OD is concerned with managing planned change in organisations – a process where organisations move from their present state to some desired future state so as to increase organisational effectiveness. This process of planned change can only be realised when both in depth scientific inquiry and effective social action are carried out in tandem with the help of professional OD practitioners.
It should be noted however that OD differs greatly from many other planned change and improvement efforts widely used today, such as those on offer from management consultants, innovation experts and operations management theory.The latter offers programmatic and expert driven approaches to change. OD provides a more adaptive and flexible approach. Indeed traditional OD can be seen as a form of process consultation, where rather than OD practitioners “prescribing” solutions to help solve specific issues - their job is more centred around helping organisational members identify their organisational problems and developing solutions together, through both scientific inquiry methods and social action techniques. Both processes of scientific inquiry and social action are of a collaborative nature and we hope to show this further in our essay.Indeed the term social action refers to the idea of acting together instead of being acted upon by experts.
Just exactly how this change process is carried out can be seen through the “General Model” of planned change - a framework which describes four basic activities which practitioners and organisational members jointly carry out when engaged in OD. These activities include Entering and Contracting, Diagnosing, Planning and Implementing change and Evaluating and Institutionalising change.Throughout this essay we hope to delve deeper into each of the four stages of change and show how they are intrinsically linked to the ideas of scientific inquiry and social action. We will draw from the Da Vita and B. R Richardson cases in order to give examples of this change process and will also look to provide solutions in the form of interventions that we feel would be appropriate to the given situations. Entering and contracting The initial set of activities in planned change concerns entering into a relationship with the client and contracting.
This usually begins when a manager or administrator approaches an OD consultant with a problem (or as an OD practitioner, we would say “positive opportunity”) within their organisation, either specific or general. In the Richardson Timbers Case, Bowman, the head of industrial relations, expressed his belief that a motivational course was needed as morale was low in the plant after a fatality, and also that the manager was slightly authoritative. In the DaVita case, Mr Thiry has presented us with several problems facing the company.They include the following * Integrating Gambro into the “DaVita” way of managing and its culture * How will Mr Thiry personally touch and impact teammates as he had done previously with the increase in size and growth of the firm * How will the company manage their employees increasing expectations regarding wages and working conditions? * How will management be able to continue and drive productivity improvement and create new ways to fundamentally reengineer the firm? As OD practitioners, we would first have to clarify the organizational issues presented to us by our clients in the above cases – to see if they did exist.
It is important that this is done early in the OD process so that consequential diagnosis and interventions are focused correctly. This can achieved be through collecting preliminary data, examining company records and interviewing a few key members to gain a deeper understanding of the issues and the positive opportunities for inquiry. This investigation is the very beginning of a scientific inquiry into the context and nature of the presenting problem and begins the process of social action. The relevant client must then be defined.
Organizational members who are critical but not defined as such and subsequently excluded in the entering and contracting process often withhold their support to the OD process. This was identified in the Richardson Timbers case – Lawler asked almost immediately if the manager, Bamford, had been consulted. He had not, and consequently he is noted to be hostile and resentful of the graduate students. Before entering into a relationship, we would have first asked that Bamford be consulted to prevent the relationship starting off on bad terms.
This is a clear demonstration of how important social action is to Organisation Development. It is vital to collectively and collaboratively work on the problems with figures inside the organisation. As of yet key figures in Gambro have yet to be identified, but once they are – they must be included in any change initiative. Without all relevant clients committed to the process, it is not unusual for an OD project to fail. After this initial stage we would decide whether to enter into a contract and if our skills and expertise would be suitable to the organisational needs.If the OD practitioner feels that they might not be a good match, they should inform the client of other options.
Before entering into the contract, Lawler demonstrated this by giving Bowman three options, one of which was an alternative option than using himself. Presuming we felt competent in taking on both cases several conditions must then be met. Firstly mutual expectations should be addressed, with clear understanding of what the client expects from the process (for example, higher job satisfaction) and also what we as OD practitioners expects to gain (for example, opportunities to try new interventions).Next the time and resources required to accomplish the change should be committed upon from each at the start. Thirdly, ground rules should be set. Diagnosis: The next stage is diagnosis which can be defined as a “collaborative process between organisational members and the OD consultant to collect pertinent information, analyse it and draw conclusions for action planning”.
Diagnosis focuses on the scientific inquiry aspect of OD however it can also be defined as a social action as it takes place in a social environment and also involves the interaction of the OD consultant and key organisational members.Here the whole system is studied to fully understand the organisational problems or developmental issues. In carrying out diagnosis at both firms, it would be very important that we do some in dept research into both the dialysis and timber products industries to achieve a deeper understanding of the situation at hand. We would spend a lot of time gathering as much information as possible and would make an effort to know as many people in the organisation as possible.We would do this by attending company meetings, furthering Jack Lawlers efforts with more interviews of employees and management, and by observing the day to day operations of both companies.
Next and most importantly we would communicate with the key figures in the organisation and ask them what problems they perceived to be present and how they would like to see them resolved. For the purpose of the Da Vita case we decided to focus on one of the problems facing Da Vita, as there were quite a number of them.We looked at what we thought was the main issue which could affect the continued development of the company; that being the acquisition of Gambro. We believe that this issue would be best addressed through organisation level analysis, as the acquisition is a transoganisational issue it would directly affect the organisations design components within Da Vita. We concluded that in our view merging Gambro’s employees into the Da Vita culture was the most pressing issue to be addressed from the organisation level analysis.However due to the social action nature of OD - it’s not all about what we think.
