» Meaning and Definition as also Objectives of the Organizational Development
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Introduction to Organizational Development
Meaning and Definition as also Objectives of the Organizational Development
Organization Development is an attempt to plan, organize, and increase organizational effectiveness through planned intervention in the processes of the organization.
a. It is a planned change effort.
This involves a systematic study of the organization and development of a strategic plan for improving and mobilizing resources to carry out the effort.
b. It involves the total “system”.
This organization development is related to a total change in the organization—this could be change of culture, or the change of reward system or the change of managerial strategy. There may be tactical efforts which work with the various systems is the organization. These systems are relatively free to determine their own plans and future within the framework of various constrains which environment might enforce upon the organization.
c. It is managed from the top.
The top management will have a personal investment in the programs of the organization and its results. A top manager actively participants in the management of various efforts. However all of them must a clear knowledge and commitment to the goals of the different programs and must committedly support efforts put in to achieve the goals.
d. It is designed to increase the effectiveness of the organization and its health. If one has to understand the goals of organization development, he should some picture of how an “ideally” effective and healthy organization should look like. What would be the characteristics there of? Different experts have given different definitions. We shall look at some of them in the following paragraphs.
• The entire organization will work against their goals and plans for achieving the same.
• Form follows function (the various constraints will decide how the human resources are organized).
• Decisions are made by and near the sources of information regardless of the location the sources.
• The reward systems will be such that all the managers and supervisors are rewarded/ punished comparably for short-term profit oriented performance or development of subordinates or creation of a viable working group.
• Communication is both vertically and horizontally undistorted. People share relevant facts including the feelings.
• Constant efforts exist at all levels to treat conflict and conflict situation as problems subjective to troubleshooting methods.
• There is clash of ideas about tasks and project, but relatively little energy is spent in clashing over interpersonal difficulties because they have been ordinarily worked through.
• The organization is an open system interacting with each other of the various parts of the organization.
• There is an atmosphere of interdependence in the organization, there is a shared value along with a management strategy to support it. There is always an effort to help ach person or unit in the organization maintain his or its integrity and uniqueness.
Another definition of organization development is that it is a planned process of change in an organizational culture through utilization of behavioral science, technology, research and theory according to Porke.
Thus OD is a planned systematic, organized and collaborative effort where behavioral science and organizational theory principles and practices are constantly applied in order to increase the quality of life which is reflected in increased health and vitality, enhanced individual and group competence and self-worth and the general overall well-being of the society.
Organizational Development as already stated is a planned change strategy which aims at improving the internal capability of an organization to continuously seek to align the individual, the organization and the environment in order to enhance effectiveness of the organization. Development in the field of human relations and behavioural sciences in the 1950s led to the emergence of OD as a professional period of social actions. This was also influenced by the growing consensus for humanization of work place and systematic approach to managing such change.
However the OD differs from other change efforts such as new product/ Service Development technological innovation, training and development among others at last on the following counts.
• It focuses on improving the organization’s ability to diagnose its current functioning and select the appropriate option for achieving higher levels of excellence.
• It aims at improving the total system in the organization by helping members of the organization to establish congruency amongst vision strategies, structures and processes for greater effectiveness.
• The target of change is not only the organization, its subunits and its relationship with the environment but also the individual development and satisfaction.
• It helps the members of the organization to acquire and sharpen such knowledge, skills and competencies that are essential for improving organizational capabilities to continuously manage change.
• It is guided by a very strong value orientation which emphasizes active participation, continuous development and release of humanistic potential.
The features mentioned above differentiate OD from other change strategies. Organizational members actively engage themselves in initiating and managing the change process in total commitment. The approach to change is thus highly participative and collaborative in orientation.
As a concept, the OD emphasizes on linkages with external environment and is a long range effort to improve an organization’s problem solving capabilities and its ability to cop up with changes in its external environments with the help of external and internal behavioral science consultant or change agents as they are sometime called. The organizational development has strong roots in action research in which the organization members identify, diagnose, choose appropriate interventions and evaluate the outcomes and their consequences. The target of change is the total system or identifiable subsystems. Involvement and support of top management is considered critical and crucial to effective implementation of OD interventions.
