Fluent Essays

Case Study and Chapter 2 of text is attached.Follow the instructions below to create a Work Product. Read: Case Study 1 (Analyzing Opportunities For OD Work at Northern County Legal Services) Consider :1. What could an OD consultant have offered the leader of this organization?2. What is is the prevailing leadership style ( see Chapter 2) and its impact on the organization?3. What OD values (as described in the text) can help this organization improve? Write:A business correspondence to the executive director of NCLS that :1. Summarizes the situation as you see it.2. Describes what OD is and its core values3. Outlines how OD might be able to assist the organization ( satellite view not a detailed plan). Work Product:Your work product is a business letter. anderson_2017_chapter_2_edition_4th.pdf case_study_1_od.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview Copyright Information (bibliographic) Document Type: Book Chapter Title of book: Organization Development The Process of Leading Organizational Change (4th Edition) Author of book: Donald L. Anderson Chapter Title: Chapter 2 History of Organization Development Author of Chapter: Donald L. Anderson Year: 2017 Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc. Place of Publishing: United States of America The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or reproduction is not to be used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research. If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of fair use that user may be liable for copyright infringement. History of evelo m rg nizati n t I fyou have just heard the term organization development (OD) used recently, you may be surprised to learn that the practice of OD is now into its seventh decade (even though the term itself first began to be used in the 1960s; see Sashkin & Burke, 1987). Like the business and organizational environments where it is prac­ ticed, OD has grown and changed significantly during this time. This chapter highlights different strands of research and practice to illustrate how each of these traditions of OD can be seen, explicitly and implicitly, in how it is practiced today. Eight major traditions of OD research and practice are described here, though these blend together and intersect one another, and the themes in these eight tra­ ditions can be seen throughout later chapters. These trends follow one another more or less historically, though there is significant overlap and influence among each of them. By becoming aware of the history of OD, you will be more aware of how it has been defined throughout its life, as well as the changes that the field has under­ gone from its historical roots. In addition, you will better understand how todays practice of OD has undergone many years of research and practice to reach its current state. The eight strands of OD research and practice discussed in this chapter are as follows: 1. Laboratory training and T-groups 2. Action research, survey feedback, and sociotechnical systems 3. Management practices 4. Quality and employee involvement 5. Organizational culture 18 Chapter 2 History of Organization Development 6. Change management, strategic change, and reengineering 7. Organizational learning 8. Organizational effectiveness and employee engagement Laboratory Training and By most accounts, what has come to be known as organization development can be traced back to a training laboratory effort that began in 1946-1947 in Bethel, Maine, at what was then known as the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in Group Development. The laboratorys founders, Kenneth Benne, Leland Bradford, and Ronald Lippitt, were inspired to develop NTL by the dedicated work of a fourth scholar and their predecessor, Kurt Lewin. A German immigrant who had arrived in the United States in the early 1930s to escape the sociopolitical environment of his home country, Lewin was a social psychologist on the faculty at the University of Iowa. His interest was in studying patterns of group behavior, social problems, and the influence of leadership on a group. At its core, Lewins work was an effort to understand and create personal and social change, with the objective of building and growing democracy in society (see Benne, 1964; L. P. Bradford, 1974; Hirsch, 1987; Kleiner, 1996). In the 1940s, with his graduate student, Ron Lippitt, Lewin studied boys clubs, specifically boys reactions to different styles adopted by group leaders. Among the research findings, they noted that group leadership significantly influenced the boys patterns of behavior observed in their groups, and when the group leaders style changed, so did the behavior patterns in the groups after a short adjustment period (Kleiner, 1996). Spurred on by the consequences of these results, in 1945 Lewin established a Research Center for Group Dynamics (a phrase Lewin invented; see L. P. Bradford, 1974) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the summer of 1946, a significant and unexpected finding occurred that dramatically changed the research and practitioner landscape at the time. It was at this time that the practices that became the T-group were discovered by Lewin and his students. The Connecticut Interracial Commission had asked Kurt Lewin to develop a workshop for community leaders in association with the Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress. The objective of the workshop was to assist community leaders in developing solutions to prob­ lems that they faced in their communities, specifically addressing problems in the implementation of the Fair Employment Practices Act. Participants included not only community leaders but also businesspeople, social workers, teachers, and other interested citizens. Instead of making attendees passively sit through lengthy lectures, speeches, and presentations by experts, which many of them had been expecting, organizers developed a workshop in which participatory group discussion, role playing, and teamwork would be the primary activities (Hirsch, 1987). Group leaders debated whether subgroups should be homogeneous 19 20 ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT (e.g., all teachers, all social workers) or mixed (Lippitt, 1949). These two consid­ erations (group participation and composition) continue as key questions for the OD practitioner today. For the researchers at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, it was an unusual opportunity to observe group processes and to understand how partici­ pants learned from their experiences in order to develop new skills that they could use when they returned to their communities. In addition, the workshop fit with the values that the researchers had espoused at the time. Kenneth Benne would later say, I saw it was an effort to help volunteers from various parts of Connecticut to begin to see themselves as agents of change in their responsible roles as citizens.... It seemed to me that this was research designed to serve both the purposes of social action and the purposes of more refined and powerful methods of training people for action. (quoted in L. P. Bradford, 1974, p. 19) As a workshop designed for both social change and social research, each subgroup had a researcher assigned to it for note-taking and observation purposes. Each evening, following the discussion session, the researchers convened to discuss the days events to document observations, code interaction, and interpret group behavior. A few of the participants in the day workshops learned of these researcher meetings and asked if they could sit in and observe. The researchers agreed and opened the sessions to other participants who were free to attend if they wished. 