OD is a long range effort to improve organization's problem solving and renewal processes, particularly through more effective and collaborative management of organizational culture, often with the assistance of a change agent or catalyst and the use of the theory and technology of applied behavioral science. Although behavioral science has provided the basic foundation for the study and practice of organizational development, new and emerging fields of study have made their presence known. Experts in systems thinking, leadership studies, organizational leadership, and organizational learning (to name a few) whose perspective is not steeped in just the behavioral sciences, but a much more multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approach have emerged as OD catalysts. These emergent expert perspectives see the organization as the holistic interplay of a number of systems that impact the process and outputs of the entire organization. More importantly, the term change agent or catalyst is synonymous with the notion of a leader who is engaged in doing leadership, a transformative or effectiveness process as opposed to management, a more incremental or efficiency based change methodology.
Organization development is a "contractual relationship between a change agent and a sponsoring organization entered into for the purpose of using applied behavioral science and or other organizational change perspectives in a systems context to improve organizational performance and the capacity of the organization to improve itself".[citation needed]
Organization development is an ongoing, systematic process to implement effective change in an organization. Organization development is known as both a field of applied behavioral science focused on understanding and managing organizational change and as a field of scientific study and inquiry. It is interdisciplinary in nature and draws on sociology, psychology, and theories of motivation, learning, and personality.