behaviors, based on a set of underlying values such as those defined above (White & Wooten, 1985). In a survey of organization development and human resources professionals in the early 1980s, practitioners admitted that there was no widespread definition of ethics for the field. Several scholars collaborated on an early draft of a statement, which was further revised. An annotated version was published in a book in 1990 by William Gellermann, Mark Frankel, and Robert Ladenson. The statement of ethical guidelines for OD professionals is reprinted in the appendix to this chapter. This statement contains many of the categories of OD values discussed earlier in this chapter, including client-centered values.
This clear statement of ethics has many followers and will be a useful guide for you throughout this book. Ethical conflicts do occur for OD professionals, and we will explore some of them in later chapters.
Summary
The values of organization development are a significant part of its identity, and they distinguish OD from other methods of consulting. Its values help practitioners with making choices about how to proceed in an intervention. They clarify our thinking and help to establish a dialogue with clients about what we value and why. They also provide a method for evaluating our work and give practitioners a larger purpose for their work. OD’s values include participation, involvement, empowerment, groups and teams, growth, development, learning, thinking of organizational members as whole people, dialogue, collaboration, authenticity, openness, and trust.
Recently, business effectiveness has been added to this list of humanistic concerns to include values such as quality, productivity, and efficiency, which some highlight as a potential conflict with OD’s humanistic values tradition. In any case, values conflicts do occur as OD practitioners must cope with economic and cultural forces that push them to see OD as a set of tools or intervention techniques and to neglect the values that underlie these techniques. Finally, a statement of OD ethics has been developed as an explicit statement of desired practitioner behaviors that are based on OD’s values.
Questions for Discussion
1 List four or five of your own personal values. How do these affect your actions? How do your values relate to the values of OD covered in this chapter?
2 Of the OD values listed in Chapter 3, are there any that you think should carry greater weight than others? Which ones? Why?
3 Think of an organization of which you have been a member. Did that organization model any of the values in this chapter well? How so?
For Further Reading
Gellermann, W., Frankel, M. S., & Ladenson, R. F. (1990). Values and ethics in organization and human systems development: Responding to dilemmas in professional life. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Margulies, N., & Raia, A. P. (1972). Organizational development: Values, process, and technology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
White, L. P., & Wooten, K. C. (1985). Professional ethics and practice in organizational development. New York, NY: Praeger.
Exercise: What Would You Do?
Consider the statement of ethical guidelines for OD practice in this chapter’s appendix. What do you think a practitioner should do when confronted with these scenarios? Identify the item(s) in the ethical statement related to each situation.
1 You have learned of a possible project that would allow you to practice your new OD skills with a nonprofit organization. While you have not led a workshop like this before, you are enthusiastic about the opportunity, and this could be a great career move that would also help a deserving organization. You would agree not to charge the group for your services. What ethical considerations exist for your participation? Would it matter if this group would compensate you for your time? Would it matter if this was a private company and you were already employed there?
2 As the manager of corporate quality, you ask members of your staff to interview 15 key stakeholders to determine their support for a new training initiative. Your staff summarized the data for you and reviewed the summary in a staff meeting. It becomes clear that two of the executives are strongly opposed to the initiative, and two are strongly in favor of it. It occurs to you that you could benefit from knowing who the supporters are so that they could convince the opponents to support your initiative. What ethical considerations exist in this situation? Can you ethically ask your staff to share the names of the supporters? What if your staff offered no promises of anonymity to the interviewees? Would it matter if the subject was a sensitive one?
3 As a favor to a friend who manages a small team of six professionals, you agree to facilitate a team meeting. Fearing that the meeting would become contentious, your friend asks you to steer the discussion away from several issues that she knows will cause an argument. Knowing that these conflicts are the source of the team’s troubles and are necessary discussion points to help the team improve, should you bring up the issues anyway and help the group resolve them, or should you heed your friend’s request?
4 You are the director of operations for the emergency department of a local hospital. Recent state regulations now mandate that certain paperwork be completed before and after each patient’s visit, and you have redesigned the intake processes to adjust for these requirements. You need the administrative and nursing staff to be on board with these changes, and you know they will be resistant. How might OD values of participation, involvement, empowerment, collaboration, and openness suggest what to do next?
Appendix
Statement of Ethical Guidelines for Practice for OD-HSD (Organization Development–Human Systems Development)
We commit ourselves to acting in accordance with the following guidelines:
1 Responsibility to OurselvesAct with integrity; be authentic and true to ourselves.Strive continually for self-knowledge and personal growth.Recognize our personal needs and desires and, when they conflict with other responsibilities, seek whole-win resolutions.Assert our own interests in ways that are fair and equitable to us as well as to our clients and their stakeholders.
2 Responsibility for Professional Development and CompetenceAccept responsibility for the consequences of our actions and make reasonable efforts to ensure that our services are properly used; terminate our services if they are not properly used and do what we can to see that any abuses are corrected.Develop and maintain our individual competence and establish cooperative relationships with other professionals.Develop the broad range of our own competencies. These include:Knowledge of theory and practice inApplied behavioral science generallyLeadership, management, administration, organizational behavior, system behavior, and organization/system development specificallyLabor union issues, such as collective bargaining, contracting, and quality of working life (QWL)Multicultural issues, including issues of color and genderCross-cultural issues, including issues related to our own ethnocentric tendencies and to differences and diversity within and between countriesValues and ethics in general and how they apply to both the behavior of our client system and our own practiceOther fields of knowledge and practice relevant to the area(s) within OD-HSD on which we individually concentrateAbility toAct effectively with individuals; groups; and large, complex systems.Provide consultation using theory and methods of the applied behavioral sciences.Cope with the apparent contradiction in applying behavioral science that arises when our “science” is too particular or theoretical to be applicable or when our real approach is intuitive and not clearly grounded in science.Articulate theory and direct its application, including creation of learning experiences for individual; small and large groups; and large, complex systems.Establish