The Objectives of Organization Development
A study of the above definition would lead us to the following operational goals of OD.• To develop a self- renewing viable system which can organize in a variety of ways depending on the various tasks involved. This means that systematic effect to change loosen up the way organization operates, so that it organizes differently depending on the nature of those tasks. There is a movement towards a concept of “from follows function” rather than that the tasks must fit into the existing the structure.
• To optimize the effectiveness of both a stable and the temporary systems by built in continuous improvements mechanisms. This mans the introduction of procedure of for analyzing the work tasks and resource distribution, and for building in continuous feedback regarding the way a system or a subsystem is operating.
• To move towards high collaboration and low competition between the interdependent units. One of the major obstacles to effective organization is the amount of dysfunctionally energy spent in inappropriate competition—energy that is not, therefore, available for accomplishment of tasks. If all the energy that is used by, let us say, manufacturing people disliking or wanting to get those sales people or vice- versa, were available to improve the organization output, productivity would increase tremendously.
• To create conditions where conflict is brought out and managed. One of the fundamental problems in an unhealthy organization is the energy that is dysfunctionally used trying to work around, or avoid, or cover up, conflicts which are inevitable in a large complex organization and as problems that need to b worked before adequate decisions can be made.
• To reach the point where decisions are made on the bass of information source rather than organizational role. This means the need to move towards a norm of the authority of knowledge as well as the authority of role. It dos not only mean that the decisions should be moved down the organization. It means that the organization managers should decide which is the best source of information (or a combination of sources of information) to work out a particular problem, and it is there that decision making should be located.
Characteristics of Organization Development
a. Planned change:
OD is an educational strategy for bringing about planned change. Planned change concept makes it different from other approaches for change in the organizations.
b. Long range change:
OD is a sort of long range process. It may take days or months or years to implement it. The Organizational Development is never intended to be a stopgap arrangement or measure.
c. Systems Orientation:
Organization Development is concerned with various groups in the organization and their interactions with each other. It is concerned with formal or informal as well as social relationships. It is concerned with group structure, processes and attitudes. The Organizational Development emphasizes on the relationship among the groups and not on the groups themselves.
d. Change agent:
The services of external experts are obtained, generally, to implement OD process. In OD,” do it yourself” programs are discouraged, when the primary change agent is consultant from outside the organization. He can operate independently without ties to the Organizational hierarchy and politics of the organizations. Change agents do not just introspect the employees and introduce changes, rather, they conduct surveys, collect data, evaluate and then take decision.
e. Problem solving:
Organization emphasize on problem solving rather than just theoretical discussion of the problems. The focus on real, ongoing problems rather than the theoretical or artificial ones is called action research.
f. Collaborative Management:
In contrast to the traditional management structure where orders are issued at upper levels and simply carried out by the lower levels, OD stresses collaboration among different levels. In OD, collaborative management is viewed in a systems perspective.
g. Group Processes:
In Organizational development, an effort is mad to improve interpersonal relationship, open communicational channels, build trust, and encourage responsiveness to others. For this, Organizational Development relies on group processes like group discussions; inter group conflicts, confrontations and procedures for cooperative efforts.
h. Situational and Contingency:
Organizational Development is flexible and pragmatic, adapting to the actions to fit particular requirements. Although some occasional organization development change agents may have to impose a single best way on the group, there is, usually, open discussion of several superior alternatives rather than a single best way.
i. Reciprocal Relationship:
The organizational development recognizes the reciprocal relationship between individuals engaged in tasks and the organizations. It acknowledges that for organization to change for better, thee individual in the organization must change.
j. Goal Orientation:
The organization Development is mostly goal oriented. It is generally a process which seeks to constantly improve both the individual and organizational well-being and effectiveness.
Humanistic Values
The organizational development generally depends on the various human being involved in the development of an organization. Our discussions should center around the behavior of people giving due value to their humanistic tendencies in the organizational stings. We have to focus on cross culture impact on employees behavior. Four generalizations can be made in this context:
• Human behavior across cultures.
• Culture determines behavior.
• Cultural clusters.
• Cultural diversity.
• Human Behavior across countries.
Behavior in organization stings varies across human cultures, human resource practices. Here are some examples.
• The concept of an hourly wage plays a minor role in Mexico. Labour law requires that employees receive full pay for 365 days in a year.
• In Australia and Brazil, employees with one year service are automatically given 30 days of paid vacation.
