Fluent Essays

summary of article See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324525271 Organizational Development and Management History: A Tale of Changing Seasons Article · April 2017 CITATIONS 2 READS 657 1 author: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Age discrimination and construction of age View project Women in public administration View project Hindy Lauer Schachter New Jersey Institute of Technology 103 PUBLICATIONS   781 CITATIONS    SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Hindy Lauer Schachter on 01 August 2019. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324525271_Organizational_Development_and_Management_History_A_Tale_of_Changing_Seasons?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_2&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324525271_Organizational_Development_and_Management_History_A_Tale_of_Changing_Seasons?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_3&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/project/Age-discrimination-and-construction-of-age?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_9&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/project/Women-in-public-administration?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_9&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_1&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hindy-Schachter?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_4&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hindy-Schachter?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_5&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/institution/New_Jersey_Institute_of_Technology?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_6&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hindy-Schachter?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_7&_esc=publicationCoverPdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Hindy-Schachter?enrichId=rgreq-472bc36651f8f8327dd8cf34836e6d57-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMyNDUyNTI3MTtBUzo3ODcxNjIyMTE1NjU1NzNAMTU2NDY4NTUwNDkwOA%3D%3D&el=1_x_10&_esc=publicationCoverPdf ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT AND MANAGEMENT HISTORY: A TALE OF CHANGING SEASONS HINDY LAUER SCHACHTER New Jersey Institute of Technology ABSTRACT This article situates organization development (OD) in public administration history as a case study in understanding how the popularity of interventions to enhance agency performance rise and decline in academic literature. Using Barley and Kunda’s (1992) tripartite historical analysis of management paradigms it discusses OD’s surge, its rhetoric, and the challenges it confronted, especially from the alternative intervention of total quality management. The article shows how the rise and relative decline of OD within the PA literature coincided with important public administration theory developments in the mid and late twentieth century. Key Words: Organization development, public administration, tripartite historical analysis, organization climate. INTRODUCTION This article situates organization development (OD) in public administration history by examining its rise to prominence in the 1970s and its subsequent place in public administration literature. The purpose is to use a case study to add to our knowledge of how and why particular interventions designed to increase agency performance grow in popularity and then face reputational challenges over time. In other words, the case study adds to our understanding of the rise and fall of management innovations in academic discourse. Techniques to modify organizational behavior and change structure and policies have swept through public and private organizations alike at least for the last hundred years (Fernandez and Rainey, 2006). Individual techniques have gone 234 PAQ SUMMER 2017 in and out of fashion; at one moment a particular approach seems an efficient means to important ends and then for material or ideational reasons it loses popularity (Abrahamson, 1991 and 1996). Organizations often fashion training programs in a “flavor of the month” spirit alternating among efforts based on management-by-objectives, total quality management (TQM), organizational development or other approaches (Hall and Nania, 1997). Scholars have debated how much new material emerges from each approach and how much is recycled principles with new names or what Mani (1995: 147) called “old wine in new bottles.” In the last forty years management scholars have tried to understand some of the constraints underlying this cycle in terms of the social construction of innovations (Rodgers, 2003). Schachter (1989) attributed the ephemeral nature of constructs to public administration’s adopting a natural science model of intellectual change where participants expected old theories to serve as foils for later explanations. A number of commentators have argued for the ubiquity of change on the grounds that management approaches need to appear as part of a culture of modernity tied to rational, positive scientific modes of inquiry if they are to gain acceptance (Abrahamson 1996; Adams 1992). Barley and Kunda (1992) argued, on the other hand, that the importance of rationality varied by period. They depicted management rhetoric alternating between rational and normative foundations. Rational discourse emphasized managerial control through manipulating systems while normative rhetoric stressed that control lay in shaping worker