and job designs. The activities may take the form of (a)
experimenting with new organization structures and evaluating their
effectiveness in terms of specific goals or (b) devising new ways to
bring technical resources to bear on problems. these activities and
label them "structural interventions" defined as "the broad class of
interventions or change efforts aimed at improving organization
effectiveness through changes in the task, structural, and
technological subsystems." Included in these activities are job
enrichment, management by objectives, socio technical systems,
collateral organizations, and physical settings interventions.
7. PROCESS CONSULTATION ACTIVITIES:
Activities that "help the client to perceive, understand, and act upon
process events which occur in the client's environment". These
activities perhaps more accurately describe an approach, a consulting
mode in which the client gains insight into the human processes in
organizations and learn skills in diagnosing and managing them.
Primary emphasis is on processes such as communications, leader and
member roles in groups, problem solving and decision making, group
norms and group growth, leadership and authority, and intergroup
cooperation and competition. '
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8. GRID ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES :
Activities developed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton, which
constitute a six-phase change model involving the total organization.
Internal resources are developed to conduct most of the programs,
which may take from three to five years to complete. The model starts
with upgrading individual managers' skills and leadership abilities,
moves to team improvement activities, Then to intergroup relations
activities. Later phases include corporate planning for improvement,
developing implementation tactics, and Finally, an evaluation phase
assessing change in the organization culture and looking toward
future directions.
9. THIRD-PARTY PEACEMAKING ACTIVITIES:
Activities conducted by a skilled consultant (the third party, designed
to help two members of an organization manage their interpersonal
conflict. These activities are based on confrontation tactics and an
understanding of the processes involved in conflict and conflict
resolution.
10. COACHING AND COUNSELING ACTIVITIES:
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Activities that entail the consultant or other organization members
working with individuals to help.
(a) define learning goals,
(b) learn how others see their behavior, and
(c) learn new behaviors to help them better achieve their goals. A
central feature of this activity is non evaluative feedback others
give to an individual.
A second feature is the second exploration of alternative
behaviors.
11. LIFE- AND CAREER-PLANNING ACTIVITIES:
Activities that enable individuals to focus on their life and career
objectives and how to go about achieving them. Structured activities
include producing life and career inventories, discussing goals and
objectives, and assessing capabilities, needed additional training, and
areas of strength and deficiency.
12. PLANNING AND GOAL-SETTING ACTIVITIES:
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Activities that include theory and experience in planning and goal setting,
problem-solving models, planning paradigms, ideal organization versus real
organization "discrepancy" models, and the like.
The goal is to improve these skills at the levels of the individual, group, and
total organization.
13. STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES:
Activities that help key policy makers to reflect systematically on the
organization's basic mission and goals and environmental demands, threats,
and opportunities, and to engage in long-range action planning of both a
reactive and proactive nature.
These activities direct attention in two important directions: outside the
organization to a consideration of the environment, and away from the
present to the future.
14. ORGANIZATIONALTRANSFORMATION ACTIVITIES:
Activities that involve large-scale system changes;
Activities designed to fundamentally change the nature of the organization.
Almost everything about the organization is changed-structure,
management philosophy,
reward systems,
the design of work,
Mission, values, and cultures.
Total quality programs are transformational: so are programs to create high-
performance organizations or high performance work systems.
Each of these families of interventions includes many activities. They involve
both conceptual material and actual experience with the phenomenon being
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studied. Some families are directed toward specific targets, problems, or
processes.
For example, Team-building activities are specific to work teams,
While life-planning activities are directed to individuals, although these latter
activities take place in-group settings.
Some interventions are problem specific: examples are the third-party
peacemaking activities and the goal-setting activities.
Some activities are process specific: an example is intergroup activities that
explore the processes involved in managing interfaces.
Another way to classify OD interventions is by the primary target of the
intervention,
For example, individuals, dyads and triads, teams and groups, intergroup
relations, and the total organization.
CONCLUSION:
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OD interventions are initiated at the top and require employee participation and commitment, therefore, visionary leaders that work as change agents, developing a vision, and providing continuous and sustained support is paramount. Kanter, Stein & Jick (1992) consider that OD interventions require a strong leader role. “An organization should not undertake something as challenging as large-scale change without a leader to guide, drive and inspire it. These change advocates, play a critical role in creating a company vision, motivating company employees to embrace that vision, and crafting an organizational structure that consistently rewards those who strive toward the realization of the vision”.
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