• In japan remuneration levels are determined using the objectives factors of age, length of service and education background rather than skill, ability and performance. Performance does not count until after an employee reaches 45 years of age.
• In UK, employs are allowed 40 weeks maternity leave, and employees must provide a Government mandated amount of pay for 18 of those weeks. In India, a woman employee is entitled for full wags during the previous 6 weeks and the subsequent 6 weeks of pregnancy. The employer is bound to pay the amount.
• In 87% of large Swedish companies, the heads of human resources are on the board directors.
As a result of those cultural differences the evaluation of the employees under the OD concept could be quite different from country to country. Naturally the employees in different countries will be evaluated differently.
• Cultures Determine Behaviour
Culture is an important factor for variation in the human behaviour. To elaborate on this statement, let us began with the nature of culture. Culture may be understood as the pervasive and shared beliefs, norms, and values that guide the everyday life of individuals which will have a telling influence of on the organizational development wherein they are employed. Cultural norms prescribe behaviours and practices. That is, they tell us what we can do, and what we cannot. This will have an impact on every stage of the employee’s life. Another key features of the culture is that cultural value, norms and believes are shared by a group of people. The group must accept that these norms, values and beliefs are by and large correct and compelling. This means that although people in any culture do not have the same way all the time, culture makes behavior predicable most of the time. When we consider group management under the organizational development concepts, these cultural values have a large role to play. Its impact stretches beyond and determines that type of business a society engages in. In many hierarchical cultures the meaning and value of a job lies more in the status rather than in the pay packet. In these cultures people also expect recognition for their seniority and age. In some other culture like US, Germany etc. People expert reward and compensation for their performance rather than for their seniority. These factors have to be carefully considered while evaluating and dealing with them in the context of organization development.
• Cultural clusters
Though cultures across countries vary, there are similarities nevertheless. To the extent that there are similarities, the need to customize products to meet local demands is minimized. Countries that share cultural similarities from cultural clusters. Not that a cultural clusters does not have differences, but the similarities are predominant. International organizations utilize the culture clustering approach in formulating their global business strategies. Improvements in communication and transportation have made clustering possible. Thanks to cable and satellite TV, people in different parts in the world watch and enjoys the same entertainment programs and serials. Multinational Corporation facilitate the process of cultural convergence, for better or for worse, through their advertisement that define appropriate life style, attitudes and goals and by bringing in new management techniques and technology and cultural values to the organizational development in the countries in which they operate.
Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions
In a discussion, reference should made to the binary work done by Hofstede, a Dutch scientist. H identified four cultural dimensions around which countries have been clustered with people in ach group exhibiting identical behaviors. The four dimensions are:
a. Power distance.
b. Uncertainty avoidance.
c. Individualism.
d. Masculinity.
a. Power Distance
Power distance is the extent to which less powerful members of the organization accept that power is distributed unequally. Countries in which people blindly obey the orders of superiors have high power distance. High power distance have norms, values and beliefs such as
• Inequality is fundamentally good.
• Everyone has a place: some are high and some are low.
• Most people should be dependent on a leader.
• The powerful are entitled to privileges.
• The powerful should not hide their power.
The dimension of power distance can be measured in a number of ways. For example, the basic motivational assumption in high power distance countries is that the people dislike work and try to avoid it. Consequently, the managers believe that they must adapt theory X leadership style, that is, thy must be authoritarian, must force workers to perform, and must supervise their subordinates closely.
Organizational structures and systems tend to match the assumption regarding leadership and motivation. In high power distance countries, the decision making is centralized. Those at the top make most of the decision. Organizations tend to have tall structures. They will have a large proposition of supervisory personnel, and the people at the lower levels often will have low job qualification. Such structures encourage and promote a kind of inequality between people at different levels. On the other hand, organizations, in low power distance countries tend to be decentralized and have flatter structures. They will have a smaller proposition of supervisory personnel and the lower state of workforce will consist of highly qualified people.
• Low power distance — US, Austria, Ireland, Norway, Newzeland.
• High power distance — France, India, Singapore, Brazil, Mexico and Indonesia.
b. Uncertainty Avoidance
Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which people feel threatened by ambiguous situations, and have created beliefs and institutions that try to avoid these. These are countries with high uncertainty avoidance and there are those characterized by low uncertainty avoidance.
