What is Organization Development - Term Paper Example

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT Organizational Development Introduction The organizations of today are producing products and services which were unknown in the past and-thus giving a new life to every individual with much higher material comforts than ever before. Organizational Development efforts are data gathering, data feedback and joint diagnosis. Organizational Development is not only the change of an individual but mainly the teams and their relationship with other interdependent teams. It can be defined as "The application of planning, development and problem solving process to the overall functioning of the organization in such a way that it strengthens the physical, financial, human resources factors and improves the process of interpersonal relationship of the organization." . An individual can establish a bond with other individuals, which multiply and generate power to create, to build and to produce. Organizational development represents the way of leading men at work and managing their mutual relations in such as way as to make them happy, productive and strong. Elements of Organizational Development Organizational Development helps us to analyze the optimum level of performance of an organization and to know where the organization is where it wants to be and how can it go there. The techniques of Organizational Development consist of methods drawn from behavioral science, which aim at developing resources, a skill within the organization to face the problems, anticipate issues and to plan and to deal with them. The various elements of Organizational Development can be classified into the following two groups: I. (a) Inter-personnel competence. (b) Self-awareness. (c) Communication ability. (d) Ability to manage conflict and tolerance. (e) Managerial grid. II. (a) Problem solving ability. (b) Goal setting ability. (c) Planning ability. (d) Understanding the process of change. Need of Organizational Development For an individual to make personal changes on the job, an organizational climate should exist to support these changes. Otherwise, training the individual will have little or on impact on the organization. Developing the system to support the desired individual change is a basic part of the organizational development. Developing- the system involves building more effective interpersonal relationship among members of the working group. For example, the team may become more efficient, responsive, flexible and creative from the point of view of the organization. The concept of team building lies in the art of organizational development but organization effectiveness requires more than effective teams. Organizational Development is not a programme or a project rather it is a continuing process. This process may involve certain projects, planning and implementation of a changed specific programme such as seminars, conferences, appraisal, interviews with an object to develop better procedures and supporting climate for dealing with organization problems. Technological change in industries are well planned and implemented with considerable care but organization change that is modifying some part of organization structure or implementing a new process of work is often not deliberately planned but haphazard activity. Planning, implementing and evaluating these organization changes are part of Organizational Development. Concept of Organizational Development Organizational Development believes that organizational members can learn to describe its culture and can be helped to plan what it should be like and in assisting the organization to change from what it is to-what it should be. The essential characteristic of Organizational Development is the involvement of the people in the organization to carry out various activities. These activities are designed to meet the organizational objective with and around the inter-action of groups within the organization. Organizational development feels that it pays to confront, it lays emphasis on trust and openness, it aims to develop, increase understanding between and within groups in order to reduce tensions and introduce team management. Organizational development objectives are to improve organizational effectiveness and organizational health. Objectives of Organizational development can be outlined as follows: (a) Sensing the problem. (b) Choosing Consultant. (c) Joint Diagnosis. (d) Strategic Planning. (e) Developing change agents Organizational Development Manager is required to have the following objectives: (a) To help the organization to adapt to internal and external changes. (b) To organize and conduct the team building programme. (c) To prevent unplanned organizational changes to take place. (d) To undertake organization diagnosis and to bring the diagnosis to the top management's notice. (e) To work as internal change agents. Organizational Development and Management Development Organizational development is the addition of organizational planning and management development. Organizational development deals with structural aspects, levels of hierarchy, span of control, and job description. Management development deals with human aspects of career planning. Development deals with deliberate changing of the instrumentation through the utilization and application of valid knowledge, succession planning, appraisal systems and training. The need for starting Organizational Development goes beyond the need for Management Development. The need of Organizational Development obviously goes beyond the development of the individual manager. It requires a total system involvement and commitment to a long-term renewal of the organization. The commitment needed in Organizational Development is far greater than for Management Development. In Management Development, it is far more difficult to arrive at conditions similar to those faced on the job. Quite often, the manager trained for a management technique learns new concepts but when he returns to job and starts implementing them, he is frequently faced with the problems of lack of support from his superiors and his subordinates. Normally management development is given a lip service with little and or no support from top management. Management development and organization development are not only compatible but are complimentary to each other. Management development is an arm of organizational development. Organizational development process perceives various problems which management development can handle. Management development and organizational development efforts are concerned with issues such as communication, planning, motivation and coordination of goals. Team Development There are many interventions for team development. The basic objective of using team development interventions is to increase effectiveness of various teams within the organization. The teamwork requires a supportive climate. In applying this principle, the relationship between the superior and subordinate is crucial. This relationship should be one, which is supportive and ego building. The more often the superior's behavior is ego-building