Page 179 - DMGT520_ORGANIZATION_CHANGE_AND_DEVELOPMENT

Organization Change and Development

Notes

Notes No doubt these limitations are valid, but the situation remains that at micro level,
managers have to manage according to contingency approach.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. A ………………...... of interaction between members of the concern to be vertical i.e.,
between superior and subordinate.
2. The ………………….. and prestige attaching to internal than the general knowledge,
experience and skills.
3. ……………...… to the concern’s tasks and to the technological ethos of material progress
and expansion is more highly valued than loyalty and obedience.

4. …………....…. is an important addition to the paradigm of modern management.
5. …...………….. takes into account not only given situations but also the influence of given
solutions on behavior patterns of an organisation.

13.4 Failures of Organisation Development

Organisation development however has invited sharp criticism as a strategy to increase,
organisational viability and effectiveness because many OD programmes have failed, Much OD
the enthusiasm created at the beginning of OD programmes vanished over the period of time in
early 60s. OD became quite successful with many professional consultants offering ship services
and programmes to various organisations. By 70s, however substantial disenchantment with
OD became evident because of many controversial OD techniques like sensitivity training
confrontation techniques, etc. Research studies have also failed to conclude significant
contributions of OD in all organisations, particularly in bottom-line ones. Therefore, OD cannot
be taken as panacea for curing all organisational problems. In general, OD is criticized on the
following lines:
 There is discrepancy between ideal and real situations. OD tries to achieve ideal without
taking into account real.
 OD makes people unfit for the real organisational world because no organisation can
fully adopt open system concept.
 Resistance to change is a natural phenomenon and OD puts undue pressure to change.
Hence it fails even as a long-term strategy.

 OD fails to motivate people with low level of achievement needs. If an organisation is
laden wit h these people. It is useless to try OD.

 OD programmes are often quite costly and only large organisations can afford this luxury
without any guarantee of positive outcome.
It can be seen that many of these criticisms are based on reality and experience. People realised
its dysfunctional aspects only when many OD efforts failed. However, it may be emphasised
that OD programmes are likely to fail when these are not undertaken properly. In fact, there
have been cases of wrong implementation of OD programmes and hence failure.

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