Countries with citizens who do not like uncertainty tend to have a high need for security and a strong belief in experts and their knowledge. Countries with low uncertainty avoidance have people who are more willing to accept that risks are associated with the unknown, and that life must go on in spite of this.
Specifically, high uncertainty avoidance countries are characterized by norms, values and beliefs which accept that:
• Conflict should be avoided.
• Deviant people and ideas should not be tolerated.
• Laws are very important and should be followed.
• Experts and authorities are usually correct.
• Consensus is important.
Obviously, low uncertainty avoidance societies tend to represent the antonym of the above characteristics.
The effect of uncertainty avoidance has several manifestations. Countries with high uncertainty avoidance cultures have a great deal of structuring of organizational activities, more written rules, less risk taking by managers, low labor turnover and less ambitious employees.
Low uncertainty avoidance societies have organization settings with less structuring of activities, fewer written rules, more risk taking by managers, higher labour turnover and more ambitious employs. The organization development people encourage the employees to use their initiative and assume responsibility for their actions.
• Low uncertainty avoidance - Denmark and Great Britain.
• High uncertainty avoidance – Germany, japan and Spain.
c. Individualism
Individualism is tendency of the people to look after themselves and their family only. Opposite of this is collectivism which refers to the tendency of people to belong to groups and to look after each other, in exchange, for loyalty. Individualism is common in the US, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Sweden. The people of Indonesia, Pakistan and a number of South American countries exhibit collectivism.
Specifically, countries with high individualism have norms, values and beliefs which accept that:
• People are responsible for themselves.
• Individual achievement is ideal, and
• People need not be emotionally dependent on organizations or groups. In contrast collectivist countries believe that:
• One’s identity is based on one’s group membership.
• Group decision making is the best, and
• Group protect individuals in exchange for their loyalty to the group.
The effects of individualism/ collectivism can be seen in organization also. Organizations in collectivist societies tend to promote nepotism in selecting managers. In contrast, in individualistic societies, favoritism shown to friends and relatives is considered to be unfair and even illegal. Further, organizations in collectivist cultures bas promotion mostly on seniority and age, whereas in individualistic societies they are based on one’s performance. Finally in collectivist cultures important decision are made by older senior managers as opposed to individualistic cultures, where decision making is an individual responsibility.
d. Masculinity
Masculinity refers to a situation in which the dominant values in society are success, money and other material things. Hofstede measured this dimension and a continuum ranging from masculinity to feminity.
High masculine cultures have norms, values and beliefs that:
• Gender roles should be clearly distinguished.
• Men are assertive and dominant.
• Machismo or exaggerated maleness is good.
• People --- especially men should be decisive.
• Work takes priority over other duties, such as family, and
• Advancement, success and money are very important.
In highly masculine societies, jobs are clearly defined by gender. There are men’s jobs and women’s jobs. Men usually choose jobs that are associated with long careers. Women usually choose jobs that are associated with short term employment, before marriage.
Cultural diversity - Source of Energy
Cultural diversity can be an important source of energy in enhancing organizational effectiveness. More and more organizations are realizing the virtues of cultural diversity, but surprisingly little do they know how to manage it. Organization that adapts a multinational strategy can become more than a sum of their parts. Operations in each culture can benefit from operations in other cultures through an enhanced understanding of how the world looks and works.
Team Building
Team development is a process of diagnosing and improving the effectiveness of a work group with a particular attention to work procedures and interpersonal relationship within that, specially the role of the leader in relation to other group members. Team building programs deals with new problems on an ongoing basis. It is seen as an effective technique by which members of a group diagnose and decide to work together and plan changes that will improve their effectiveness.
