forces of effective Organizational Development (OD)

Businesses need to keep ahead of their rivals in the modern business world by implementing effective organizational development (OD) interventions (Allcorn, 2015). Understanding action research’s methodology is essential to comprehending the idea of interventions. Typically, such a process is defined by its planning, doing, and assessing phases. Consequently, with an emphasis on the organizational development process, interventions can be described as the steps done to address problems or issues that arise during the process. These turning points take place during phase one’s planning phase. They are executed in the second step, doing, and are evaluated in the third phase, evaluating.

For the ease of understanding their scope, interventions are categorized by level of individual, group or team, and organization. However, several categories may harbor one intervention, for example the Leadership development interventions and the performance management system implementation. This paper focuses on Organizational interventions only and how they address various issues related to the corporations that employ them. At the organizational levels, these interventions are aimed at improving performance of the factors contributing to output of an organization. Thus, they can be considered to be socio-technical systems that are broader in scope because they affect the whole organization.

There are a number of organizational intervention strategies. In the choice of a particular strategy, many assumptions about the functioning and the nature of organizations are made. Groups (teams) are the major building blocks of organizations and thus are the basic units of change. There are interventions that focus on process issues, that is, how people go about doing things; and those that focus on task issues, that is, what the people do. The change mechanisms that the interventions tend to emphasize is another way used to classify them. We shall only focus on two types of these organizational interventions.

The first type of organizational intervention is the Techno-structural intervention. Through changes in the tasks, structural, technological, organizational and goal processes, it is aimed at improving organizational effectiveness (Wolfensperger, 2000). The techniques and methods through which this kind of intervention is achieved are many. The organization may opt for outsourcing and downsizing. This is whereby the organization doesn’t need some staff so it lays them off. Another method is through staff business organization and task organization. This is whereby the jobs and roles of the employees are completely specified and organized leaving them with the duty of doing them. This category also includes cultural change and business planning which are quality management strategic interventions.

The second type is the Human Resource Management (HRM) intervention. Here, management of employee performance is vital by the administration of the organization. This is attained many times through emphasis on diversity, establishing performance plans, discouraging drugs in the workplace, facilitating observation and feedback, career and leadership development and providing training to the employees (Buckle, Wheeler and Halbesleben, 2015). Programs for employee wellness and employee assistance are encouraged. This is not only important in achieving the performance goals but also in evaluating the ergonomics of employee performance such as recognizing performance problems, rewarding performances and preventing violence in the workplace,

Having discussed the two above organizational interventions, it is evident that they are not similar and they differ in various ways as portrayed by corporations (Pasmore & Fagans, 1992). For instance, techno-structural interventions are particularly aimed at the structure of other organization as opposed to the employees as is the case with HRM interventions. Furthermore, the HRM interventions enable closer relation with the employees by the administration. This interaction provides first hand feedback as opposed to Techno-structural interventions. Techno-structural interventions provide an overview of the organization’s development status. This is not the case with HRM interventions which provide a close to individual overview of the development of the general organization status.

In conclusion, interventions can be thought in the action stage of organization development as the principal learning processes. Therefore, this can be used on individual basis or in combination to improve their social or task performance as structured activities. They are part of an improvement program introduced by a change agent. Interventions are key in reviving a firm’s monotonous strategies and natures. It is always interesting, especially to the workers of any organization, to experience new routines in the workplace. Above all, it is more motivating to them if they feel considered and cared about. Thus organizational interventions are necessary in any society in order to obtain better performance and a changed environmental atmosphere in any organization’s workplace (Gicheru, 2013).

References

Allcorn, S. (2015). Organizational dynamics and intervention: Tools for changing the workplace.

Gicheru, E. (2013). The Effects of OD Interventions on Employees Performance: A Case Study. Saarbrücken : LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing.

In Buckle, M. R., In Wheeler, A. R., & In Halbesleben, J. R. (2015). Research in personnel and human resources management.

Pasmore, W. A., & Fagans, M. R. (1992). Participation, individual development, and organizational change: A review and synthesis. Journal of Management, 18(2), 375-397.

Wolfensperger, D. Q. (2000). Theory vs. practice in an organizational development technostructural interventions.