identities. But they agreed with the theorists cited in the last paragraph the popularity of a given management approach changes over time. Barley and Kunda (1992) proposed a model for studying the ebb and flow of historically popular techniques based on exploring three aspects of each approach. Using this method scholars examine the technique’s surge, meaning the mechanisms by which it rose to prominence; its rhetoric or major motifs; and the challenges such rhetoric eventually confronts. Two types of challenges may appear. First the rhetoric of each management approach contains internal contradictions, which become increasingly visible over time. Second every technique PAQ SUMMER 2017 235 competes with other approaches that focus on different aspects of organizational life. Approach A, for example, might focus on parts X and Y of organizational life, which are salient to researchers in a given period. Approach B focuses on aspect Z which becomes increasingly important over time thus displacing interest from approach A. Barley and Kunda’s work emphasized the advantages that management as a field gets from moving from one approach to another and by extension the advantages conferred by using multiple approaches. Using Barley and Kunda’s tripartite analytical scheme this paper tries to answer some questions about OD’s trajectory in public administration scholarship starting in the 1970s. When and how did OD enter public administration literature? What were its dominant motifs? Which challenges if any did it eventually face in relation to maintaining its place in the field’s literature? My argument is that in the 1990s TQM upstaged OD as a fount of interest for public administration scholarship because its rhetoric meshed better with important trends in the field. The source of information for this and other arguments comes from reading public administration literature on OD and TQM from 1969 to the present. Abrahamson (1996) argued that the way to study the trajectory of a management approach was to examine its place in articles and conference proceedings over a period of time. I concentrated on articles in two scholarly journals. One was Public Administration Review (PAR), the field’s leading journal in this period. The other was Public Administration Quarterly (PAQ), a journal affiliated with the American Society for Public Administration’s Section for Professional and Organizational Development (SPOD), and a leading home for articles on OD. Tracing the rise and ebb of academic articles in this way is a widely used method developed by business management scholars to show academic interest in a given organizational improvement technique (Benders, et al., 2007). The rise and decrease of OD articles in PAR is an analogous marker for the approach’s salience in public administration scholarship. 236 PAQ SUMMER 2017 The analysis proceeds in six sections. The first defines OD. The second discusses its surge into the public administration spotlight. The third reports some dominant motifs in its rhetoric, particularly its emphasis on an open climate and employee participation. The fourth and fifth discuss OD’s internal and external challenges, respectively. The sixth offers conclusions. WHAT IS ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT? Organization development is an “educational strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, and structure of organizations so that they can better adapt to new technologies, markets, and challenges” (Bennis, 1969, p. 2). As an educational strategy OD succeeds by changing people through activities that foster learning about self, group and agency (Knowles, 1974). These activities work “by dispelling the tenuous base of existing norms and giving participants a common view based on new data” (Gardner, 1974). OD consultants do not offer advice on how to improve agency tasks. Instead, they provide information to organization members who can then use new knowledge to improve processes. Thus, while OD was not the first theory to take employee perceptions into account, it was the first to place worker perceptions at the center of its approach. All its activities focus on eliciting and trying to understand employee perceptions on work and work relationships. OD facilitators assume that units can build change on that understanding. OD facilitators try to create an open, problem solving oriented climate at work, supplementing the authority of position with the power of knowledge. They assume that in this situation, managers are more likely to use new tactics rather than simply rely on past practice (Golembiewski, 1969). OD techniques include sensitivity training, an intense form of counseling where groups of employees meet with a facilitator to learn how they and co-workers perceive their work world, team building and intergroup training (George and Jones 2012). By the 1990s OD facilitators used these techniques in the service of diverse human resource issues including organizational structure and work PAQ SUMMER 2017 237 design, quality of work life programs, strategic planning and career development (Dahl and Glassman 1991). In organizations that require change at many levels, facilitators begin at the apex of the authority structure. This arrangement increases the likelihood that that top managers will support subsequent interventions (Boss et al., 1991). Some scholars contrast rational techniques based on a positive science with an interpretive approach such as OD that seeks to discover the