Page 199 - DMGT520_ORGANIZATION_CHANGE_AND_DEVELOPMENT

Organization Change and Development

Notes  Health and fitness: Currently, fitness models focus on organizational and individual
health; such models will provide an increase in self-selected excellence and fitness
approaches for the OD practitioner in the future.
 Interdependence: Finally, the increasing complexity emphasizes the interdependent
relationship between the individual and the organization. The OD practitioner attempts
to develop synergy among organizational elements.

14.5 The Future of OD

The course of change anticipated for OD will predominantly surround the issues of a changing
workforce, global competence, and transformation within the organization. The changing
workforce will encompass a positive change toward productivity and involvement with enhanced
training and technological awareness. Global competence will mean shared values and similar
organizational structures to compete in a highly competitive arena. Transformational
management leaders will lend credence to the evolution of growth patterns associated with the
emergence of self-managing work groups. Advances in media and communication technologies
will influence all of these organizational transformations (Gottieb & Sanzgiri, 1992). Our Changing
World: No Job is Safe—Never Will Be gives some suggestions for how to remain professionally
viable and competitive.
Organization development is an expanding and vital technology. A great deal was accomplished
during its past growth, and certainly much more will be done in the future. OD is being applied
in a multinational framework and in a variety of organizational settings, including industrial,
governmental, and health-care institutions. Most theorists agree that there is a need for more
empirical studies on the relationship of intervention processes to other organizational variables.
It is widely acknowledged that techniques to deal effectively with external systems and power-
coercive problems have yet to emerge. Yet the different views about the myths and rituals of OD
are in themselves an indication of a healthy discipline. When OD practitioners become complacent,
when the controversies over approaches and techniques subside, and when the discipline becomes
stagnant, then perhaps there will be an even deeper need to worry about the future of OD.
Managers need to understand that OD interventions have the potential to make the biggest
differences in human development and bottom-line performance.

Notes These interventions are based on the same truths that have led us to see democracy
as a superior form of governance for our society.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:

6. There is a trend toward reducing layers of management, increasing participation, and
developing temporary systems for problem-solving.
7. The growing emphasis on productivity and quality suggests future trends for OD
practitioners to develop links between the goals of management and improving
productivity systems.
8. The OD practitioner can assist in shared understanding and training do deal with these
problems.
9. The concept of the thinking individual raises the question of corporate values and cultures
as belief systems, and offers the OD practitioner a vehicle for creating a positive, research-
based value system in the organization.

194 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY