Organization Development - Essay Example

DIAGNOSIS OF THE GROWING HOME SOUTHEAST'S ENVIRONMENT DYNAMICS AND PLANNING AN APPROPRIATE THEORY-BASED ORGANIZATION DYNAMICS INTERVENTIONS Organization development (OD) is the process of planning and implementing interventions to create interpersonal, group, inter-group, or organization-wide change. This paper reflects diagnosis of the Growing Home Southeast (formerly Human Services Associates)'s environment dynamics and planning an appropriate theory-based organization dynamics interventions. Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action (Aguilar 1967, Choo and Auster 1993). Organizations scan the environment in order to understand the external forces of change so that they may develop effective responses which secure or improve their position in the future. They scan in order to avoid surprises, identify threats and opportunities, gain competitive advantage, and improve long- and short-term planning (Sutton 1988). To the extent that an organization's ability to adapt to its outside environment is dependent on knowing and interpreting the external changes that are taking place, environmental scanning constitutes a primary mode of organizational learning. Environmental scanning includes both looking at information (viewing) and looking for information (searching). It could range from a casual conversation at the lunch table or a chance observation of an angry customer, to a formal market research program or a scenario planning exercise (Choo, 2001). T This paper presents the theoretical foundations of organization development as an applied behavioral science. Many types of interpersonal, intra-group, inter-group, and organizational interventions that are used to effect comprehensive and lasting changes will be analyzed. Organizational situations that would benefit from organization development interventions will be identified. The organizational systems issues of the Growing Home Southeast at the level of the individual, small group, inter-group, organization, and organization/environment levels of analysis will be diagnosed. At a foundational level, this paper aim to diagnose and plan an intervention that will increase organizational effectiveness. This institution was founded in 1979 as a social service agency in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1987, the agency opened an office in Bamburg, South Carolina with the executive director serving as the only staff person. This company does not have a merit system in place. There are enough employees now and the organization wants to implement an appropriate merit system. Within a few months of operation in South Carolina, the first child was placed in one of our foster homes and this institution have consistently grown since. By 1994, the need for serving a special population of foster youth was identified and the agency began providing a medically-fragile program. In March, 2005, Growing Home Southeast acquired the programs of Family Resources, Inc. of Beaufort, SC, increased its staff size to nearly fifty employees statewide, managed services for more than 200 clients and entered the home-based services market. Analysis of the organizational status of the Growing Home Southeast was conducted. Various aspects of the organization were studied such as the management of the organization, projects, supervision of the institution, management of client relationships and strategies. The researcher also performed extensive analysis of database and system response times with custom realtime diagnostic tools, and designed optimizations to address performance, bottlenecks, and increasing database capacity fourfold. According to Choo (2001), scanning or browsing behavior is influenced by external factors such as environmental turbulence and resource dependency, organizational factors such as the nature of the business and the strategy pursued, information factors such as the availability and quality of information, and personal factors such as the scanner's knowledge or cognitive style. Many research studies on scanning investigate the effect of situational dimensions, organizational strategies, information needs, and personal traits on scanning behavior. Situational dimensions are often examined by measuring the perceived uncertainty of the external environment, typically in terms of the complexity and rate of change of the environment. Organizational strategies refer to the pattern of organizational actions vis-a-vis the outside environment, and two examples of well-known strategy typologies are those developed by Miles and Snow (1978) (defender, prospector, analyzer), and Porter (1980) (overall cost leadership, differentiation, focus). Managerial traits that have been studied include the managers' functional specialty, hierarchical level, and cognitive style. Scanning as a form of information behavior is composed of information needs, information seeking, and information use. In the context of environmental scanning, information needs often refer to the focus and scope of scanning, particularly the environmental sectors where scanning is more intense. Information seeking has been examined in terms of the sources that are used to scan the environment as well as the organizational methods and systems deployed to monitor the environment. Finally, information use is usually looked at in relation to decision making, strategic planning, or equivocality reduction (Choo, 2001). The diagnostic profile will be conducted through an extensive and intensive diagnosis of the Growing Home Southeast. The appropriate objectives for the intervention strategies to be used will be set. Process of planned change such as theories of organizational change and change management, impact of change at individual, group, and organizational level, and resistance and barriers to change will be considered in setting the change objectives. The methodology to be used here is diagnosing individual, group, or organizational/environment dynamics and to then determine and plan an appropriate theory-based organizational development intervention. Organisational culture and climate such as the formation, management and consequences of organisational culture and climate greatly affect the Growing Home Southeast. Working in groups, group dynamics and teamwork, team versus individual performance, intragroup and inter-group relations will be a good strategy. It was also found that contemporary theories and research on leadership may be a useful tool in the further diagnosis of the Growing Home Southeast. Proper implementation of organisation development can be done through adoption of various models of organizational development, levels and methods of organizational development, intervention, effectiveness of organizational development, interventions and the role of occupational psychologists in organizational change. According to Coghlan and Rashford, training and developing managers in skills that enable them to deal effectively with the multiple issues within an organization is important. In the systems approach, complex systems are divided into hierarchical levels of complexity (Miller 1978). In organizations these levels are typically described as individual, group, inter-group and organizational (Staw 1984, Rousseau 1985). Levels of organizational behavior are common in organizational behavior and organization development texts. In these texts they seem to be rather static