meanings that various actors attach to a situation rather than to test hypotheses. The core of the interpretivist’s work is to ask workers what a particular situation means to them including how it allies with their values, the objective being to enhance understanding for all involved in the process (White 1986). This approach has similarities with Hummel’s (1991) idea that the stories employees tell about their work are foundational to renewing public administration. OD is an interpretive approach and McConkie and Boss (1994) consider stories one of its tools. Facilitators elicit stories that delineate climate; they tell stories that spur change. Gordon (1986, p. 585) explicitly labeled OD as a “countercurrent” to rationality in public administration and noted that endeavors centered on rationality were “frustrated” by it. The question then becomes can techniques allied with interpretive methods gain the approval of managers. Will they appear to be adequately grounded in science to propel their use by decision makers? If managers do use interpretative approaches, do such interventions become simply another of the techniques managers and their hired experts use to manipulate workers? SURGE OD rests on a foundation built by several psychological theories that emerged in the fifteen years immediately after World War II. This was a period when important political science and public administration theorists questioned the validity of productivity improvement approaches based on engineering concepts tied to scientific management. (Dahl, 1947; Waldo, 1948). Such criticism opened the door to interest in an 238 PAQ SUMMER 2017 approach explicitly generated outside of scientific management- one that featured at its core a call to understanding worker personality differences and perceptions. Approaches from humanist psychology seemed to fit that bill. A key foundation for OD was Kurt Lewin’s force field theory. This work posited the existence of two sets of forces in any organization, those for and those resisting change. If these forces were in equilibrium, inertia towards change prevailed. The OD facilitator’s job was to increase the forces for change and/or decrease the forces resisting change and so minimize inertia. This approach required three phases. The first was unfreezing the status quo, where OD interventions discussed later in this article gave employees new information that would lead them to reject their old perceptions. The second was changing, where workers developed new attitudes, values and behaviors. The third was refreezing which entailed creating a new and presumably more productive equilibrium based on the new values and behaviors. (Lewin, 1951). OD also built on human relations theories stressing situational/emergent motivation and use of the managerial grid (Kirkhart and White, 1974). Particularly important was Douglas McGregor’s (1960) Theory Y where organizational characteristics influenced whether people saw work itself as a source of satisfaction. This approach gave new importance to companies’ changing work characteristics including characteristics relating to the worker’s sense of autonomy and trust on the job. While an “objective reality” (however defined) mattered, so too did each worker’s perception of what was real about the environment. Some OD practitioners saw the “managerial grid,” with its stress on manager concern for performance and human morale as another foundation (Blake et al., 1964). Rather than viewing efficiency and good human relations as antagonists OD practitioners saw these goals as symbiotic. OD sought to enhance democracy in organizations at least partly to increase the performance of their systems. (An approach that valued workplace democracy for its own sake would have a hard time receiving executive support.) PAQ SUMMER 2017 239 The first OD interventions took place in the 1960s. Important writers in the human relations literature served as organizational consultants who introduced techniques such as team building and intergroup facilitation to elicit worker perceptions on their surroundings. Their aim was to use the ensuing understanding of extant organizational climate to affect change. Many interventions occurred in private corporations such as McGregor’s (1967) team building at Union Carbide. Although some commentators reported that the public sector was less bullish on the approach (Golembiewski, 1969), right from the start other interventions involved public agencies as in Chris Argyris’ (1967) intergroup facilitation at the State Department. By the 1970s, OD had entered mainstream public administration literature. Public Administration Review, the field’s premier journal, published multiple articles exploring OD in public agencies (e.g., Knowles 1974, Gardner 1974; Kirkhart and White 1974; Eddy and Saunders 1972). Robert Golembiewski and William Eddy (1978) edited a collection of articles on OD for Marcel Dekker’s public administration handbook series. In 1975, the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) recognized a Section for Professional Development (later renamed the Section for Professional and Organizational Development) that would specialize in training and OD. At subsequent ASPA annual conferences the new section sponsored panels featuring field research and conceptual papers on OD. One 1977 panel, for example, offered participants a chance to exchange OD resources and techniques; another discussed the unique issues that arise when facilitators use OD with