Organizational development history

1. History of Organization
Development

2. Like a Mangrove tree OD has four important
trunk stems:-
1. The laboratory training stem
2. The survey research and feedback stem
3. The action research stem
4. The socio-technical and socio-clinical stem

3. Laboratory training stem
 The T-group: it is an unstructured small-
group situations in which participants learn
from their own actions.
 An Inter-group Relations workshop held at
State Teachers College in New Britain,
Connecticut in 1946.
 T-Group consisted of Kurt Lewin, Kenneth
Benne, Leland Bradford and Ronald Lippitt.

4. Robert Tannenbaum
 Some of the early sessions of what would
now be called “team building” were
conducted by him in 1952 and 1953.
 According to him, term vertically structured
groups was used with groups dealing with
“personal topics” as interpersonal relations
and organizational topics as responsibilities
etc.

5. Douglas McGregor
 He was the first to talk about the transfer
problem and to talk systematically about
implementation of T-group skills in complex
organizations.
 He along with others established a small
internal consulting group which used
behavioural science knowledge to help line
managers and their subordinates learn how
to be more effective in groups.

6. Herbert Shepard and Robert
Blake
 After initiating a series of two week
laboratory, they emphasized on intergroup as
well as interpersonal relations.
 Although working on interpersonal problems
affecting work performance was clearly an
organizational effort, but between group
problem solving had even greater
organizational development implications
because it involved a broader and more
complex segment of the organization.

7. Survey Research and
Feedback stem
 It is specialized form of action research, the
history of this stem revolves around the
techniques and approaches developed over a
period of years.
 Survey Research Center was founded by
Rensis Likert, who is also famous for giving
us the five point rating scale also known as
Likert scale.

8. Action Research stem
 It is a collaborative, client-consultant inquiry.
 Out of the five versions, participant action
research is used most frequently in OD.

9. Socio-technical and socio-
clinical stem
 Bion, Rickman and others had been involved
with a six-week “Northfield Experiment” at a
military hospital during world war II. In this
experiment each soldier was required to join a
group that performed some task such as
handicrafts as well as discuss feelings,
interpersonal relations.
 Eric Trist in1947 visited a British coal mine, and
observed that the teams that the workers
themselves have organized was different and
the result of the team approach was remarkable
in safety and productivity both.

10. Second Generation OD
 Organizational Transformation
 Organizational Culture
 Learning Organization
 Intensified Interest in Teams
 Total Quality Management
 Visioning and Future Search

11. Interest in Organizational
Transformation
 “second-order change (organizational
transformation) is a multi-dimensional, multi-
level, qualitative, discontinuous, radical
organizational change involving a pragmatic
shift.” (Amir Levy and Uri Merry)
 Increasingly, OD professionals distinguish
between the more modest, or evolutionary
efforts towards organization improvement
such as: transitions, fundamental large-scale
change in the organization etc.

12. Interest in Organizational
Culture
 Schein in particular has written extensively
about culture, he has devised interventions to
help leaders and employees identify those
cultural assumptions that will assist the
organization in attaining its goal and those
that hinder goal attainment.
 The intervention may involve exploration of
artifacts, values and assumptions as well as
use of questionnaires to identify old norms
and form new ones.

13. Interest in Learning
Organizations
 Senge writes extensively about the
importance of systems thinking and also
about learning disabilities that plague
organizations.
 Some of the learning disabilities faced by the
organizations are focusing on one's own job
with little sense of collective product, another
is blaming the “enemy out there”, Senge
developed workshops, exercises and games
to create awareness of these disabilities.

14. Intensified interest in teams
 The recent years have seen a widening and
deepening interest in teams specially high-
performing teams, cross-functional teams,
self-managed teams.

15. TQM
 The past decade has seen a mushrooming
interest in total quality management world-
wide.
 “ Total Quality is typically a companywide
effort seeking to install and make permanent
a climate where employees continuously
improve their ability to provide on demand
products and services that customers will find
of particular value”

16. Visioning and Future Search
 In this approach interventions have been
designed to help organizational members
look to the future.
 Marvin Weisbord has developed a “future
search conferences” in which organizational
members work together on data by analyzing
and drawing conclusions for future action
steps.

17. Extent of Application
 Business and industry are not the only kind of
institutions involved.
 From public schools to medical schools,
social welfare agencies, police departments,
government units all are using the OD
interventions.
 The rage of occupational roles that have
been involved in OD is limitless ranging form
managers, soldiers, psychologist, teachers,
engineers, lawyers etc.

18. Thank You