Organizational development is the direction of organizational consulting, which is a list of methods aimed at changing the existing situation in the field of corporate culture, psychological climate, and other degrees of satisfaction with work. Unlike organizational diagnostics, these events and projects not only assess the current situation in the organization but mainly aim at changing this situation. In addition, the given development interventions are conducted at four levels, such as physical, infrastructural, behavioral, and cultural, and they are assisted by coaching activities. Moreover, organizational development of an enterprise is a systematic, purposeful improvement of its organization by building more rational production and management structures, regulating the functions of individual units or divisions. The given approach also affects workers and their interaction by streamlining labor, managing processes based on the optimal combination of production elements, and creating conditions for their smooth functioning and further development. In other words, the essence of Continue reading
Organizational Development
Sensitivity Training – Meaning, History, and Stages
Sensitivity training is a method of laboratory training where an unstructured group of individuals exchange thoughts and feelings on a face-to-face basis. Sensitivity training helps give insight into how and why others feel the way they do on issues of mutual concern. Training in small groups in which people develop a sensitive awareness and understanding of themselves and of their relationships with others. Sensitivity training is based on research on human behavior that came out of efforts during World War II to ascertain whether or not an enemy’s core beliefs and behavior could be modified by the application of certain psychological techniques. These techniques have been gradually perfected over the years by efforts of business and industry leaders to persuade people to buy products, including the radio and television industry to ascertain how an audience might be habituated to certain types of programming. Kurt Lewin is credited with being the Continue reading
Action Research in Organizational Development
Action research is another view of the organizational change process. It is an organizational change process that is based on a research model specifically one that contributes towards the betterment of the sponsoring organization and contributes to the advancement of knowledge of organizations in general. In Action Research, the change agent is usually an outside person, who is involved in the total change process, from diagnosis to evaluation. This person usually contracts with the sponsoring organization to engage in organizational research, whereas the typical change agent is called in to make a specific change. Action Research in organizational development provides a scientific methodology for managing planned change. Kurt Lewin described action research as “a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action” that uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, Continue reading
Overcoming Resistance to Change
In the previous post, we deal with the various sources of resistance to change. In this post we discusses strategies and tactics to overcome resistance to organizational change. Kotter and Schelsinger (1979) has identified six general strategies for overcoming resistance to change. Education and Communication : Resistance can be reduced through communicating with employees to help them see the logic of a change. This tactic basically assumes that the source of resistance lies in misinformation or poor communication. If employees receive the full facts and get any misunderstanding cleared up, resistance will subside. Communication can be achieved through one-to-one discussions, memos, group presentations, or reports. Does it work? It does, provided the source of resistance is inadequate communication and that management-employee relations are characterized by mutual trust and credibility. If these conditions don’t exist, the change is unlikely to succeed. Participation and Involvement : It is difficult for individuals Continue reading
Team Development Life Cycle
When a number of individuals begin to work at interdependent jobs, they often pass through several stages as they learn to work together as a team. The stages of team development life cycle are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. This model of team development was first proposed by Bruce Tuckman in 1965, who maintained that these phases are all necessary and inevitable and allow team growth. Though these are not followed rigidly, they do represent a broad pattern that may be observed and predicted in many settings across team’s time together. These stages are the result of a variety of questions and issues that team members face such as “who will be members of the team?” “Who will perform what functions?” “Who will contribute what?” “What rules will be followed?” “How can conflicts among members be resolved?” and so on. These typical stages of team development life cycle are Continue reading
Organizational Effectiveness Through Adaptive-Coping Cycle
The organization must develop a system through which it can adapt or cope with the environmental requirements; Edgar H Schein has suggested that an organization can do this through the adaptive coping cycle, which consists of various activities that enable an organization to cope with the dynamics of environment. Adaptive-Coping Cycle is a continuous process. There are six stages in the adaptive-coping cycle as follows: Sensing of Change: The first stage is the sensing of change in internal or external environment. Most of the organizations have adaptive sub-system such as marketing research, research and development and other similar devices for effective coping with the environment. Importing the Relevant Information: Organizations must be able to take the relevant information from the environment, which constitutes the input. Changing Conversion Process: The organization takes the inputs from environment for further processing, normally known as conversion process. Stabilizing Internal Changes: The fourth stage of Continue reading