Introduction to ODDr.Yogananthan

Content DefinitionHistory of ODCharacteristicsQualities of an effective org5 rulesOD goals

Definitions Thomas Cummings- organization development is a system-wide process of applying behavioral-science knowledge to the planned change and development of the strategies, design components, and processes that enable organizations to be effective.OD may be defined as a systematic, integrated and planned approach to improve the effectiveness of the enterprise. It is designed to solve problems that adversely affect the operational efficiency at all levels (Koontz ET. Al. 1980).

Definitions Richard Beckhard (1969- an effort [that is] (1) planned, (2) organization-wide, and (3) managed from the top, to (4) increase organization effectiveness and health through (5) planned interventions in the organizations processes, using behavioral-science knowledge

OD is an effort.which isplanned,organization-wide, and managed from the top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions

HISTORY OF ODIn a little over 50 years, OD has evolved a complex and diverse body of knowledge and practice. Because this expertise derives mainly from helping organizations change and improve themselves, the history of OD can be understood in terms of the kinds of changes that organizations have implemented over this time period. These include changes aimed at: (1) social processes; (2) work designs; (3) human resources; and (4) organization structures.

Social processesThe earliest applications of OD involved helping organizations improve social processes including relationships among members, communication, group decision-making, and leadership. ODs response to these social problems started in the late 1940s with the work of Kurt Lewin and his colleagues in laboratory training. It began with a training program for community leaders which included both cognitive learning about leadership as well as informal feedback about participant behavior (Bradford, 1967). This led to the development of laboratory training, commonly called a T-group, where a small, unstructured group of participants learn from their own interactions about group dynamics, leadership, interpersonal relations, and personal growth. They led to an impressive array of interventions for improving social processes in organizations, such as team building (Patten, 1981; Dyer, 1987), process consultation (Schein, 1969, 1987, 1998), organization confrontation meeting (Beckhard, 1967), and, more recently, large-group interventions such as search conferences and open-space meetings (Bunker & Alban, 1997).

It showed how feeding back that information to members can motivate and guide them to create meaningful change (Mann, 1962). It provided evidence that participative systems of management were more effective than traditional authoritative or benevolent systems (Likert, 1967).

Work designsTraditionally, work was designed to promote technical rationality, resulting in jobs that were highly specified, fragmented, and repetitive. (in 1960s)Employees complained that work was boring and meaningless; they felt alienated from their jobs and the organizations that employed them.

Eric Trist & Colleagues- The socio-technical approach, which originated in Europe and Scandinavia in the 1950s, structured work to better integrate technology and people. It resulted in work designs that enhance both productivity and employee satisfaction. Socio-technical systems also showed that when tasks are highly interdependent and require significant decision-making, teams comprised of multi-skilled members who can make relevant decisions are the most effective work design (Cummings & Srivastva, 1977). Today, such self-managed work teams are the cornerstone of work design in many organizations.Fredrick Herzberg & Colleagues- job enrichment aimed to make work more productive and humanly rewarding. It approached work redesign from a motivational perspective, showing how traditional jobs could be enriched to make them more motivating and satisfying.

Human Resources 1970shuman resource practices needed to produce at higher levels at lower costs. Because people generally do those things for which they are rewarded, rewards can play a powerful role in promoting performance.Unfortunately, many of the reward systems in use at the time were not linked closely to performance; employees were typically paid for a particular job level, time at work, or seniority.Edward Lawler and his colleagues,- made interventions aimed at making rewards more contingent on performance. Gain sharingProfit sharingFlexible schemes

Organisational structureorganizations have increasingly faced complex, rapidly changing environments that often demand radical changes in how they compete and design themselves (Mohrman et al., 1989).This typically includes a so-called SWOT analysis where the organizations strengths and weakness are compared to opportunities and threats in its competitive environment. These include: high-involvement organizations that push decision-making, information and knowledge, and rewards downward to the lowest levels of the organization (Lawler, 1986);

boundary less organizations that seek to eliminate unnecessary borders between hierarchical levels, functional departments, and suppliers and customers (Ashkenas et al., 1995); and virtual organizations that focus on the organizations core competence while outsourcing most other functions to other organizations who do them better (Davidow & Malone, 1992).

