Organization Development Organization development (OD) is a new term which means a conceptual, organization-wide effort to increase an organization’s effectiveness and viability. Warren Bennis has referred to OD as a response to change, a complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, and structure of an organization so that it can better adapt to new technologies, markets, challenges, and the dizzying rate of change itself.
OD is neither “anything done to better an organization” nor is it “the training function of the organization”; it is a particular kind of change process designed to bring about a particular kind of end result. OD can involve interventions in the organization’s “processes,” using behavioural science knowledge organizational reflection, system improvement, planning and self-analysis. Some definitions are:
Organization Development (OD)is a process by which behavioral science knowledge and practices are used to help organizations achieve greater effectiveness, including improved quality of work life and increased productivity (Cummings, & Huse, 1989). In the 1950s and 1960s a new, integrated approach originated known as Organization Development (OD): the systematic application of behavioral science knowledge at various levels (group, intergroup, and total organization) to bring about planned change (Newstrom & Davis, 1993) Growth of Organization Development OD continues to grow.
Some of the first generation contributors include Chris Argyris (learning and action science), Warren Bennis (tied executive leadership to strategic change), Edger Schein (process approach), and Robert Tannenbaum (sensitize OD to the personal dimension of participant’s lives). Second Generation contributors include Warner Burke (makes OD a professional field), Larry Greiner (power and evolution), Edward Lawler III, (extended OD to reward systems and employee involvement), Newton Margulies and Anthony Raia (values underlying OD), and Peter Vaill and Craig Lundberg (developing OD as a practical science).
Newer generation contributors include Dave Brown (action research and developmental organizations), Thomas Cummings (sociotechnical systems) self-designing organizations, and transorganizational development), Max Elden (political aspects of OD), and Jerry Porras (puts OD on a sound research and a conceptual base). The Evolution of OD A brief history of OD will help to clarify the evolution of the term as well as some of the problems and confusion that have surrounded it.
As currently practiced, OD emerged from five major stems, as shown below. The first was the growth of the National Training Laboratories (NTL) and the development of training groups, otherwise known as sensitivity training or T-groups, The second stem of OD was the classic work on action research conducted by social scientists interested in applying research to managing change. An important feature of action research was a technique known as survey feedback.
Kurt Lewin, a prolific theorist, researcher, and practitioner in group dynamics and social change, was instrumental in the development of T-groups, survey feedback, and action research. His work led to the creation of OD and still serves as a major source of its concepts and methods. The third stem represents the application of participative management to organization structure and design. The fourth stem is the approach focusing on productivity and the quality of work life.
The fifth stem of OD, and the most recent influence on current practice, involves strategic change and organization transformation. According to one theory, OD emerged from four major backgrounds (Cummings, ; Huse, 1989): 1. Laboratory Training stem (The T-Group): This stem of OD pioneered laboratory training, or the T-group – a small, unstructured group in which participants learn from their own interactions and evolving dynamics about such issues as interpersonal relations, personal growth, leadership, and group dynamics.
Essentially, laboratory training began in 1946, when Kurt Lewin, (1898 – 1947, a prolific theorist, researcher, and practitioner in interpersonal, group, intergroup, and community relationships) widely recognized as the founding father of OD, although he died before the concept became current in the mid-1950s, and his staff at the Research Centre for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were asked by the Connecticut Interracial Commission for help on research in training community leaders. A workshop was developed, and the community leaders were brought together to learn about leadership and to discuss problems.
At the end of each day, the researchers discussed privately what behaviors and group dynamics they had observed. The community leaders asked permission to sit in on these feedback sessions. Reluctant at first, the researchers finally agreed. Thus, the first T-group was formed in which people reacted to data about their own behavior. The researchers drew two conclusions about the first T-group experiment: Feedback about group interaction was a rich learning experience, and The process of “group building” had potential for learning that could be transferred to “back-home” situations.
As a result of this experience, the Office of Naval Research and the National Education Association provided financial backing to form the National Training Laboratories (NTL), and Gould Academy in Bethel, Maine, was selected as a site for further work (since the, Bethel has played an important part in NTL). The first Basic Skill Training Groups (later called T-groups) were offered in 1947. The program was so successful that out of Bethel experiences and NTL grew a significant number of laboratory training centers sponsored by universities.
