HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE - Fichier PDF

Organizational development, change and transformation ❚ 339The classic and ambitious approach to OD was described by Bennis (1960) as follows:‘Organization development (OD) is a response to change, a complex educationalstrategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, and structure of organizationsso that they can better adapt to new technologies, markets, and challenges, andthe dizzying rate of change itself.’A short history of ODOrigins of ODThe origin of OD can be traced to the work of Kurt Lewin (1947, 1951), who developedthe concept of group dynamics (the phrase was first coined in 1939). Groupdynamics is concerned with the ways in which groups evolve and how people ingroups behave and interact. Lewin founded the Research Centre for Group Dynamicsin 1945 and out of this emerged the process of ‘T-group’ or sensitivity training, inwhich participants in an unstructured group learn from their own interaction and theevolving dynamics of the group. T-group laboratory training became one of thefundamental OD processes. Lewin also pioneered action research approaches.The formative years of ODDuring the 1950s and 1960s behavioural scientists such as Argyris, Beckhard, Bennis,Blake, McGregor, Schein, Shepart and Tannenbaum developed the concepts andapproaches that together represented ‘OD’. They defined the scope, purpose andphilosophy of OD, methods of conducting OD ‘interventions’, approaches to‘process consulting’ and methodologies such as action research and surveyfeedback.OD – the glory yearsThe later 1960s and the 1970s were the days when behavioural science reigned andOD was seen, at least by behavioural scientists, as the answer to the problem ofimproving organizational effectiveness. Comprehensive programmes using thevarious approaches described below were introduced in a number of American businessessuch as General Motors and Corning Glass and a few UK companies such asICI. US research quoted by French and Bell (1990) found that positive impacts weremade in between 70 and 80 per cent of the cases studied.OD in declineDoubt about the validity of OD as a concept was first expressed in the 1970s. Kahn