1 The researchers continued their process of reflecting on and inter­ preting the participants actions during the day while the participants listened. At one point, one of the researchers stated that he had seen one woman, who had been a cautious and quiet participant earlier, become a more lively contributor that day as a result of being assigned to a leadership role during a role-playing activity. Rather than allowing this observation to pass without comment, the researchers invited the woman (who was present at that evenings discussion, listening to the observation being shared) to discuss the hypothesis and to share her own interpretation. The woman agreed that, yes, it had been more enjoyable to participate as a result of being assigned to the leadership role. She found herself surprised by how much she was energized by the discussion and how much she changed from initially being uncomfortable participating to being disappointed when the discussion came to an end (Lippitt, 1949). This exchange led to a prom­ ising new pattern in which researchers reported on their observations and the participants listened, reflected, and shared their own interpretations of their own behavior. 1 The historical record differs as to how enthusiastic the researchers were about this develop­ ment. Some have written that the participants were encouraged to sit in on the sessions by the researchers (French & Bell, 1999, p. 33), some remark that the request to sit in was simply assented to (Hirsch, 1987, p. 18), and others emphasize the anxiety (L. P. Bradford, 1974, p. 35) and misgivings (Lippitt, 1949, p. 114) that the researchers felt by the request. Chapter 2 History of Organization Development Attendance at the evening sessions soared in subsequent days, with almost all participants attending, and this led to the researchers conclusion: Group members, if they were confronted more or less objectively with data concerning their own behavior and its effects, and if they came to participate nondefensively in thinking about these data, might achieve highly meaningful learnings about themselves, about the responses of others to them, and about group behavior and group development in general. (Benne, 1964, p. 83) Lewin seemed to know instinctively that this was a potentially powerful finding, remarking that we may be getting hold of a principle here that may have rather wide application in our work with groups (quoted in Lippitt, 1949, p. 116). The training group (or T-group) was born. The following year, 1947, the first T-group session took place at the National Training Laboratory in Bethel, Maine. T-group sessions were designed to last 3 weeks and comprised approximately 10 to 15 participants and one or two trainers. The trainers were not leaders of the group, but facilitators and observers of the groups processes. They posed questions and suggested activities, but remained lis­ teners who encouraged participation and truthfulness rather than directing group activity (Hirsch, 1987). The content and topic of the groups work was developed out of its own chosen goals and objectives; no specific problem-solving tasks were mandated in the T-groups unstructured format. In open and honest sessions in which authenticity and forthright communication were prized, group members spent time analyzing their own and others contributions, as well as the groups processes. Regardless of whatever process the groups followed, the common objec­ tive of each T-group was to create interpersonal change by allowing individuals to learn about their own and others behavior, so that this education could be trans­ lated into more effective behavior when the participants returned home. As the word spread about the effectiveness of the T-group laboratory method, managers and leaders began to attend to learn how to increase their effectiveness in their own organizations. Attendance was aided by a BusinessWeek article in 1955 that pro­ moted unlock[ing] more of the potential of employees and teams (What Makes a Small Group Tick; 1955, p. 40). By the mid-1960s, more than 20,000 business­ people had attended the workshop (which had been reduced to a 2-week session), in what may be considered one of the earliest fads in the field of management (Kleiner, 1996). The research that Lewin began more than 70 years ago had a significant influ­ ence on OD and leadership and management research. His research on leadership styles (such as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire) profoundly shaped aca­ demic and practitioner thinking about groups and their leaders. His influence on his students Benne, Bradford, and Lippitt in creating the National Training Laboratory has left a legacy that lives on today as NTL continues to offer sessions in interpersonal relationships, group dynamics, and leadership development. The fields of small-group research and leadership development owe a great deal to Lewins pioneering work in these areas. Though the T-group no longer represents mainstream OD practice, we see the roots of this method today in organization 21 22 ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT development in team-building interventions (a topic addressed in detail in Chapter 11). Lewins research also influenced another tradition in the history of organization development-action research and survey feedback. Action Research, Survey Feedback, and Sociotechnical Systems Recall that Kurt Lewin had founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics in 1945 at MIT to develop research findings and translate them into practical, action­ able knowledge that could be used by practitioners to improve groups and solve their problems. Lewin called this model action research to capture the idea that the research projects at their core always had both pragmatic and theoretical compo­ nents, and that rigorous scientific methods could be used to gather data about groups and to intervene in their processes (Cunningham, 