Our next task would be to see if the client agreed with our observations. In the Richardson Timbers case, we feel that there has been a lot of information already collected. However, in our view this is only preliminary data. More extensive, concise information collection and analysing is required. We did however decide to look at Richardson Timbers in view of the open systems model, which looks at organisations as existing as part of a larger environment that affects how the organisation operates and performs.
In this framework, organisations can be viewed in terms of their inputs, transformations and outputs. We believe that one of the most pressing matters in Richardson Timbers is the effectiveness of the social component i. e. the employees and their work relationships.
This is part of the transformations that a business carries out. This problem can be seen when one looks at the fact that a lot of employees do not have faith in many key organisational members and also, in the fact that communication and teamwork is limited.Just like any other scientific enquiry, we have proposed to collect and analyse data and have made various observations of both organisations using conceptual models. However, yet again it would be important to see what our client felt regarding our observations. Feedback: When the issues facing both companies are fully diagnosed, the next, and perhaps most important step in the diagnostic process is taking what we have learned from the scientific inquiry and feeding back this information to key organisational figures.As already noted true OD is concerned with giving individuals the power to develop and solve their own issues and the importance of feedback in this process cannot be understated.
The key task in the case of both Da Vita and Richardson Timbers is to grant ownership of this data to members so that they can use this information to devise appropriate plans with us. However, they can only do so if it is meaningful and easily understood. This is extremely evident in the Richardson Timbers case.As discussed, the data that has already been gathered is only preliminary work and is presented in a cumbersome manner.
It would be necessary for us to give our evaluation in a clear and comprehensible style. This would involve regular meetings with key stakeholders, the use of charts and diagrams, detailed information accounts etc. To facilitate the members’ ownership of the data we would firstly stress to both organisations’ members that their presence in the process is an integral element to its success, by providing a clear link between the members’ participation and the prospective beneficial change.This would develop a distinct motivation in the members to be proactive in the process and highlights that OD is a professional field of social action. If there is agreement on the diagnosis it’s on to the next stage of deciding how to deal with the issues.
Planning and Implementing Change At the very heart of the OD process is the effort of planning and implementing change. This segment truly encapsulates the idea of social action – the process of getting people to act collectively in organisations.After problems or opportunities have been jointly identified in the diagnosis stage and feedback to the relevant clients has occurred – organisational members and the OD consultant again jointly plan and implement a suitable OD Intervention. It is important to note here that although this should be seen as a collaborative process – with the OD practitioner and clients working together to find possible solutions – the OD practitioner will have to use his/her expertise to present what he/she believes to be the various options available given the problems Identified.The types of actions that can be implemented can be drawn from Human Process Interventions, Techonostrutural Interventions, HRM Interventions and Strategic Interventions. Again the OD practitioner is there to advise on which they think is most suitable.
In relation to the DaVita case we can see that social action has already occurred. Thiry acting as an “internal” OD practitioner saw a need for change in order to turn Total Renal Care around. One of the key issues he felt was getting the philosophy of the company in order.He looked to Human Process Interventions to facilitate this change. These interventions focus on improved function of people and organisational processes so as to increase organisational effectiveness.
In order to introduce a new philosophy and a new “way of doing things” in the company he saw the need to include organisational members in this process. It was thus the company’s teammates not just the board or senior managers who collectively came up with both a new name for the company – “Da Vita” and voted on proposals for the core values of the firm.These core values which included Teamwork, Service excellence and fun to name but a few were to set the tone for a strong new and exciting culture that came to permeate the entire firm. This new culture which, became known as the “Da Vita way”, was continually reinforced through village imagery, effective communication and training and development at the Da Vita university. We as OD practitioners believe that the next OD effort should focus on how to integrate the Gambro employees into the successful Da Vita culture.This next phase of social action must again be based on operations of a collaborative nature.
Our intervention would include: * A strategic change intervention suggesting a Merger and Acquisition (M&A) team is set up to develop an integration plan which will ensure a smooth and successful operational combination phase between Da Vita and Gambro. Our impact on this group will not be an over-bearing one; rather we will simply aid the process. We would provide approaches that the team could use in developing the integration plan but not dictate how it should be done.A human process intervention using team building exercises. For the strategic intervention we would suggest steps that the team might take in dealing with the integration process.
The team will have to devise a new management structure, a new structure of tasks and work designs as well as the physical moves necessary. They will also have to focus on the cultural integration of both companies. Much of Da Vita’s success since Mr. Thiry arrived has been based upon setting and maintaining a strong cultural focus for the company and it is natural therefore that this strong cultural focus must evolve and grow to include the new Gambro additions.
The cultural values which formed such an integral part of the firms overall focus has to be transmitted to the new employees. We would suggest that Da Vita University could play a very important role here. This university could be expanded and its presence could play a huge role in educating both existing Da Vita staff as to how the firm will evolve as it grows significantly and also for the new members who will benefit greatly from a thorough introduction to life at Da Vita, learning how the firm operates and what it stands for.Finally in order for this integration to work we will stress to the board that it must be implemented in as quick a manner as possible, in order to reduce confusion and anxiety among members which could essentially lead to operational paralysis. Another aspect of our intervention would be to use team building which, can be a very important tool in getting members from both organizations to work effectively together.
This process would be set up by forming groups that will consist of, where possible, both existing Da Vita staff and the new Gambro employees. This again could be implemented at the DA Vita University.Team building activities would serve to foster a common culture between the new staff and the current, stressing the link between their collaboration and overall organizational success. As well as helping to bond a common culture, these groups would also be used to educate the newly acquired staff on the existing work processes and to give a thorough understanding of just how they will operate under the ‘Da Vita’ way. It must be stressed that these above interventions for Da Vita are only suggestions.
They would have to be discussed with key organizational members agreed upon be all before anything was fully implemented.