notions, providing convenient headings under which particular elements of organizational behavior can be located. One approach, developed by Rashford and Coghlan (1987), attempts to articulate and link together the different levels of behavior in organizations. They describe levels in a more dynamic framework of how people participate in organizations by defining them in terms of tasks and interventions and attempting to link them to provide a useful action skills tool for managers. This framework is integrative in that it attempts to describe in a single paradigm the psychological processes of individual, group and inter-group behavior with issues of technological and strategic management (James & Jones 1974, Ivancevich, Szilagyi and Wallace 1977, Harrison 1987). In the case of the Growing Home Southeast, the framework in terms of managerial action skills will be identified, and draws on experience in using it in effecting change. Diagnosis of the client system will be carried out through utilization of simple diagnostic tools. The results were strategies drafted to effect changes. Following diagnosis, the ultimate goals of the project is to implement appropriate intervention strategies. Using relevant diagnostic frameworks from individual, group, inter-group, organizational, and organization/environment levels of understanding in order to analyze what is occurring in the situation will be applied. By presenting the challenges and the rare patterns using the diagnostic profile to plan, appropriate intervention strategies will be determined. The interventions that occur during organizational change effort are those that are building skills and insights through practice. Special attention should be given to entry into client systems, organization diagnosis, and intervention (Principle and Practices of Organizational Development, 2006). These interventions that occur during organizational change effort is done through acquiring skills, working continuously in improving their effectiveness with the clients of the Growing Home Southeast. In addition, the managers should assume responsibility for managing a significant change effort in their organizations. These practitioners and managers typically have a need to learn more about the nature of organizational functioning and change, enhance their skills in helping managers and executives to understand and manage change throughout their organization, and enhance their skills in managing change (Principle and Practices of Organizational Development, 2006). Biases might be influencing the perceptions of the situation and the ability to stand back and analyze the situation objectively. Biases may be overcome to become an effective organizational development agent in this situation. To do this, do an honest self-evaluation of biases, professional loyalties or attachments, and personal agendas. Self-awareness is the first step in overcoming, or at least curbing, prior prejudices. To ensure detachment and fairness, re-orientation should stress loyalty to the data (i.e., following outcomes data to their logical conclusions), customer focus, professionalism and commitments to system-wide accountability and continuous program improvement (Lean, 1997). Two action steps that will be taken based upon the learning in the diagnosis and intervention planning is the diagnosis of the environment dynamics and planning appropriate theory-based organization dynamic interventions. Based on the diagnosis conducted on the Growing Home Southeast environment dynamics and planning an appropriate theory-based organization dynamics intervention, it was found that this strategy is effective in coming up with organization dynamics interventions that will be critical in effecting change for the betterment of the institution, Growing Home Southeast. Environmental scanning, the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, knowledge of which assist management in planning the organization's future course of action (Aguilar 1967, Choo and Auster 1993). Depending on the organization's beliefs about environmental analyzability and the extent that it intrudes into the environment to understand it, modes of scanning may be differentiated: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting, and searching (Choo, 2001). The modes of scanning, in this case, is analyzed by examining its characteristic information needs, information seeking, and information use behaviors. In the Growing Home Southeast there is lack of a merit system within the organization. There is a need for one. It is recommended to implement the merit systems in the Growing Home Southeast. These merit systems will include the pay for performance system. This would benefit a small company such as growing home southeast. Decisions that are made during the design and implementation of a pay for performance system are crucial (Working for America Act, 2006). Therefore, the Growing Home Southeast decision makers should carefully consider their design options with full awareness of the potential advantages and disadvantages. In the decision-making process of the officials of the Growing Home Southeast, they need to determine who should be covered, what should be rewarded, how to reward employees, and they need to preserve the integrity of the pay system. Through critical thinking Gowing Home Southeast agency heads should anticipate important issues and tailor their pay systems to their unique needs, which will facilitate their success. Performance-based pay systems present unique opportunities and challenges. Studies in pay sytems suggests that "one size does not fit all" in pay systems. Growing Home Southeast needs to customize compensation systems to their own unique circumstances (A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 2006). Specific interventions to improve the situation at the Growing Home Southeast is that the organization's leaders can increase wages for all staff of the Growing Home Southeast and implement merit raise program which may assist the organization in stabilizing staff and attracting potential employees. Employees and clients alike should be recognized during quarterly, semestral or annual awards banquet to be held on a regular basis. The organization may have an annual independent audit and use generally accepted accounting practices and cash management principles. There should be a risk management plan in place and policies and procedures for the financial management of the organization's funds (Cobb, 1999). A sound business practices in place at the Growing Home Southeast will allow clients to meet their basic necessities of living in addition to being able to save for more costly nonessential items. In addition, the organization may implement an electronic time keeping system to better manage overtime and payroll costs of its employees. The management of Growing Home Southeast may compare their planned budget with their performance results. Reviewing the Growing Home Southeast current employee evaluation system and making significant changes to the current evaluation tool that they have so that staff can be provided with feedback and recommendations consistent with their specific job duties. References Aguilar, Francis J. 1967. Scanning the Business Environment. New York: Macmillan Co. Choo, Chun Wei. 2001. Environmental Scanning as Information Seeking and Organizational Learning. 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