What is Organisational Development?

Table of Contents

Organisational development is a discipline for building learning organisations that have the capacity to change and renew themselves. Organisational development can be viewed as an ongoing process of creating, maintaining, and revitalising workplace structures that produce satisfied customers, satisfied employees, growth, profits, and lasting competitive advantage.

Organisational development seeks to understand the “health” and “vitality” of an organisation, and improve it.

The goal of organisational development is to develop the awareness, knowledge and skills of all employees in order for them to contribute to improvement in their collective working lives.

Organisational development integrates personality and organisational psychology with the wider field of management studies. It grew out of industrial and organisational psychology in the 1940s, when organisations became interested in applying psychological principles to personnel management problems. Organisational development is a multifaceted field of study, with four main areas of inquiry:

1. Group dynamics and process consultation;
2. Individual factors & motivation;
3. Leadership and power relations;
4. Organisation design and change processes.

Goals of Organisational Development

The specific goals of organisational development practises can vary from organisation to organisation and may change over time. But there are some general objectives that most organisations have in common:

• Remove barriers to individual and group effectiveness;
• Increase the level of expressiveness, freedom, responsibility, ownership and autonomy at work;
• Develop a sense of community and teamwork;
• Promote understanding, appreciation and respect for diversity;
• Improve job satisfaction and quality of life at work;
• Increase an organisation’s capacity to change and innovate.

Also Read: What is Organizational Behavior?

Key Aspects of Organisational Development

Organisational development (OD) can be defined as a planned, systematic process of organisational change through which the organisation learns to function more effectively and efficiently.

A humanistic approach to OD believes that learning is an ongoing activity at all levels in the organisation. The focus is on client-centred services where individual employees are taught how to better address their own problems, so they can become self-actualized and self-motivated.

Organisational Development Activities Include:

• Individual consultations;
• Training and education;
• Team building and team training;
• Small group meetings or learning sessions;
• Conflict resolution, problem solving and decision making;
• Stress management;
• Cultural diversity training;

Performance Appraisal and Management

The aim of OD is to foster a state of collective awareness in the organisation. According to Wenger, this shared understanding allows people to have meaningful conversations about how they work together, enabling them to act with integrity towards each other within the boundaries of their working relationships.

The Overall Process Involves:

• Organisational diagnosis;
• Developing organisational objectives;
• Identifying human needs, resources and potential problems;
• Designing an action plan to address these issues.

Conclusion

Organisational development is a useful management technique to help organisations meet their objectives through work restructuring, training and the facilitation of open communication among employees. Although it has been around for decades, OD remains a fast changing field, with new techniques constantly being developed. In order to keep up with these changes, OD practitioners need to continue their personal development through formal education, research and networking.