A History of Organization Development

The structure and design of organizations have drastically changed over the last twenty-five years. Organizations develop new goals at the beginning of the year or after the completion of previous goals, and heavily depend on planning to help achieve these goals. Planning is an integral part of organizational success, as upper management receives substantial information on various needs such as risk uncertainty, available resources, employee development, and unforeseen changes in technology (Daft, 2013). Most importantly, successful planning allows management to make effective decisions when unforeseen events arise within the organization. Not participating in planning is equivalent to taking a road trip across the country without a

Organizational development is a very significant course of action. This development acknowledges the challenges and the growth of an organization. Organizational development involves the arrangement and incorporation of various organizational activities and enhancing the current procedures of accomplishing various tasks throughout the community.

Cummings, T. G.; and Worley, C. G. (2015). Organization Development and Change, (10th Ed). Mason, OH. Cengage Learning.

Group and team work is described as two or more interacting individuals who share collective norms and goals and have a common identity. The size of the group is key, a large group the leader may not catch all. However, a small group becomes more bonded, allowing interaction and shared awareness.

Wagner III, John A. & Hollenbeck, John R. (2003). Organizational behavior securing competitive advantage. New York: Routledge.

Specifically, this paper will address the following topics: the definition of a group, the roles played within the group, a description of the group member personalities, the intended focus of the group, how the group worked together as a team and the process that was involved, how conflict was resolved, and how the group emerged as a group at the end of the situation.

Organizational change encompasses many challenges to both the individual, and the organization. An organization is a living system, as Flower (2002) states “living systems cannot survive without change, challenge, variety, and surprise” (Flower, 2002, p. 16). An organization requires the ability to adapt in to survive as Darwin states in The Origin of Man, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” (Read Me First, 2013, p. 1). It must adapt to the changing market, global economic pressures, stakeholder demands, and the diverse needs

Brown, Donald R. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organization Development. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

The model of a group communication that attains its objective with easy and success requires a delicate process. An ideal group communication ranges from three to few members gathered and discussing strategies to accomplish a specific goal. Groups’ formations are the result of an old truism that more brains are better than one. Consequently, groups continue to define people’s daily collective efforts to solve problems an immense way. “When groups work effectively, members find the experience motivating and rewarding. Group members also learn a

The significance of Lewin’s change theory lay not in the formality of the theory itself but rather on his ability to conceptualize real situations and as a result come up with models that reflect ideal situations. Kurt Lewin cut a niche for himself as one of the pioneers of the applied, organizational and social psychology. Born Kurt Zadek Lewin in September 9 1890, he is acknowledged as the founder of social psychology and among the first people to study organizational development and group dynamics. He lays claim to the term action research which he coined in 1944 to try and explain the effect of social action and the factors that lead to the same. A spiral circle

          The Hexadecimal Company in recent years was forced to change their product market due to lower labor costs by companies in competition. With this change of product came rapid growth and systemic problems within the company. The President, John, Zoltan, decided to created an Organizational Development (OD) group to help address change and managerial style within the company. However, this OD group was not accepted well within the organization and many felt as though this group was a waste of time, energy and resources. Employees did not want to participate in the training although forced to attend.

In conclusion, this class has changed my perspective about working in a group. Since my prior experience with groups was so unsettling, I believed that all groups were going to be the same. However, this class has made it possible to believe that there are groups that respect and take into consideration other members’

The understanding I now have of Organization Development came at a point in which I was personally experiencing it myself. As someone who has undergone a reduction in work force, this course helped me better understand why transitions happen in a company that is going through an economical or global change. As someone who has worked for over 30 years, I experienced this for the first time ever in my life. I did not quite know the gest of what it all meant because I did not have an understanding regarding

Organization development grew out of the human relations traditions of the 1940s and 1950s, and it has had enormous influence on management practices and thinking about how organizational effectiveness can be achieved. Critical manpower and resource shortages faced by all organizations, public and private, during World War II and in the immediate post-war years stimulated a search by social scientist and managers, separately and in cooperation with one another, for effective means to maximize the utilization of existing individual and organizational resources. (Ritcher, I 2007). Organization Development was by tradition about planned change efforts, instituted to enhance organization effectiveness within the context of the traditional, hierarchical, management-as-experts, top-down era. The legacy of leaders and organizations developed in this context remain. Organizational Development is about how organizations and people function and how to get them to function better. Organization transformation signals the need to transform mindsets, engage people and make the deep shift to the ongoing mutual learning environment needed for the long-lasting change characteristic of our world today.

Koontz and Weihrich (1990) Organizational development as well as management coincide with one another. Organizational development seeks to offer a systematic process of identifying and solving problems as they occur over time. However, the greatest tasks of organizational developments are determining what techniques to use to make sure the organization continues to improve while fueling the growth of the organization (Koontz & Weihrich, 1990).