Team building begins with the understanding that work groups require time and training before they develop into productive and cohesive units. There seems to be a learning curve in building an effective group. At first some employees may be unwilling to join or buy into the group. Only when they smell success and team member satisfaction will this feeling change. Once established some form of accountability must be present. Managers should expect to see some uncertainty in the team, which may last for one or two years, and during that time there may be even a dip in the productivity. As the team matures, members learn the basics of the team work understand their individual roles more clearly and make more effective group decisions and pursue group goals effective team building establishes a sense of ownership and partnership and allows members to see the team as a unit and as an attractive work arrangement. Tam building succeeds when individuals share collective intelligence and a sense of empowerment. Team building involves rapid learning which takes place when there is a free flowing generation of ideas. Quality team building programs must fit with corporate culture, have will design goals, allow members to translate skills to the work place. These programs take place in a separate environment and may even move employees outside the comfort zone, but not so much that they cannot learn. Effective team building exercise may help members of some teams bond and learn to work together. Training model has been developed by the GE Company and has been successfully used to bring about high standards and high productivity with a clear commitment to excellence. The following table shows the ten steps for developing an effective self-managed team.
a. Establish credibility:
The trainers must establish their Knowledge and believability.
b. Allow ventilation:
The anxieties and unresolved issue of the trains must be cleared before starting.
c. Provide an orientation:
The trainees should be given directions and clear expectation and models of behavior.
d. Invest in the process:
e. Set group goals:
The trainees create their own mission statement through consensus and then set goals to achieve it.
f. Facilitate the group process:
The trainees are taught how groups functions and also techniques to successfully achieve the goals.
g. Establish intra group procedures:
A meeting format is set which throw light on reporting minutes, announcements, problems, issues, solutions and new assignments.
h. Change the role of the trainers:
With experience and empowerment the team will not need the full involvement of the trainers.
i. End the trainer’s involvement:
The team is now on its shown and is now self-managing.
Teams represent an important dynamic in the study and application of organizational development Team formation, types and processes; the dynamics of informal roles and organization; and the dysfunctions of work groups and tams are all of particular relevant to the study of organization development.
The team development may face problems of two types:
i. Task related conflicts
The task related conflicts can be streamlined by changing the ways things are done, by redirecting by the resources to be utilized and by examining the work process.
ii. Personality conflicts
The interpersonal relationships within the team can be improved by creating an environment which is open and trustworthy. In this atmosphere, members can freely communicate their feelings and thoughts. The tam leaderships evolve on the basis of respect and functional excellence and where conflicts are resolved on the basis of mutual understanding.
As a technique of organizational development, the team building requires the help of a skilled consultant to increase the effectiveness of the team’s tasks and maintenance roles. Feedback is another important component of team building which is provided by the consultant during or after the meeting to increase the effectiveness of both the team as well as its members.
There are three approaches to tam development explained in detail as follows:
a) The consultant will interview members of the team individually to know their feelings, attitudes and perceptions of tam effectiveness. After these, the consultant will arrange a meeting of the team away from the organization location and provide them feedback data which will be discussed in detail. The set of priorities will be worked out and action plan will be formulated for resolving the problems.
b) In this approach each team member will discuss with another member his perceived roles and also team feeling so as to make more meaningful and productive contribution. This exercise will help in removing most of the misunderstanding existing between team members and also ensure that each team member extends his full cooperation to other members.
c) The consultant will regularly attend the team meeting. He will observe how the team is accomplishing the group tasks and maintaining roles. Thus he will concentrate on the process rather than the contents. After that h will suggest the steps to improve the effectiveness of the working groups.
Advantages of team decision making
a) Compared to an individual, the teams usually have a greater knowledge, expertise, and skill base to make better decisions.b) Large number of members provides more perspectives of the problem. As such, the narrow vision of a single perspective is avoided in making decisions.
C) With large number of team members, the participations also increases which helps reach a quality decisions.
d) Following increased tam participation, comprehension of a final decision made is usually high.
Disadvantages of team building
All is not good with tam decision making. It suffers from following disadvantages.a) Team decision making is a time consuming process.
b) Influences groups usually manipulate the team decision in a direction of their liking and interest.
c) Sometimes decision made by the team members are simply a compromise between the various views and options offered by the team members.
System Orientation
The period of 1950s witnessed a major change in the new world of knowledge and provided conceptual frameworks for understanding the function of the various phenomenon’s--- physical, biological and social. A general systems theory was proposed by Bertalanffy that could be used in understanding the process of interaction amongst a wide variety of components. The theory provided a framework that was universally applicable.
