INTRODUCTION TO ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT: A PRIMER Copyright 2009,

J. Eric Smith

In the broadest, most-layman-based terms, Organization Development (OD) is a multi-

disciplinary branch of contemporary behavioral science that focuses on the ways in which
organizations can improve their performance and well-being through planned, active
interventions. As is the case with many contemporary social science disciplines that emerged in
the latter half of the 20th Century, there is no single, universally accepted definition of the rules
or parameters of OD, as the field and its academic underpinnings continue to evolve, both in the
classroom and in the workplace.

It is important to stress the depth of those academic underpinnings within the contemporary OD
movement, as many seminal scholarly research models have been “dumbed down” to the popular
press, and have found their way into the workplace, marketed as easy fixes or sure-fire paths to
organizational improvement. The ever-evolving litany of OD-themed management theories—
some legitimate, some not—that pass into the popular business press can cause long-time
managers to become cynical regarding their claims or methods, as this year’s best-selling flavor
of management theory often tastes very much like the flavor which came before it. By better
understanding some of the robust research that underpins the seminal works of the modern OD
movement, managers may be better able to separate wheat from chaff when presented with
proposals for OD interventions from consultants or colleagues, and may also be better prepared
(and more willing) to seek outside assistance when events dictate that such an approach could
improve their organization’s effectiveness.

In their influential and oft-reprinted handbook on the fundamentals of OD, Wendell L. French
and Cecil H. Bell, Jr. compiled a survey of many of the definitions that have been applied to the
field since its earliest days, then crafted their own composite definition, that explains OD as “a
long-term effort, led and supported by top management, to improve an organization’s visioning,
empowerment, learning and problem-solving processes, through an ongoing, collaborative,
management of organizational culture—with special emphasis on the culture of intact work
teams and other team configurations—using the consultant-facilitator role and the theory and
technology of applied behavioral science, including action research.1”
French and Bell’s specific reference to action research pays direct homage to—and indicates the
enduring importance in OD practice of—Kurt Lewin’s seminal work in the 1940s in group
dynamics and social psychology. Lewin coined the term “action research” in 1946, defining it as
an iterative, feedback-intensive “spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of
planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action. 2” In contemporary, practical
terms, a white paper for managers prepared by the Organization Development Network (ODN)
notes that action research remains a cornerstone of OD practice, as Lewin’s principles guide the
processes whereby entire organizations or specific work units are taken through an assessment
and problem solving process aimed at improving their overall effectiveness, typically

1 Wendell L. French and Cecil H. Bell, Jr. (1999). Organization Development: Behavioral Science Interventions for
Organizational Improvement, Sixth Edition. Prentice-Hall.
2 Kurt Lewin (1946). “Action research and minority problems.” Journal of Sociology 1946 2(4): 34-46.

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with an outside consultant or other professional practitioner guiding the multi-phased, feedback-
producing process in contract with the organization’s management.3
Stressing the utility of the outside consultant to organizational improvement is a cornerstone of
contemporary OD theory and practice. Social psychologist Edgar Schein defined three types of
consulting models: purchase of expertise, doctor-patient, and process consultation. The process
consultation model is the most commonly deployed, and effective, approach to contemporary
OD, wherein the contracted consultant works with both management and staff of the
organization being evaluated, diagnosing strengths and weaknesses, identifying problems and
opportunities, and developing plans to reach desired goals and objectives.4 Implicit in adherence
to this consultative approach is a belief (perhaps a subjective, or even inaccurate one, in some
cases) that the active deployment of the training, expertise and independent perspective of the
outside consultant will allow an organization to see, perceive or otherwise experience insights
and opportunities that could not be acquired or understood through existing, passive, non-
interventionist, internal processes.