CHARACTERISTICS OFOD1. There is a planned program involving the whole system.2. The top of the organization is aware of and committed to the program and to the management of it. 3. It is related to the organizations mission. 4. It is a long-term effort.5. Activities are action-oriented.6. It focuses on changing attitudes and/or behavior. 7. It usually relies on some form of experienced-based learning activities.8. OD efforts work primarily with groups.

Qualities of effective orgsa. The total organization, the significant subparts, and individuals manage their work against goals and plans for achievement of these goals.b. Form follows function (the problem, or task, or project deter- mines how the human resources are organized).c. Decisions are made by and near the sources of information regardless of where these sources are located on the organization chart.d. The reward system is such that managers and supervisors are rewarded (and punished) comparably for: short-term profit or production performance,growth and development of their subordinates, creating a viable working group.e. Communication laterally and vertically is relatively undistorted. People are generally open and confronting. They share all the relevant facts including feelings.

f. There is a minimum amount of inappropriate win/lose activities between individuals and groups. Constant effort exists at all levels to treat conflict situations as problems subject to problem-solving methods g. There is high con.ict (clash of ideas) about tasks and projects, and relatively little energy spent in clashing over interpersonal difficulties because they have been generally worked through.h. The organization and its parts see themselves as interacting with each other and with a larger environment. The organization is an open system.i. There is a shared value and management strategy to support it, of trying to help each person (or unit) in the organization maintain his (or its) integrity and uniqueness in an interdependent environment.j. The organization and its members operate in an action- research way. General practice is to build in feedback mechanisms so that individuals and groups can learn from their own experience.

5 rules to be effective orgThe first rule is that the organization must have an effective program for the recruitment and development of talent.The second rule for the organization capable of continuous renewal is that it must be a hospitable environment for the individual.The third rule is that the organization must have built-in provisions for self-criticism.The fourth rule is that there must be liquidity in the internal structure.The fifth rule is that the organization must have some means of combating the process by which men become prisoners of their procedures (Gardner, 1965).

OD - Goals1. To develop a self-renewing, viable system that can organize in a variety of ways depending on tasks. 2. To optimize the effectiveness of both the stable (the basic organization chart) and the temporary systems (the many projects, committees, etc., through which much of the organizations work is accomplished) by built-in, continuous improvement mechanisms. 3. To move toward high collaboration and low competition between interdependent units.

4. To create conditions where con.ict is brought out and managed. One of the fundamental problems in unhealthy (or less than healthy) organizations is the amount of energy that is dysfunctionally used trying to work around, or avoid, or cover up, con.icts which are inevitable in a complex organization. 5. To reach the point where decisions are made on the basis of information source rather than organizational role.

Sociotechnical systemsA sociotechnical system is the term usually given to any instantiation of socio and technical elements engaged in goal directed behaviour. Sociotechnical systems are a particular expression of sociotechnical theory, although they are not necessarily one and the same thing. Sociotechnical systems (STS) in organizational development is an approach to complex organizational work design that recognizes the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. The term sociotechnical systems was coined in the 1960s by Eric Trist and Fred Emery, who were working as consultants at the Tavistock Institute in London.

Sociotechnical systems theory is theory about the social aspects of people and society and technical aspects of organizational structure and processes. Sociotechnical refers to the interrelatedness of social and technical aspects of an organisation. Sociotechnical theory therefore is about joint optimization.

Sociotechnical theory - two main principles:

One is that the interaction of social and technical factors creates the conditions for successful (or unsuccessful) organizational performance. This interaction is comprised partly of linear cause and effect relationships (the relationships that are normally designed) and partly from non-linear, complex, even unpredictable relationships (the good or bad relationships that are often unexpected). Whether designed or not, both types of interaction occur when socio and technical elements are put to work.The corollary of this, and the second of the two main principles, is that optimization of each aspect alone (socio or technical) tends to increase not only the quantity of unpredictable, un-designed relationships, but those relationships that are injurious to the systems performance.