In the 1950s, three trends emerged: The emergence of regional laboratories, The expansion of year-round sessions of T-groups, and The expansion of the T-group into business and industry, with NTL members becoming increasingly involved with industry programs. Over the next decade, as trainers began to work with social systems of more permanency and complexity then T-groups, they began to experience considerable frustration in the transfer of laboratory behavioral skills and insights of individuals into the solution of problems in organizations.
Personal skills learned in the T-group settings were very difficult to transfer to complex organizations. However, the training of “teams” from the same organization had emerged early at Bethel and undoubtedly was a link to the total organizational focus of Douglas McGregor, Herbert Shepard, and Robert Blake, and subsequently the focus of Richard Beckhard, Chris Argyris, Jack Gibb, Warren Bennis, and others. All had been T-group trainers in NTL programs. Applying T-group techniques to organizations gradually became nown as team building – a process for helping work groups become more effective in accomplishing tasks and satisfying member needs. Chris Argyris Chris Argyris is an American business theorist, Professor Emeritus at Harvard Business School, and a Thought Leader at Monitor Group. He is commonly known for seminal work in the area of “Learning Organizations”. Action Science, Argyris’ collaborative work with Robert W. Putnam (not to be confused with Robert D. Putnam) and Diana McLain Smith, advocates an approach to research that focuses on generating knowledge that is useful in solving practical problems.
Other key concepts developed by Argyris include Ladder of Inference, Double-Loop Learning (Argyris & Schon 1974), Theory of Action/Espoused Theory/Theory-in-use, High Advocacy/High Inquiry dialogue and Actionable Knowledge. Chris Argyris’ early research explored the impact of formal organizational structures, control systems and management on individuals and how they responded and adapted to them. This research resulted in the books Personality and Organization, 1957 and Integrating the Individual and the Organization, 1964.
He then shifted his focus to organizational change, in particular exploring the behaviour of senior executives in organizations (Interpersonal Competence and Organizational Effectiveness, 1962; Organization and Innovation, 1965). From there he moved on to an inquiry into the role of the social scientist as both researcher and actor (Intervention Theory and Method, 1970; Inner Contradictions of Rigorous Research, 1980 and Action Science, 1985 – with Robert Putnam and Diana McLain Smith).
His fourth major area of research and theorizing – in significant part undertaken with Donald Schon – was in individual and organizational learning and the extent to which human reasoning, not just behavior, can become the basis for diagnosis and action (Theory in Practice, 1974 ; Organizational Learning, 1978; Organizational Learning II, 1996 – all with Donald Schon). He has also developed this thinking in Overcoming Organizational Defenses, 1990 and Knowledge for Action, 1993. Douglas Murray McGregor Douglas McGregor was a Management professor at the MIT Sloan School of
Management and president of Antioch College from 1948 to 1954. He also taught at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. His 1960 book The Human Side of Enterprise had a profound influence on education practices. In the book he identified an approach of creating an environment within which employees are motivated via authoritative, direction and control or integration and self-control, which he called theory X and theory Y, respectively. Theory Y is the practical application of Dr. Abraham Maslow’s Humanistic School of Psychology, or Third Force psychology, applied to scientific management.
He is commonly thought of as being a proponent of Theory Y, but, as Edgar Schein tells in his introduction to McGregor’s subsequent, posthumous (1967), book The Professional Manager : “In my own contacts with Doug, I often found him to be discouraged by the degree to which theory Y had become as monolithic a set of principles as those of Theory X, the over-generalization which Doug was fighting…. Yet few readers were willing to acknowledge that the content of Doug’s book made such a neutral point or that Doug’s own presentation of his point of view was that coldly scientific”.
