Organizational Development: Objectives, Roles and Values of Organization Development

Organizational development (OD) is the most significant, innovative, integrated process of achieving operational efficiency and effectiveness in organization. According to Bennis a pioneer in the field of OD is a response to change, a complex educational strategy intended to change, the beliefs, attitudes, values, structure of organizations so that they can better adopt to new technologies, market and challenges and decrying rate of change, itself. It is essentially a long-range effort to improve an organization's problem solving abilities and its ability to cope with change (i.e. internal as well as external). OD is a planned and calculated attempt to change the organization, typically to a more behavioral environment. It places high priority on humanistic values and goals. It is a way of looking at the whole human side of organization life.

Objectives and Goals of Organizational Development

A typical OD programme has the following objectives and goals.
  1. To increase the level of interpersonal trust among employees.
  2. To increase employee's level of satisfaction and commitment.
  3. To increase openness of communications.
  4. To confront problems instead of sweeping them under the rug?
  5. To effectively manage conflict.
  6. To increase co-operative and collaboration among employee.
  7. To improve the organization's problem solving and self-renewal capabilities.
1. Increase the levels of interpersonal trust among employees

The main objective of OD effort is the improvement in internal potentialities. OD with its strategy brings out that potentialities and use it to gain competitive advantages. This benefits both the organization and employee.

2. Development of more effective team management

Teamwork is more effective than individual work. Complex task becomes simple with team spirit. A self-managed team increases the effectiveness of the organization. Thus, OD puts its effort for the development of effective team management.

3. To effectively managed conflict

OD helps in the development of better method of conflict resolution instead of usual bureaucratic methods. It adopts the techniques like face-to-face communication, participation methods to handle the conflict.

4. To increase co-operation and collaboration among employees

All the OD techniques are built on humanistic democratic values. It value human more. It does not equalize human with machinery component it treats employee as the living resources.

5. Openness of communications

Miss-communication is the source of conflict. Close communication is the barriers for development. To remove conflict and to support idea exchange, innovation and creation, required OD welcomes the open communication pattern. Open communication facilities the flow of idea and information is in the organization that is fruitful for OD.


Role of Organizations Development

Organizations development is a long term strategy for organizations. Organizational change plays the following roles in organizations development. 

  • Increased personal and organizational awareness that improves the organization's ability to adapt to a continuously changing environment and continue to grow, learn and stay competitive.
  • An effort to develop a work climate that encourages creativity and openness provides opportunities for personal growth and development, rewards and healthy behavior.
  • The ability to attract and keep healthy and productive employee.
  • A significant decrease in dysfunctional behavior.
  • Improvement in communication, problem solving, conflict resolution skills, resulting in increased effectiveness and less wasted time from communication breakdown, game playing and win-lose confrontation.
  • Improved organizational effectiveness (increased productivity and more; more effective goal setting, planning and organizing, clear goals and responsibility, better utilization of human resources; and bottom line improvement)
  •  A better understanding of an organization and its strength and weakness.
  • Greater commitment and involvement of organizational members in making the organizations successful.
  • Better management from top to bottom.
  • Improved team work within and between groups.

Problems/ Limitations of Organizations Development 

Besides the positive role played by organizations development, OD program has following limitations: 

  • Organizational development fails to motivate people with low level of achievement needs. If an organization is loaded with only this type of people, it is useless to try organizations development.
  • Organizational development program are often quite costly and only large organizations can afford this luxury without any guarantee of positive outcome.
  • Organizations development makes people unfit for the real organizational world because no organizations can fully adopt open system concept.
  • There is discrepancy between ideal and real situation. Organizational development tries to achieve ideal result without taking into account of real situation.
  • Resistance to change is a natural phenomenon and organizational development puts undue pressure to change. Hence, it fails even it is a long term strategy. 

Organizational Development (OD) Values 

The OD paradigm values human and organizational growth, collaborative and participative processes, and spirit of inquiry. The change agent may be directive in OD; however, there is a strong emphasis on collaboration. Concepts such as power, authority, control, conflict and coercion are held in relatively low esteem among OD change agents. The following are the underlying values in most OD efforts.
organization development values

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