Transforming organizations - Essay Example

All the theories of organizational development aim toward improving individual organizations. Such a notion of organizational development differs considerably from the traditional techniques of organizational change. This paper aims at answering the various questions related to organizational development and the traditional methods. Traditional, Pragmatic and scholarly forms of transforming organizations The traditional systems of organizational change emphasize mainly on identifying the problems arising in an organization and then making efforts to make changes to the factors that are creating such problems.

It is an endeavor to bring about changes in isolated behaviors that are responsible for certain unwelcome outcomes. It does not pay much attention to the cooperative action of the managers as well as the employees at the different hierarchical levels to solve the problems. Traditionalists argue that the long established values that human beings possess should be the driving force of OD. It should be based on equality, faith and collaboration (Trends within OD and Their Impact on OD’s Future, 2012).

The pragmatic forms relate to the growing demands for professionalization and emphasizes on relevance. They desire that OD should create a common body of knowledge, describe the minimum level of aptitude and introduce regulatory infrastructure. The scholarly forms of OD are based on the ability to understand, predict and control change. They are more inclined towards creating knowledge and figure out proactively how change is triggered and under what circumstances it works effectively. These differences are illustrated in Figure 1 (See Figure 1 in Appendix B).

Changes in the methods of organizational development There are different forms of organizational development in terms of both theoretical and philosophical grounds. These different practices of organizational development have emerged, according to general thinking, as a result of a shift in the awareness of people and their acceptance of the new theories and more importantly because, these new theories become effective in practice. They throw light on new ways of improving effectiveness of the organizations alongside staying true to the humanistic value base of the organizational development (Bushe & Marshak, 2009, p. 349). The form of OD that is prevalent and is commonly found to be explained in OD textbooks is the Diagnostic OD.

Contrary to this, a new form of OD is followed by the organizations that have been named as the Dialogic form of OD. In the foundational theory of OD, organizations are believed to adapt to their outside environment similar to the way employees adapt to the internal environment of the organization. The Diagnostic OD refers to the process of collecting data for making comparisons between a team or company against a given prescriptive model. Methodologies in this process include classical research, socio-technical analysis of systems, survey feedback, SWOT analysis and effective team development.

These are incorporated into the methods of problem solving and action planning. The central aspect of this form of OD lies in the assumption that the objective data can be used in the process of social discovery. The classical system of organizational development pushes people to think of companies as an assortment of structures that co-evolve with their environment and adapt to it. However the emerging practices of orga