Graham Cleverley in Managers ; Magic (Longman’s, 1971) comments: “… he coined the two terms Theory X and theory Y and used them to label two sets of beliefs a manager might hold about the origins of human behaviour. He pointed out that the manager’s own behaviour would be largely determined by the particular beliefs that he subscribed to…. McGregor hoped that his book would lead managers to investigate the two sets of beliefs, invent others, test out the assumptions underlying them, and develop managerial strategies that made sense in terms of those tested views of reality. But that isn’t what happened. Instead McGregor was interpreted as advocating Theory Y as a new and superior ethic – a set of moral values that ought to replace the values managers usually accept. ” Herbert Allen Shepard Herb Shepard made a significant contribution to Organization Development[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] He held faculty posts at several universities including M. I. T. , where he received his doctorate in Industrial Economics. He founded and directed the first doctoral program in Organization Development at Case Western Reserve; developed a residency in dministrative psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine, and was also President of The Gestalt Institute of Cleveland and The Professional Development Institute. Herb conducted the first large-scale experiments in Organization Development, while at Esso in the late fifties, and served as principal consultant to TRW Systems in the applications of behavioral science to organizations and teams. He has published widely[9][10][11] and was chairman of the Douglas Memorial Award Committee of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.
His research advanced our understanding of human behavior and social systems[12][13] from dyads (doctor-patient or consultant-client) to organizations (synergy, alternative dispute resolution, structure, building consensus and caring about the powerless). It opened the way for further developments in the psychology of teams, leadership and interpersonal compatibility; cognitive behavior therapy, social cognitive theory (educational psychology); choice theory;[14]; principled negotiation, positive psychology and organization development.
In management consulting, Herb’s clients included Bell-Northern Research, Syncrude, Esso, TRW, Connecticut General Life Insurance Company, Union Carbide, USAID and most of the departments of the federal governments of the U. S. A. and Canada. Robert R. Blake Robert Blake was an American management theoretician. He did pioneer work the field of organizational dynamics. Together with Jane S. Mouton, he developed the Managerial Grid Model (1964), which attempts to conceptualize management in terms of relations and leadership style. Jane Srygley Mouton
Jane Mouton was a management theorist, remembered in particular for developing the Managerial grid model with Robert Blake. Jane Srygley Mouton received her Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Education from the University of Texas at Austin in 1950 and later returned to complete a PhD in 1957 (Contemporary, 2004). She also received a Masters of Science from Florida State University in 1951. She was loyal to the University of Texas at Austin with her working positions including being a research scientist from 1953–1957, a social science researcher and instructor from 1957–1959, nd assistant professor of psychology from 1959-1964. She was furthermore vice-president of Scientific Methods Inc. from 1961–1981 and has presided as president of the company since 1982. Mouton was a former student of Robert Blake from the University of Texas. Together they are known for their creation of the aforementioned Managerial Grid which was admittedly composed of Mouton’s creation and Blake’s name (Bokeno, 2007). The Grid came into existence when Blake and Mouton were hired as consultants by Exxon.
It was during this time that their supposedly combined efforts produced the grid as a method of finding a median between McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y workers (Capstone, 2003). Originally, their work was reflected upon the National Training Laboratories (NTL) who they had worked with as a means of bringing their ideas into the organizations (Kleiner, 1996). Mouton was among the few women to lead one of the NTL’s T-Groups (Training Groups) during the 1950s. However, Blake and Mouton’s methodology was more focused on treating the organizational issues rather than simply diagnosing them.
This was contrary to standard NTL practices. Thus, they separated from the company. Blake had copyrighted the Grid so that only by franchising with him could someone else use the Grid for training, thus ensuring that everyone would use it in the way Blake and Mouton deemed fitting. Therefore, through their work with NTL leading T-Group’s and the creation of Mouton’s Managerial Grid, Blake became famous and Mouton was seemingly allowed to ride on his coat tails, eventually co-founding Scientific Methods, Inc. in 1961 (Ultimate, 2003). Richard Beckhard Richard Beckhard was a pioneer in the field of organizational development.
He co-launched the Addison-Wesley Organization Development Series and began the Organization Development Network in 1967. His classic work, Organization Development: Strategies and Models, was published in 1969. Beckhard was an adjunct professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1963-1984. He died on December 28, 1999. He helped to define organizational development as: “an effort (1) planned, (2) organization-wide, (3) managed from the top, to (4) increase organization effectiveness and health through (5) planned interventions in the organization’s ‘processes’, using behavioural-science knowledge.