elected officials. In 1989, the section became one of the first ASPA groups to affiliate with a journal, in this case Public Administration Quarterly (PAQ). The journal acknowledged the new affiliation beginning with its spring 1990 issue (volume 14, issue one).The journal publicized OD in three ways. First, Jack Rabin, as editor, accepted individual articles on the topic as well as publishing eleven symposia edited by Robert Golembiewski; some of these symposia had two parts, extending into two separate journal issues. In1992, Rabin also accepted a 240 PAQ SUMMER 2017 symposium that Sherman Wyman edited on OD practitioner, Neely Gardner. Second, in the 1990s Hindy Lauer Schachter edited a special SPOD-affiliated PAQ section that featured several short OD case studies. Third, Golembiewski edited a separate section called “Frontiers of Empirical Research and Development” which included articles delineating OD’s scope and methods. Both the journal itself and the two separate sections used the services of multiple reviewers from academia and public agencies. The journal-as-a-whole and Golembiewski’s section also had their own editorial boards. The upshot was that many people were involved in writing, editing and reviewing articles about OD. In the 1980s some (though not all) of the most widely used textbooks in MPA-level introduction to public administration courses included OD as one of their topics (e.g., Gordon 1986, Nigro and Nigro 1989). In fact, one textbook labeled it the most familiar organization theory approach based on a psychological perspective (Nigro and Nigro 1989). Such inclusion acknowledged the status of OD in the field as textbooks are a primary method for conveying key concepts to acolytes (Dunn 1988). In 1997 Golembiewski (1997: 254) identified himself as delighted with OD’s coverage. He noted that public sector OD had become so “in” for both academics and practitioners that the problem was “many people want to join the parade with too little attention to whether they have developed the appropriate values, attitudes, and skills.” Yet by the time he made these laudatory comments the surge to prominence was already ebbing on one count. While PAQ continued to publish symposia on OD through the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, PAR, the field’s most prominent journal reduced its coverage in those decades. In a later section we will consider why this about-face may have occurred. RHETORIC OD attempts to improve organizational functioning by helping to create an open environment. In this milieu, people feel PAQ SUMMER 2017 241 free to give their honest opinions about work. Workers at all hierarchical levels collaborate in decision-making. As mentioned earlier, OD stressed openness and democratic decision-making, at least in part, as a way to boost performance. Dener and Miller (1999: 139) noted, “effective OD is both values-driven and results-oriented.” OD practitioner and theorist, Neely Gardner (1974: 108) explained that his plan was to foster situations that enhanced freedom and effectiveness. Examining how OD defined openness and participation and related them to performance thus probes the rhetoric’s core. Let us examine each concept in turn. Open climate OD values a reasonably confrontational organizational culture where workers are less constrained by fear of failure than by the rewards of prudential risk taking (Golembiewski, 1994). Without a propensity for confrontation OD sees a crisis of agreement lurking. This crisis can manifest itself in groupthink, where decision makers converge prematurely on one option. Alternatively, it can elicit what is known as the Abilene paradox, where each group member withholds disagreement with the earliest stated opinion. Other group members thus believe unanimous support exists for a particular course of action when, in fact, people have secretly withheld dispositions against the option. In either scenario, defective decisions occur (Taras, 1991, Kim, 2001). OD consultants doing field projects often find that workers try to avoid conflict. Consultants see such avoidance as a natural result of authoritarian management (e.g., Snyder 1995). The solution is to foster a culture where workers do not fear the confrontation of dialogue. Instead they take risks for increased performance; they gladly broach different options so the best way forward can receive a hearing (Ashforth, 1991). To reach that stage consultants have to collect information on how the group or groups are currently functioning and which treatments might lead to change. Consultants use sensitivity training, team building and other exercises to unmask the falsity of the original agreement and thus reach a stage suitable for open planning and collaboration. 