The act of entering into an OD process, therefore, requires an organization to be self-aware

enough to understand that it needs additional, outside help in order to achieve its mission or
goals most effectively. A report of the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation’s Organizational
Development Program suggests five indicators that may lead a self-aware organization to seek
such an external, OD-based intervention:
•
The desire to ensure organizational survival in changing or competitive environments;
•
The desire to provide the highest quality of goods or services that the organization can
realistically provide;
•
Developing means to raise more resources for mission-essential work;
•
Focusing on values that are foundations of the organization’s mission; and
•
Training staff and board members so that they can improve programmatic results.5

Another common element to contemporary OD practice is a commitment to the concept of

learning organizations, which facilitate the ongoing training and development of their employees
or members, thereby preventing individual intellectual ossification and the organizational stasis
that such personal rigidity inevitably produces. Learning organizations possess five key
identifying characteristics, as defined by Peter M. Senge in his influential work The Fifth
Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization:

• They embrace personal mastery, which requires a commitment by individuals in the

organization to the process of learning;

3 ODN Chicago White Paper (2008). “What Is Organization Development?” The Organization Development
Network.
4 Wendell L. French and Cecil H. Bell, Jr. (1999). Organization Development: Behavioral Science Interventions for
Organizational Improvement, Sixth Edition. Prentice-Hall, citing
5 Ann Philbin and Sandra Mikush (2000). A Framework for Organizational Development: The Why, What
and How of OD Work. Perspectives from Participants in the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation’s Organizational
Development Program, 1995-1999. The Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation.

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•
They challenge ingrained mental models and assumptions held by individuals and the
organization as a whole;
•
They build shared vision to create a common culture and identity, and provide the energy
needed to pursue personal mastery;
•
They practice team learning, wherein individual learning is shared, thereby expanding access
to knowledge and expertise across the entire organization;
•
They embrace systems thinking, an over-arching strategic process that unites the other four
elements into a practical, useful whole.6
Abraham Maslow posited that when humans have their basic, selfish, lower-level needs met,
they are able to focus more intellectual, emotional and physical energy into such potentially
altruistic, higher-level needs as esteem and self-actualization.7 Contemporary approaches to OD
are often rooted in a fundamental belief that the health and well-being of an organization may be
directly correlated to the health and well-being of the individuals that comprise it, and that
individual self-actualization may enhance organizational effectiveness, even when there may be
inherent conflicts between the needs of the organization and the needs of its component
members. Business and management theorist Chris Argyris has spent much of his career
researching and documenting the ways in which those conflicts may be successfully addressed
and mitigated, most especially in his books Personality and Organization (1957) and
Interpersonal Competence and Organizational Effectiveness (1962).

While self-aware or self-actualized organizations which are generally healthy, effective and
efficient may still opt to pursue improvement and enhancement through the use of OD
techniques, a new field of study has emerged that sees a need for OD professionals to take a clear
role in assisting organizations that may not be performing effectively and efficiently due to
unresolved organizational traumas. Organizational trauma may be caused by personnel changes
(either through retirements, layoffs, forced replacements, or deaths), negative economic factors
that impede the organization’s ability to discharge its mission effectively, changes to long-
standing missions or objectives, harsh media exposure, or a myriad of other factors. Researcher
Mias DeKlerk proposes that unresolved traumas of these natures within organizational culture
may block individuals’ capacities to perform effectively, thereby impeding organizational
efficiency.8
While OD professionals should not serve as individual psychiatrists or psychologists in a
“doctor- patient”-type intervention, they may work to help organizations identify the human
tensions and conflicts between individual needs and aspirations and organizational goals and
objectives, and may play a key role in finding opportunities that satisfy both collective and
personal requirements. In the same ways that Maslow laid out a path upon which human beings
may walk toward self-actualization, organizations may seek similar paths toward states of
empowerment or even enlightenment by tending fully to their most basic needs, thereby creating
opportunities to deploy systems thinking or other high-level traits typically associated with
effective and innovative learning organizations.

6 Peter M. Senge (1990), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization,
Doubleday.
7 Abraham Maslow (1954), Motivation and Personality, Harper.
8 Mias De Klerk (2007). “Healing emotional trauma in organizations: An O.D. Framework and case study.”
Organizational Development Journal, 2007 25(2), 49-56.