Together with David Gleicher, he is credited with developing a Formula for Change. The formula proposes that the combination of organisational dissatisfaction, vision for the future and the possibility of immediate, tactical action must be stronger than the resistance within the organisation in order for meaningful change to occur. Warren Gamaliel Bennis Warren Gamaliel Bennis is an American scholar, organizational consultant and author, widely regarded as a pioneer of the contemporary field of Leadership studies. 1] [2] Bennis is University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Founding Chairman of The Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. [3] “His work at MIT in the 1960s on group behavior foreshadowed — and helped bring about — today’s headlong plunge into less hierarchical, more democratic and adaptive institutions, private and public,” management expert Tom Peters wrote in 1993 in the foreword to Bennis’ An Invented Life: Reflections on Leadership and Change. [1] Management expert James O’Toole, in a 2005 issue of Compass, published by Harvard University’s John F.
Kennedy School of Government, claimed that Bennis developed “an interest in a then-nonexistent field that he would ultimately make his own — leadership — with the publication of his ‘Revisionist Theory of Leadership'[4] in Harvard Business Review in 1961. “[5] O’Toole observed that Bennis challenged the prevailing wisdom by showing that humanistic, democratic-style leaders are better suited to dealing with the complexity and change that characterize the leadership environment. Eva Schindler-Rainman Eva Schindler-Rainman was one of the few volunteerism pioneers to gain popularity both within and outside of our field.
An organizational consultant, social worker with a PhD, and behavioral scientist, she was known for her advocacy of effective human resource development – paid and volunteer – and for non-traditional organization design and development. She moved easily between nonprofit circles and the corporate world, eventually becoming one of the “deans” of the highly-respected National Training Laboratory (NTL) in Maine. Without question, Eva was an inspired and inspiring group facilitator, always looking for innovative ways to engage trainees in active, creative thinking.
She was one of the originators and disseminators of “brainstorming,” a problem-solving exercise that we take for granted today but that broke new ground in the 1970s. 2. Survey Research Feedback stem: Kurt Lewin formed the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT in 1945. After he died in 1947, his staff moved to the University of Michigan to join the Survey Research Center as part of the Institute for Social Research. It was headed by Rensis Likert, a pioneer in developing scientific approaches to attitude surveys (five-point Likert scale).
Rensis Likert Rensis Likert was an American educator and organizational psychologist best known for his research on management styles. He developed his Likert Scale and the linking pin model. Rensis Likert was a founder of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and was the director from its inception in 1946 until 1970, when he retired and founded Rensis Likert Associates to consult for numerous corporations. He also helped found what is now known as the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp).
During his tenure, Rensis Likert devoted particular attention to research on organizations. During the 1960s and 1970s, his books on management theory were extremely popular in Japan and their impact can be seen across modern Japanese organizations. He did research on major corporations around the world, and his studies have accurately predicted the subsequent performance of the corporations. 3. Action Research stem: In the 1940s John Collier, Kurt Lewin, and William Whyte discovered that research needed to be closely linked to action if organizational members were to use it to manage change.
Action research has two results: 1) organizational members use research on themselves to guide action and change, while 2) researchers were able to study the process to gain new information. Two noted action research studies was the work of Lewin and his students at the Hardwood Manufacturing Company (Marrow, Bowers & Seashore, 1967) and Lester Coch and John French’s classic research on overcoming resistance to change (Coch ; French, 1948). 4.
Sociotechnical and socioclinical stem: This was originally developed in Europe during the 1950s and is based on the work of Eric Trist and his colleagues at the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London. This approach examined both the technical and the human sides of organizations and how they are interrelated Wilfred Ruprecht Bion Wilfred Ruprecht Bion was an influential British psychoanalyst, who became president of the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1962 to 1965. Bion has been twinned with Jacques Lacan as “inspired bizarre analysts… ho demand not that their patients get better but that they pursue Truth”. ‘Bion’s ideas are highly unique’, so that he ‘remained larger than life to almost all who encountered him’. He has been considered by Neville Symington as possibly “the greatest psychoanalytic thinker… after Freud”. Wilfred Bion’s observations about the role of group processes in group dynamics are set out in Experiences in Groups where he refers to recurrent emotional states of groups as basic assumptions.
