LEAD 707

1. © Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

2. Chapter 8
Organizational Development (OD)
and Organizational Learning
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

3. Learning outcomes
• Define Organizational Development in the
context of change in organizations
• Appreciate what is meant by organizational
learning in the context of sustainable change in
organizations
• Identify the key concepts for developing a
learning organization
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

4. Definition
• Organizational 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 organizational culture –
with special emphasis on the culture of intact work
teams and other team configurations – using the
consultant-facilitator role and the theory and
technology of applied behavioral science, including
action research. (French & Bell 1999: 25)
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

5. Four core values of OD (French & Bell, 1973)
1. There is a belief that the needs and aspirations of
individuals provide the prime reason for the existence
of organizations within society.
2. Change agents believe that organizational
prioritization is a legitimate part of organizational
culture.
3. Change agents are committed to increased
organizational effectiveness.
4. OD places a high value on the democratization of
organizations through power equalization.
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

6. Types of Interventions
• Individual
• Team
• Organization
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

7. Factors to consider when selecting
interventions
• Matching the intervention to the data and
diagnosis
• The readiness for change
• Where to intervene first
• The depth of the intervention
• The sequence of activities
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

8. Criticisms of OD
• It is too rational, linear, incremental and prescriptive.
• It does not pay enough attention to the need to
analyse and conceptualize organizational change.
• It fails to recognize that change processes are shaped
by history, culture, context and the balance of power in
organizations
(Pettigrew, 1985)
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

9. Dialogic OD methods
• Action Research
• Appreciative Inquiry
• Open Space Technology
• World/Knowledge Cafe
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

10. Learning organization
• A learning organization is an organization that has
developed the continuous capacity to adapt and
change (Garvin, 1993)
• It is an organization that is skilled at creating, acquiring
and transferring knowledge, modifying its behaviour to
reflect new knowledge and insights and adjusting itself
to adapt to internal and external environmental
changes, thereby achieving both sustainability and
development (Chen, 2005)
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

11. Five pillars of a learning organization
(Edwards & Usher, 2001)
• Vision
• Infrastructure
• Culture
• Learning dynamics
• Training and development
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

12. Learning communities
The characteristics of effective learning
communities are that:
– Membership is voluntary.
– They have a specific focus.
– There is no expectation of tangible results that can
be measured.
– Their existence is defined by group members and
they last as long as members want them to last.
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

13. Summary
• Learning and change are inter-related. Change is a learning process and
learning is a change process.
• Organizational Development (OD) is the process for initiating, implementing
and sustaining change, through the facilitation of individual, team and
organizational interventions.
• Dialogic OD methods, such as Appreciative Inquiry, Open-Space Technology,
and Knowledge, or World Café have developed in response to criticisms of the
traditional OD approaches.
• An organization can proactively sustain change by making continuous learning
part of its culture, by becoming an organization that learns – a learning
organization.
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill

14. References
Chen, G. (2005) ‘An organizational learning model based on western and Chinese
management thoughts and practices’, Management Decision, 43(4): 479–500.
Edwards, R. and Usher, R. (2001) ‘Lifelong learning: A postmodern condition of
education?’, Adult Education Quarterly, 51(4): 273–87.
French, W.L. and Bell, C.H. (1973) Organization Development. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
French, W.L. and Bell, C.H. (1999) Organization Development: Behaviour Science
Interventions for Organization Improvement, 6th edn. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Garvin, D.A. (1993) ‘Building a learning organization’, Harvard Business Review,
71(4): 78–91.
Pettigrew, A. (1987) ‘Context and action in the transformation of the firm’,
Journal of Management Studies, 24(6): 649–69.
© Julie Hodges and Roger Gill