Organizational Development

Organizational Development

Introduction

The field of organizational development (OD) is about the operation, development and effectiveness of organizations. Organization is defined as two or more people gathered for one or more common goals. Organizational Development is conceived as free and relentless effort of management and all members of the organization to make credible, sustainable and functional to the organization over time, putting emphasis on human capital, streamlining processes, creating a style and pointing north from the institutional one (Argyris, 1999).

Discussion

Historical Sketch

A historical sketch of organizational development explains the evolution of the term, as well as some of the problems and confusion surrounding it. As used today, organizational development has five major records (root):

Training in the laboratory: The root of organizational development was the pioneer in using the laboratory training, also called T group: a small, unstructured group whose members learn from their personal interaction and dynamic evolution in relation to things like following: interpersonal relationships, personal growth, leadership and group dynamics (McLean, 2006).

Investigation of the action / feedback by survey: Kurt Lewin also participated in this second movement that led to the birth of organizational development as a practical field of sociology. The second precedent concerns the action research and survey feedback.

Regulatory approaches: intellectual and practical advances in the laboratory entertainment and feedback / action research are precedents that were accompanied by the conviction that the human relations approach was "optimally" to manage the companies.

According to the participatory management program, companies have one of the four types of management systems (Waddell, et. al., 2004), which are:

Authoritarian systems operators

Benevolent authoritarian systems

Advisory Systems

Early systems groups

Quality of working life: The contribution of this precedent organizational development can be explained in two phases. the first corresponds to the projects designed in Europe during the fifties and his appearance in the U.S. a decade after age fifty and his appearance in the U.S. a decade later. With base in the investigation of Eric Trist and his colleagues at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London, the pioneers of Great Britain and Ireland, Norway and Sweden prepared design work aimed at better integrating technology and people. Generally required the joint participation of unions and management to job design, the final designs gave wide discretion to employees, diversity of tasks and feedback about the results. Perhaps his hallmark of quality in work was the discovery of the mode of self-directed work groups. In the definition seguna is considered as approach or method, ie, part of the techniques and procedures with which improves the work. It was synonymous with methods such as job enrichment, self-directed teams and committees of labor administration. Such technical guidance came primarily from the increased publicity given to projects of quality of working life.

Strategic Change This precedent has recently influenced the evolution of organizational development.  As companies with their technological environment, social and political have become more complicated and uncertain, so has the size and complexity of organizational change (Carter, et. al., 2001). It's a trend that requires a strategic perspective and encourages that level of planned change processes

Organizational Effectiveness

The process of enhancing organizational effectiveness in accomplishing the organization's goals and improving the well-being of the organization's members by applying ...