Bion argues that in every group, two groups are actually present: the work group, and the basic assumption group. The work group is that aspect of group functioning which has to do with the primary task of the group – what the group has formed to accomplish; will ‘keep the group anchored to a sophisticated and rational level of behaviour’. The basic assumption group describes the tacit underlying assumptions on which the behaviour of the group is based. Bion specifically identified three basic assumptions: dependency, fight-flight, and pairing. When a group adopts any one of these basic assumptions, it interferes with the task the group is attempting to accomplish. Bion believed that interpretation by the therapist of this aspect of group dynamics would result in insight regarding effective group work. [ Eric Trist Eric Trist was a British scientist and leading figure in the field of Organizational development (OD). He was one of the founders of the Tavistock Institute for Social Research in London. Trist was born in September 1909 (according to his autobiography), of a Cornish father and a Scottish mother.
He grew up in Dover, England, where he experienced dramatic air raids in the first world war. He went to Cambridge University – Pembroke College in 1928, where he read English Literature, graduating with first-class honours. Influenced heavily by his don I. A. Richards he became interested in Psychology, Gestalt psychology, and Psychoanalysis, and went on to read psychology under professor Bartlett. At that time (1932/3) Trist has said he was very interested in articles by Kurt Lewin.
When Kurt Lewin (who was Jewish) left Germany as Adolf Hitler came to power, he travelled to Israel via the USA, stopping off in England, where Trist briefly met him and showed him around Cambridge. Trist graduated in Psychology in 1933, with a distinction, and went to Yale University in the USA and again met Lewin, who was at Cornell University and then Iowa. He visited B. F. Skinner, a key figure in Behaviourism in Boston. After witnessing some disturbing experiences during the Depression, he became politically interested for the first time, and read Karl Marx.
Trist was heavily influenced by Kurt Lewin, whom he met first 1933 in Cambridge, England. Kurt Lewin had moved from studying behaviour to engineering its change, particularly in relation to racial and religious conflicts, inventing sensitivity training, a technique for making people more aware of the effect they have on others, which some claim as the beginning of political correctness. This would later influence the direction of much of work at the Tavistock Institute, in the direction of management and, some would say, manipulation, rather than fundamental research into human behaviour and the psyche.
It was a partnership between Trist’s group at the Tavistock, and Lewin’s at MIT that launched the Journal ‘Human Relations’ just before Lewin’s death in 1947. The Tavistock group It was the wartime experiences of Trist and his various associates that created what became known as ‘the Tavistock group’, which formed a planning committee to meet and plan the future of the Tavistock after the war. The Tavistock Institute was formed, with Trist as deputy chairman, and Tommy Wilson as chairman, with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in February 1946, and a new Tavistock Clinic became part of the newly formed National Health Service.
Many of the group went into formal Psychoanalytic training. Trist was much influenced by Melanie Klein, who visited the Tavistock, as well as by his colleagues John Bowlby, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion and Jock Sutherland. Though close to Wilfred Bion during the war, Trist later wrote that he was glad he did not join Bion at this point, because “he left groups in the 1950s – which flummoxed everybody – and got completely absorbed in psychoanalysis”, adding, “that was when the cult of Bion – a wrong cult in my view – became established. Trist and the Tavistock became involved in industrial projects until 1951, and was given the Lewin Award in 1951. The family discussion group was formed, and John Bowlby did his world-famous studies on mother-child separation and the establishment of family systems therapy. With cooperation and contributions from Kurt Lewin in the USA, the publication of Human Relations, the Tavistock Journal began, and Trist commented that this gave the Tavistock credibility in the USA, saying, “its articles wouldn’t have been accepted by any of the other British psychological journals”.
Second generation OD: Practitioners and researchers are giving considerable attention to emerging concepts, interventions and areas of application that is called second generation OD. It includes: Organizational Transformation Organizational Culture Learning Organization Work Teams Total Quality Management Visioning and Future Search Discovering Learge Meetings Modern development In recent years, serious questioning has emerged about the relevance of OD to managing change in modern organizations. The need for “reinventing” the field has become a topic that even some of its “founding fathers” are discussing critically.
With this call for reinvention and change, scholars have begun to examine organizational development from an emotion-based standpoint. For example, deKlerk (2007) writes about how emotional trauma can negatively affect performance. Due to downsizing, outsourcing, mergers, restructuring, continual changes, invasions of privacy, harassment, and abuses of power, many employees experience the emotions of aggression, anxiety, apprehension, cynicism, and fear, which can lead to performance decreases. deKlerk (2007) suggests that in order to heal the trauma and increase performance, O.
