Read Ch 3 & 4 of your Text: Organization Development and Change- Cummings & Worley.
Answer the following questions. Explain your answers with specific examples from work and personal experiences. Connect your answers to the readings from your text.
1) What is your personal definition of OD?
Organizational development is a research practice dedicated to developing systematic changes through data collection in an organization to improve performance. Organizational development studies behaviors and norms and creates plans to change ineffective standards and expand knowledge in ways that can produce evidentiary-based improvements.
2) In what ways do the definition(s) of OD as described in your text apply to your experiences and definition of OD? Explain.
In my department there tends to be a lot of internal consulting, employees working from within assessing processes and behaviors to continuously improve process flow and organizational standards. As interruptions to processes occur, a review process is created to study, plan and change flows that aren’t working optimally. The following definition speaks to my understanding of organizational development within my organization. “Organizational development refers to a long-range effort to improve an organization’s problem-solving capabilities and its ability to cope with changes in its external environment with the help of external or internal behavioral-scientist consultants, or change agents, as they are sometimes called (French).” A current push is to improve process documentation throughout our department. We found that we are really underprepared when individuals retire or leave the department and that their knowledge base is leaving with them. This is a change that will always need to be monitored and reviewed as processes and systems continue to change.
3) What needs to be added or changed to the definition in regard to your experience and/or industry? Explain.
I think that an element of flexibility needs to be added into the definition. Perhaps flexibility creates a looseness that is undesirable but it seems that as soon as we hone a process or