STS theory principle componentsResponsible autonomy-Adaptability- restore fitness & complexityWhole tasks -A whole task has the advantage of placing responsibility for the [] task squarely on the shoulders of a single, small, face-to-face group which experiences the entire cycle of operations within the compass of its membership.[Meaningfulness of tasks-for each participant the task has total significance and dynamic closure

Socio technical systems approachJob enrichmentJob enlargementJob rotationMotivationProcess improvementTask analysisWork design

Job enrichmentJob enrichment in organizational development, human resources management, and organizational behavior, is the process of giving the employee a wider and higher level scope of responsibilitiy with increased decision making authority. This is the opposite of job enlargement, which simply would not involve greater authority. Instead, it will only have an increased number of duties.[12]

Job enlargementJob enlargement means increasing the scope of a job through extending the range of its job duties and responsibilities. This contradicts the principles of specialisation and the division of labour whereby work is divided into small units, each of which is performed repetitively by an individual worker. Some motivational theories suggest that the boredom and alienation caused by the division of labour can actually cause efficiency to fall.

Job rotationJob rotation is an approach to management development, where an individual is moved through a schedule of assignments designed to give him or her a breadth of exposure to the entire operation. Job rotation is also practiced to allow qualified employees to gain more insights into the processes of a company and to increase job satisfaction through job variation. The term job rotation can also mean the scheduled exchange of persons in offices, especially in public offices, prior to the end of incumbency or the legislative period.

Motivation

Motivation in psychology refers to the initiation, direction, intensity and persistence of behavior.Motivation is a temporal and dynamic state that should not be confused with personality or emotion. Motivation is having the desire and willingness to do something. A motivated person can be reaching for a long-term goal such as becoming a professional writer or a more short-term goal like learning how to spell a particular word.

Process improvementProcess improvement in organizational development is a series of actions taken to identify, analyze and improve existing processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives. These actions often follow a specific methodology or strategy to create successful results.

Task analysisTask analysis is the analysis of how a task is accomplished, including a detailed description of both manual and mental activities, task and element durations, task frequency, task allocation, task complexity, environmental conditions, necessary clothing and equipment, and any other unique factors involved in or required for one or more people to perform a given task. This information can then be used for many purposes, such as personnel selection and training, tool or equipment design, procedure design (e.g., design of checklists or decision support systems) and automation.

Work designWork design or job design in organizational development is the application of sociotechnical systems principles and techniques to the humanization of work. The aims of work design to improved job satisfaction, to improved through-put, to improved quality and to reduced employee problems, e.g., grievances, absenteeism.

Backwards & ForwardsSumming up: Today we covered centuries in job design from the craft era to modern times. Along the way we reviewed the era of scientific management, job rotation and enlargement and the Job Characteristics TheoryLooking Ahead: Next time we continue with job design and consider some contemporary approaches as well as the implications of modern manufacturing and information technologies on job design.

ReferenceEric Trist & K. Bamforth (1951). Some social and psychological consequences of the longwall method of coal getting, in: Human Relations, 4, pp.3-38. p.7-9. Siebold, G. L. (1991). "The evolution of the measurement of cohesion". In: Military Psychology, 11(1), 5-26. P.V.R. Carvalho (2006). "Ergonomic field studies in a nuclear power plant control room". In: Progress in Nuclear Energy, 48, pp. 51-69 A. Rice (1958). Productivity and social organisation: The Ahmedabad experiment. London: Tavistock. R. Carvajal (1983). "Systemic netfields: the systems paradigm crises. Part I". In: Human Relations 36(3), pp.227-246. Sitter, L. U., Hertog, J. F. & Dankbaar, B., From complex organizations with simple jobs to simple organizations with complex jobs, in: Human Relations, 50(5), 497-536, 1997. p. 498