D. practitioners must acknowledge the existence of the trauma, provide a safe place for employees to discuss their feelings, symbolize the trauma and put it into perspective, and then allow for and deal with the emotional responses. One method of achieving this is by having employees draw pictures of what they feel about the situation, and then having them explain their drawings with each other. Drawing pictures is beneficial because it allows employees to express emotions they normally would not be able to put into words.
Also, drawings often prompt active participation in the activity, as everyone is required to draw a picture and then discuss its meaning. The use of new technologies combined with globalization has also shifted the field of organization development. Roland Sullivan (2005) defined Organization Development with participants at the 1st Organization Development Conference for Asia in Dubai-2005 as “Organization Development is a transformative leap to a desired vision where strategies and systems align, in the light of local culture with an innovative and authentic leadership style using the support of high tech tools.
The Future of Organization Development: There are contradictory opinions about the status and future prospects of organizational development. Is it a theory whose time has come and gone? Does its basis in behavioral science, a “soft” science, make it unappealing? What are the challenges for the future? An article by Bunker, Alban, and Lewicki proposes six areas that could revitalize the field of organizational development in the future: virtual teams, conflict resolution, work group effectiveness, social network analysis, trust, and intractable conflict.
These authors suggest that focusing on these areas will help bridge the gap between research theory (i. e. , academics) and practice (i. e. , consultants). Getting these two groups to communicate with each other will benefit both groups and promote organizational development efforts. In a survey conducted by Church, Waclawski, and Berr, twenty individuals involved in the study and practice of organizational development were questioned about their perspectives and predictions on the future of the field.
The most in-demand services, according to those polled, are: * executive coaching and development * team building and team effectiveness * facilitating strategic organizational change * systemic integration * diversity and multiculturalism. They list the daily challenges in the field as the need for speed, resistance to change, interpersonal skills and awareness, and differentiating organizational development, which refers to the variety of definitions of organizational development among practitioners and how this impacts consultants, clients, and the clients’ needs.
The opinions on the future direction of the field vary among its practitioners. Nevertheless, the continuing interest in and value of optimizing an organization’s needs and goals with the needs, wants, and personal satisfaction of its employees indicate that organizational development will continue to be relevant to and vital for organizational reform in the future, either in its present form or through evolution into other theories and practices. Corporate business leaders in the 21st century face daunting, complex and unrelenting challenges.
In the competitive global marketplace, business leaders must simultaneously identify new opportunities for growth and innovation to remain agile and responsive, as they continue to lead organizations in: • Becoming global and multi-cultural; • Developing productive, performance-based work environments; • Building their talent and organizational capabilities to fulfill future needs; • Accommodating new and changing external regulation; • Leveraging and integrating new technologies to support the business; and • Meeting increasing expectations for socially responsible and sustainable business practices.
Additionally, corporations are increasingly asked to collaborate with government, non-governmental organizations(NGOs), and non-profit efforts to support the social, economic, and natural environment – and to transform themselves into more sustainable enterprises within this larger ecosystem (Wirtenberg et al, 2007). The key to meeting these enormous challenges lies in utilizing the knowledge, expertise, and commitment of people to enhance organizational performance.
Not coincidentally, it is Organizational Development practitioners who possess the required organizational resources and competencies that can address these very issues. A recent study found that companies that “invest in human capital, work to develop and retain valued employees, and measure and hold people accountable for that investment, have a powerful competitive advantage” (IBM,2005). Moreover, in a recent special issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (JABS) entitled: “Is Organization Development in Crisis? Bradford and Burke (2004) argue that indeed Organization Development does have much to offer in its emphasis on releasing the human potential within organizations – “It has developed many valuable approaches. It has stressed the importance of values in a time when too much behavior seems valueless. ” Conclusion: Although one might be tempted to visualize the field of OD from its birth to today as a tree having an original seed and then a trunk and many branches, this analogy does not fit well.
There are too many branches and threads that start out disconnected from this tree. Grasping both where OD came from and where it is today requires more the eye of a Picasso. The picture depends on where the viewer stands and what the viewer already knows. The field of organization development continues to include other elements, many created by the interaction between OD and other areas of new and growing knowledge about the world. This pattern is consistent with OD’s and has always been the greatest strength of the OD field.
