Organization Development and Its Relevance to the Organizational Context
Introduction
Over the last 40 years, organization development has been widely applied in organizations settings across the world since it emanated from United States (Rees, 2008) and has progressed from a limited conceptual and practice base into a comprehensive, global approach to organizational improvement (Glassman and Cummings,1991), so it seems that understanding organization development’s content and its relations to organizations has become more and more critical for OD professions. Therefore, as a student study organizational change and development, I will explore these aspects in this essay.
1. Organization Development
Organization development, originates from United States in the mid-1950s, is generally 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 (Meyer and Meyer, 2011), but when asked to define the organization development accurately, it seems that “no single accepted definition of OD exists” (French and Bell, 1999:24) because the field which organization development involves is dynamism, diversity and ambiguity (Karakas,2009). Among the numerous scholars who have given definitions of organization development, Beckhard (1969) who addresses the process of organization development, defining organization development as “an effort planned, organizationwide and managed from the top to increase organization effectiveness and health, through planned interventions in the organization’s process using behavioral science knowledge”. However, according to French et al.(2000): “organization development is a long-term effort, led and supported by top management, to improve an organization’s visioning, empowerment, learning and problem-solving processes, through an ongoing, collaborative management of organization culture - with special emphasis on the culture of intact work teams and other team configurations-using the consultant-facilitator role
Over the last 40 years, organization development has been widely applied in organizations settings across the world since it emanated from United States (Rees, 2008) and has progressed from a limited conceptual and practice base into a comprehensive, global approach to organizational improvement (Glassman and Cummings,1991), so it seems that understanding organization development’s content and its relations to organizations has become more and more critical for OD professions. Therefore, as a student study organizational change and development, I will explore these aspects in this essay.
1. Organization Development
Organization development, originates from United States in the mid-1950s, is generally 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 (Meyer and Meyer, 2011), but when asked to define the organization development accurately, it seems that “no single accepted definition of OD exists” (French and Bell, 1999:24) because the field which organization development involves is dynamism, diversity and ambiguity (Karakas,2009). Among the numerous scholars who have given definitions of organization development, Beckhard (1969) who addresses the process of organization development, defining organization development as “an effort planned, organizationwide and managed from the top to increase organization effectiveness and health, through planned interventions in the organization’s process using behavioral science knowledge”. However, according to French et al.(2000): “organization development is a long-term effort, led and supported by top management, to improve an organization’s visioning, empowerment, learning and problem-solving processes, through an ongoing, collaborative management of organization culture - with special emphasis on the culture of intact work teams and other team configurations-using the consultant-facilitator role