1993). Two important developments during this time were a survey feedback process and the field of sociotechnical systems. Survey Feedback While Lewin and his colleagues were developing the T-group methodology, an effort was taking place at the University of Michigan, where a Survey Research Center was founded in 1946 under the direction of Rensis Likert. In his PhD dis­ sertation at Columbia in 1932, Likert had developed a 5-point scale for measuring attitudes (a scale known today as the Likert scale). One of the first clients brought to Michigan was that of the Office of Naval Research, which was focused on the underlying principles of organizing and managing human activity and on research­ ing techniques to increase productivity and job satisfaction (Frantilla, 1998, p. 21). The contract with the Office of Naval Research provided needed and important funding for Likerts work on management practices in particular, culminating in a 1961 book, New Patterns ofManagement, which reported the results of his funded research. (These findings are discussed in the next section.) The Survey Research Centers goal was to create a hub for social science research, specifically with survey research expertise. Sensing an opportunity to improve their organizations, derive economic success, and develop a competitive advantage, some organizations proposed survey research projects to the center but were denied because the center aimed to focus on larger projects of significant importance beyond a single organization and to share the results publicly. These two criteria (addressing questions of larger significance and making the results known to other researchers and practitioners) formed the core of the action research process. One such project that met these criteria was a survey feedback project at Detroit Edison. Members of the Survey Research Center conducted a 2-year study at Detroit Edison from 1948 to 1950. The survey of 8,000 employees and managers was administered to understand perceptions, opinions, and attitudes about a variety of Chapter 2 History of Organization Development aspects of the company, such as career progression and opportunities for advance­ ment, opinions about managers and colleagues, and the work content and work environment itself. The survey also asked supervisors specifically about their opin­ ions about managing at the company, and invited senior leaders and executives to offer additional perceptions from the perspective of top management. The researchers sought to understand not only how employees at Detroit Edison felt about the organization but also how the results of this project could be used to understand, instigate, and lead change in other organizations. There were four objectives of the research project: 1. To develop through first-hand experience an understanding of the problems of producing change 2. To improve relationships 3. To identify factors that affected the extent of the change 4. To develop working hypotheses for later, more directed research. (Mann, 1957,p. 158) Following the initial data collection, feedback was given to leaders and organi­ zational members about the survey results. Mann (1957) described the process of sharing this feedback as an interlocking chain of conferences (p. 158) in which initially the results were shared with the top management, assisted by a member of the research team. At this meeting, participants discussed the results, possible actions, and how the results would be shared with the next level of the organization. Next, each of those participants led a feedback discussion with his or her team about the research results, also conducting action planning and discussing how the results would be shared with the next level. This pattern continued throughout the organization. At each level, the data relevant to that specific group were discussed. Mann noted that the leaders in each case had the responsibility of presenting the data, prioritizing tasks, taking action, and reporting to their supervisors when they had reached an impasse and needed additional assistance to produce change. The researchers observed that this series of feedback meetings had a very positive influ­ ence on initiating and leading change in the organization, but they had been unable to substantiate this observation with data. In 1950 that changed with a second study conducted in eight accounting depart­ ments at Detroit Edison that had participated in the first survey. For this stage of the research, managers reviewed the two sets of survey results with employees (those from the first 1948 survey and those from this second 1950 survey) and again conducted action planning. One difference from the first round, however, was that a natural field experiment was set up. In four of the eight departments, after the initial feedback meeting, no action was taken based on the survey results (two intentionally as control departments; two due to personnel changes that made it impossible to continue to include them in the experiment). In the four departments that did take action, managers developed action planning programs that differed significantly from one another. Some programs took as long as 23 24 ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT 33 weeks, while others took 13; some departments met as frequently as 65 times, while others met as few as 9. Some department action programs involved all employees, while others were limited to the management team. Almost 2 years after the programs were initiated, a third survey was conducted in 1952 to assess the impact of the programs that the managers had developed. Thus, the experiment allowed the researchers to compare the 1950 and 1952 data for groups that had taken significant action and those that had taken no action. The researchers found that among the groups that had taken action based on the survey results, employees reported a positive change in perceptions about their jobs (such as how important it was and how interested they were in the job), their supervisors (such as the managers ability to supervise and give praise), and the company work environment (such as opportunities for promotion or the groups productivity) compared to the groups that had taken no action. Moreover, Mann (1957) reported, Employees in the experimental departments saw changes in (1) how well the supervisors in their department got along together; (2) how often their super­ visors held meetings; (3) how effective these meetings were; (4) how much their supervisor understood the way employees looked at and felt about things. (p. 161) Mann added that the change was even stronger in groups that involved all levels and employees in the action planning process. The researchers then could conclude that the conference feedback model they had developed was an effe ... Purchase answer to see full attachment