242 PAQ SUMMER 2017 The public sector has unique problems reaching openness, especially among politicians. Open meetings requirement can lead council members to mask their intentions, simplistically playing to the gallery rather than leveling with colleagues. Groups at many public agency levels may consider political behavior undiscussable. The OD facilitator has to foster a climate where people are comfortably discussing politics and other relevant topics (Schwarz ,1991). Participation Participation in decision-making and shared power are fundamental OD propositions. Facilitators view such participation as good for the organization and the worker. Widespread involvement in decisions that matter can release multiple sources of information and give people at all levels a higher stake in the outcome. OD consultants assume that most people prefer to collaborate on reaching decisions that affect them. By giving them this opportunity the organization improves their work experience as well as fostering their innovation and creativity (Golembiewski and Rountree, 1991). The result should be happier workers and better creation and delivery of products and services. While OD was primarily interested in empowering company employees, the technique was also theoretically available to empower external stakeholders as well. Golembiewski and Kiepper (1983) included local residents in an OD intervention relating to planning the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s (MARTA) railroad stations. The addition of citizens to the decision making process expanded each station’s fit with its own neighborhood texture. CHALLENGES: INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS Every management fashion has unspoken assumptions that inevitably evoke contradictions. Eventually these contradictions elicit criticism both from insiders and outsiders, that is to say both from people allied with the approach as well as from scholars who want to supplant it with another technique. In this section I examine two potential contradictions inherent in PAQ SUMMER 2017 243 OD. One relates to OD’s attitude towards change and the other to the threat that OD itself can foster manipulation. Pro-change A key limitation of OD (as with much of the organizational behavior literature) is that all its rhetoric favors change. Resistance to change is always portrayed as wrong. Facilitators never laud such resistance or even remain neutral in its face. Indeed, McConkie and Boss (2006: 119) defined change for OD as “a movement from a less desired to a more desired state.” Yet surely some examples exist where resisting organizational change is the right stance, the stance that will actually aid performance. If OD did not privilege management plans for change over worker resistance, managers might not have favored the approach. But does a stance contra resistance a priori comport with assuming that workers at all levels have information and values to contribute? If workers have unique information and values not vouchsafed to executives, does it never happen that this special understanding of the situation leads to justified resistance? OD never confronts this dilemma nor does it posit a role for a technique that helps workers resist change successfully. Pro-open workplace Organizational development facilitators enter an intervention convinced that closed minds and reluctance to share one’s own outlook with others are problematic. The upshot should be that facilitators themselves share with participants all knowable implications of their work. Do they? In a moving laudatory profile of Neely Gardner, city manager Camille Cates Barnett (1992: 180) remembered watching Neely, the facilitator; rearrange the chairs in the middle of a department retreat. She reproached him for arranging the chairs himself and even offered to bring someone into the room to help. He replied “It’s one of the most important things I do: arrange the chairs.” One point of her report was that seemingly small matters such as chair arrangement matter in an OD intervention. A good 244 PAQ SUMMER 2017 facilitator such as Neely would always understand the importance of proper physical configuration. But a question that comes to mind reading the incident is “Does the facilitator tell the participants that chairs are being placed in a particular milieu that will nudge them to behave a certain way?’ Probably not. The facilitator enters the organization as an expert in creating an environment where the company can better meet its own goals. Like all experts OD facilitators possess information that others with whom they interact lack. Without this information other participants in OD interventions are at a disadvantage in understanding the motives for the facilitator’s actions. To what extent does this paucity of information sharing itself constitute manipulation? In the end OD facilitators face a common problem of leaders in many fields. The leaders do not disclose all the subtle incentives working on other organizational actors because they believe such disclosure would harm performance. In OD’s case, however, failure to disclose seems to work against the approach’s core rhetoric. Even in the 1970s Kirkhart and White (1974) noted that while technicism was OD’s enemy, perhaps OD itself was a technique that provided an organization’s executives another way to manipulate people. CHALLENGES: RIVAL APPROACHES Despite these internal problems (which are certainly not unique to OD), the biggest challenge the approach faced comes not from its own contradictions but rather from the perceived strengths of alternative techniques for organizational improvement. The relative diminution in Public Administration Review articles on OD from the 1970s/1980s to the 1990s did not emerge from internal contradictions but rather from a failure to compete for writer interest with rival performance improvement approaches. One such alternative was Total Quality Management (TQM) a management philosophy based on meeting customer expectations through providing high quality goods and services. As several writers have observed OD and TQM have much in common as approaches that improve organizations (Wolf, 1992, Fiorelli and Feller, 1994). Ehrenberg and Stupak PAQ SUMMER …