According to general system theory, a system can be defined as unitary whole composed of interacting and interdependent two or more components engaged in contributing to the goals and perception of the whole. The system, as a whole, is conceived as a part of a larger system or whole. Thus, every system would consist of a number of subsystems and the system in question would itself be a sustenance of the whole. The system, as a whole, is conceived as a part of a larger system or whole. Thus, every system would consist of a number of subsystems and the system in question would itself be a subsystem of the larger entity. The core of this theory lies in the interconnectedness and interrelationship of various components each having a separate function but contributing to the existence and sustenance of thee whole. In biology, organism is a system of mutually dependent parts, each of which includes many subsystems such as circulatory, digestive, nervous systems etc. even though each subsystem performs a separate function, thy dependent on each other and contribute to the whole. i.e. human body. Likewise a general systems theory thus provide a set of broad macro level principles applicable to all types of animate and inanimate systems.
Systems tend to have different levels of complexities based on the degree of stability and dynamism. One of the inadequacies of the classical system approach to understanding an organization was that both Taylor and Weber, the systems experts, considered the organization as closed systems and the impact of environment on internal processes and functions of organization was not taken to account. Thus the scientific management and bureaucratic principles are called a ‘machine model’. The view of organization as an open system offers several different possibilities of developing alternative design of organization.
Organization as an Open System
Open systems have common characteristics which can be applicable to organizations as well. Some of these characteristics are:
a) System and subsystem
Organization as a system has its own boundary in the environment which differentiates it from other organization. The relevant components of the environment of the organizations like suppliers of raw materials, relevant policies of the government, the customer base etc. are external to the boundary of the organization. Technical, human, managerial and support are some of the components that can be considered as subsystems. Every subsystem is a system in its own right having its own boundary. The subsystems of the organization are interconnected and mutually dependent on each other.
b) Holism
The whole is greater than the arithmetic sum of its parts. Interaction among them leads to creation of synergy. The individual part acquires a new meaning when it is seen as a part of whole.
c) Importation
Open system imports some form of energy from various inputs in the organization. The organization draws its manpower from the labor market, materials from other organization, money from financial institutions etc. No open system i.e., organization is self-sufficient and it needs renewed energy from various sources for its survival and growth.
d) Conversion process
An organization needs to arrange and organized technical, human and other support system in such a way that the energy is transformed efficiently without wastage. For this every organization has adopted improvement tools and techniques such as TQM, Process reengineering, IT enabled services etc. For increasing speed and ease of information.
e) Export of energy
Organizations transform energy in the form of value added products and services and export them to the outside environments for consumption by individuals/ organizations. Various bye-products such as gases, chemicals, etc. are also available sometimes to the organization for proper disposal. Safe disposal of industrial waste and recycling of bye-products for productive use have emerged as major areas of global concerns.
f) Cyclical nature of activities
It is important to realize that the activities involved in energy exchange are cyclical. The best way of structuring an organization is to understand this cyclic nature and analyze the whole value chain from design to delivery in order to continue the health of the organization.
g) Negative entropy
The law of entropy states that all forms organization move towards disorganization, decay or death. It is therefore imperative that the organization has to develop the capacity to arrest the entropic process to sustain its growth.
Contingency approach -- An extended of the system approach
The system approach implies that all organization of all types will evolve into having similar structures and processes it fails to take into account the situational factors impacting on the design often organization. It also limits the choice of developing the different forms appropriate to demands of a given situation.
It was in response to these limitations that contingency approach to designing organization was developed. This is not a distinct approach but is an extension of systems theory. It suggests that there is no universal design of an organization which will be suitable for all situations. The effectiveness of a particular organization form will depend on a properly chosen fit between organizational purposes and the nature of environment in which it functions. It is obvious that there is no one right way or the best approach to designing an organization. The selected design should aim at achieving congruence between the organization, its subsystems and the environment. The external environment and internal subsystems of each organization are unique. The design of structure and process must take into account this uniqueness.
In conclusion, one has to understand that the general system theory helped the industrial scientist to view the organization as an open system with characteristics more or less similar to biological systems and in continuous interaction with its external environment. The socio technical systems approach to designing work organizational development approach. The system concept has had profound impact on our comprehensive view of social phenomenon as inter dependent and inter connected. This brought about change in the perceptive of perceiving social reality in relation to the organizational development. The contingency theory is an extension of the systems theory. Therefore it is mandatory that every organization realizes its uniqueness in its design for dealing with various situational variables. The contingency theory provides the basis on which organizations of today are and will have to be designed.