rather than the ego deflating, the better will be the effect of his behavior on organizational performance. This relationship may work equally in the case of peer relationships in-group building. The underlying aim of team development is to increase trust among team members because people work better together when there is open and honest sharing about the problems and difficulties that they have with one another. As such, at the initial level, the attempt should be to develop such an environment where such trust can be developed among the team members. Though organizational climate, in general, provides such a trusting condition, management may take specific measures in this direction. Such measures, in order to be more effective, should proceed in the following procedure: 1. Problem Sensing. There are a number of ways in which problems of a team can be identified. Often the team itself defines which aspects of teambuilding it wishes to work on. This problem can better be identified in terms of what is hindering group effectiveness. At this stage, generally most of the members come forward with their arguments as to what the real problems are. The views may be quite different ranging from the organizational problem, groups problems to even personal problems. In problem identification, the emphasis should be on consensus. The consensus seeking part of the process necessitates that each person becomes thoroughly aware and understand clearly the basic concepts of team-development. Much of the problems may be solved through effective communication and training sessions. 2. Examining Effects of Differences in Perception. The perception of people on an issue differs because of their differing backgrounds, such as, their value systems, personality, and attitudes. The perception maybe brought to conformity through the process of exercise on perception, which involves a number of psychological exercises particularly on perceptual differences. The role of communication is important in this context because it will help in clarifying the actual problems to the members. 3. Giving and Receiving Feedback The step of perceiving things and listening to each other may be relayed back to the members as there is a possibility that such processes may create tense situation in the group. Other members report about the painful feelings that they have at the time of evaluation of their feelings. The discussion should continue until all members of the team have commented. The feedback should be given to the members about their feelings, about the issue, the way people talk about the issue, the staying with the topic or going off on tangents, who was talking more or who was talking less, who was trying to resolve the differences, etc. Such feedback generally provides members to evaluate the values but at the same time also provides opportunity to understand them. 4. Developing Interacting Skills. The basic objective of this process is to increase the ability among the people as to how they should interact with others and engage in constructive behavior. Following are the examples of constructive and negative behaviors: Constructive Behavior: (i) Building: developing and expanding the ideas of others. (ii) Bringing in: harmonizing, encouraging others to participate. (iii) Clarifying: resting, ensuring, understanding, and seeking relevant information. (iv) Innovating: bringing in new relevant ideas, information, feelings etc. Negative Behavior: (i) Over talk: interrupting, talking together with speaker. (ii) Attacking: deriding, belittling, and criticizing person. (iii) Negating: cooling, cynicism, undermining morale. At the time of discussion of feedback, people take themselves assignments to increase specific constructive behaviors and decrease specific negative behaviors. If this process is adopted several times, there is a strong possibility that members may learn constructive behaviors and leave negative behavior. This is quite helpful in developing teamwork. Self-Development Process Self Development is the most effective means of training because of the unsolicited commitment involved. Self Development is the core of development process. All the development is self-development. Training is a process of increasing the skills and knowledge of employees to enable them to perform their job well while development is more akin to education. The initiative for development has to be taken by the individual himself. Development is a process of becoming potentialities. At each stage of development there are specific tasks such as: skills, attitudes, understandings which are appropriate to that level of maturity and which society expects the individual to master. Self development has emerged as major concept in management development.Total Quality is an expression of the need for continuous improvement in four areas. Interpersonal effectiveness, Personal and Professional Development, Managerial effectiveness, Organizational Productivity. Interpersonal Relations Total Quality on an interpersonal level means making constant deposits into the emotional bank accounts of others. It is continuously building goodwill and negotiating in good faith and not under fear. Emotional bank account can evaporate fast particularly when expectations of continuous communication and improvement are violated. If communication does not take place, people begin to tap into their memories and into their fears and spin off negative scenario and start planning based on the negative feelings. Personal and Professional Development Personality and skill development is a process of ongoing improvement or profession-a constant upward spiral. It is a process of total integrity around your value system and part of the value system means you are always getting better, personally and professionally. The common denominator of success is a strong empowering, guiding, inspiring, uplifting purpose. The purpose is to unleash one's creative capacities. Managerial Effectiveness It means nurturing "Win-Win" performance and making sure that they are aligned with what is happening inside creates inter functional teamwork. Organizational Productivity Productivity is the essence of real leadership. A leader is a product of principles, values, attitude beliefs and behavior and transforms the situation and people in line with organization mission and objectives. It is important that top management gives full leadership and active support to Organizational Development efforts in order to make it successful and operative in the organization. If the top management is giving a lip service then it is quite critical to succeed on Organizational Development programme. It is vital that all levels of management are involved in any change of process. Organizational development concentrates on the development of people in such a way that the development of the organization is ensured. References Ahuja K. (2005) Human Resource Management. Kalyani Publishers. Calcutta. Pp 880-883 Darwin Cartwright, Achieving Change in People: Some Implications of Group Dynamics Theory; Human Relations, 1991, pp. 388-391. Sharma MC. (2004). Business Studies. S Chand & Company. New Delhi. Pp 10-20 Read More