Organization Development
Lecture 14/11
Course and lecture overview → how topics are interrelated
Organisation Development → planned process of change in an organization’s
culture through the utilization of behavioral science, research and theory
Another definition → OD is a long-range effort to improve an organization’s
problem-solving capabilities and ability to cope with change in its external
environment, with the help of external or internal behavioral-scientist
consultants (change agents)
You are doing OD if you are…
o Bringing planned change to align the structure, culture, strategy and
individual jobs of people in an entire organisation (not accidental)
o Applying behavioral science knowledge to diagnose, to facilitate and
to evaluate organisational change (evidence-based)
o Analyzing the effectiveness of an organisation and how to improve
that by involving members of the organisation (interviews, focus
groups): gather evidence on the change needed and the course to
take (not intuitive)
o Supporting increase of organisational effectiveness on all levels
(high quality and productivity, financial performance, optimizing
teamwork, improving well-being/health of workers)
o Facilitating organisations’ response to change in a flexible, adaptive
and often participative way
o Developing sustainable change that is continues (not tactics or
short-term)
1
, Why do organisations need continuous
development?
o General and task (specific) environment
o Orange → indirectlt influence the
company
o Colors inside → directly influence the
company
Important trends in the general environment
o Economic → globalization
o Demographic → diversification of labour
force
o Technological → IT revolution and AI,
more automation
o Political/legal → tightened (financial)
supervision, governmental changes
(taxes, regulations)
o Sociocultural → increased focus on Corporate Social Responsibility
(people, planet, profit)
88% of Fortune 500 firms that existed in 1955 are gone → three companies
that failed to adapt and why
o Kodak → did not anticipate digital camera → success trap: exploiting
what has been historically working → outperformed by competitors
such as Canon
o Toys R us → missed opportunity to develop e-commerce → only kept
physical stores (outperformed by online companies like Amazon)
o General Motors → activists started pointing out that Hummer was
worst car to drive environmentally → eco-friendly alternatives were
brought to marked (Tesla)
Types of change
1. Magnitude of change → incremental vs fundamental
a. E.g. you go from old school phones to iphone
b. Iphone was way more fundamental
or bigger
2. Degree of organisation → overorganized
‘loosen up’ vs underorganized ‘tighten up’
a. Many rules or no rules at all in an
organisation
3. Setting of change → local vs global
a. Globalisation, so environment
becomes bigger
Models of Planned Change → see figure
1. Lewin’s Planned Change Model
2. Action Research Model
3. Positive Model
a. Main difference → second and third
model are circulative, it’s rather
reciprocative
2
,3
, Most important to diagnose what
needs to be changed → diagnosing
change: an open systems model →
key aspect of course
Alignment → if organisatoin
has strong ideas about being
eco-friendly, but they don’t
make it easy for people to do
so, they haven’t align the
organisational and personal
needs → there needs to be
higher overlap with
culture/higher management, all the way down to individual employees
Boundaries → what parts of the organisation are you actually changing
Organizational culture → blanket above diagnosing change
model → culture is the pattern of artifacts, norms, values
and basic assumptions which describes how the
organisation solves problems and teaches newcomers how
to behave
You diagnose the organisational culture
Organisational culture → onion model
Artifacts → visible components of culture
o You can observe it
o E.g. how people talk, dress, what the building
looks like, werkpleinen or individual offices
Norms → unwritten rules of organisation
o E.g. open door policy
Values → ideas how people should behave, what organisation should look
like
Basic assumptions → how people are in general, what kind of people do
you hire?
o E.g. people are inherently prosocial, helpful, attentive, calm
Think of it as an iceberg → many things you can’t see from the outside
Why study culture?
It’s predictive of…
o Financial performance of organisations
o Employee well-being
o Organizational effectiveness
o Innovation
And more important than formal control systems, procedures, structure
and strategy
4
Lecture 14/11
Course and lecture overview → how topics are interrelated
Organisation Development → planned process of change in an organization’s
culture through the utilization of behavioral science, research and theory
Another definition → OD is a long-range effort to improve an organization’s
problem-solving capabilities and ability to cope with change in its external
environment, with the help of external or internal behavioral-scientist
consultants (change agents)
You are doing OD if you are…
o Bringing planned change to align the structure, culture, strategy and
individual jobs of people in an entire organisation (not accidental)
o Applying behavioral science knowledge to diagnose, to facilitate and
to evaluate organisational change (evidence-based)
o Analyzing the effectiveness of an organisation and how to improve
that by involving members of the organisation (interviews, focus
groups): gather evidence on the change needed and the course to
take (not intuitive)
o Supporting increase of organisational effectiveness on all levels
(high quality and productivity, financial performance, optimizing
teamwork, improving well-being/health of workers)
o Facilitating organisations’ response to change in a flexible, adaptive
and often participative way
o Developing sustainable change that is continues (not tactics or
short-term)
1
, Why do organisations need continuous
development?
o General and task (specific) environment
o Orange → indirectlt influence the
company
o Colors inside → directly influence the
company
Important trends in the general environment
o Economic → globalization
o Demographic → diversification of labour
force
o Technological → IT revolution and AI,
more automation
o Political/legal → tightened (financial)
supervision, governmental changes
(taxes, regulations)
o Sociocultural → increased focus on Corporate Social Responsibility
(people, planet, profit)
88% of Fortune 500 firms that existed in 1955 are gone → three companies
that failed to adapt and why
o Kodak → did not anticipate digital camera → success trap: exploiting
what has been historically working → outperformed by competitors
such as Canon
o Toys R us → missed opportunity to develop e-commerce → only kept
physical stores (outperformed by online companies like Amazon)
o General Motors → activists started pointing out that Hummer was
worst car to drive environmentally → eco-friendly alternatives were
brought to marked (Tesla)
Types of change
1. Magnitude of change → incremental vs fundamental
a. E.g. you go from old school phones to iphone
b. Iphone was way more fundamental
or bigger
2. Degree of organisation → overorganized
‘loosen up’ vs underorganized ‘tighten up’
a. Many rules or no rules at all in an
organisation
3. Setting of change → local vs global
a. Globalisation, so environment
becomes bigger
Models of Planned Change → see figure
1. Lewin’s Planned Change Model
2. Action Research Model
3. Positive Model
a. Main difference → second and third
model are circulative, it’s rather
reciprocative
2
,3
, Most important to diagnose what
needs to be changed → diagnosing
change: an open systems model →
key aspect of course
Alignment → if organisatoin
has strong ideas about being
eco-friendly, but they don’t
make it easy for people to do
so, they haven’t align the
organisational and personal
needs → there needs to be
higher overlap with
culture/higher management, all the way down to individual employees
Boundaries → what parts of the organisation are you actually changing
Organizational culture → blanket above diagnosing change
model → culture is the pattern of artifacts, norms, values
and basic assumptions which describes how the
organisation solves problems and teaches newcomers how
to behave
You diagnose the organisational culture
Organisational culture → onion model
Artifacts → visible components of culture
o You can observe it
o E.g. how people talk, dress, what the building
looks like, werkpleinen or individual offices
Norms → unwritten rules of organisation
o E.g. open door policy
Values → ideas how people should behave, what organisation should look
like
Basic assumptions → how people are in general, what kind of people do
you hire?
o E.g. people are inherently prosocial, helpful, attentive, calm
Think of it as an iceberg → many things you can’t see from the outside
Why study culture?
It’s predictive of…
o Financial performance of organisations
o Employee well-being
o Organizational effectiveness
o Innovation
And more important than formal control systems, procedures, structure
and strategy
4
