12 and 13 to highlight the growing importance of organization design and culture interventions
Additional examples of global issues in organization development
New readings at the end of each chapter, where appropriate
My continued thanks to the students at the University of Denver as well as to the clients who share with me their struggles in achieving change at work. Reviewers and readers of prior editions continued to share ideas to improve this volume. As always, I am grateful to my family and friends, especially my wife, Jennifer, for their patience, support, and encouragement.
Exercises and Activities
Many chapters contain exercises, activities, and role plays that can be used to practice skills and apply concepts developed in several chapters of the book. This chart details which exercises and activities accompany which chapter and topic.
Ancillaries
Instructor Teaching Site
A password-protected instructor’s manual is available at edge.sagepub.com/andersonod5e to help instructors plan and teach their courses. These resources have been designed to help instructors make the classes as practical and interesting as possible for students.
An Overview for the Instructor offers the author’s insights on how to most effectively use this book in a course on organization development and change.
PowerPoint Slides capture key concepts and terms for each chapter for use in lectures and review.
Case Epilogues provide additional information about the organizations or scenarios featured in the text.
Discussion Questions suggest additional topics to engage students during classroom discussions and activities.
Sample Course Syllabi provide models for structuring your course.
A Test Bank includes multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay exam questions for each chapter.
Video Resources for each chapter help launch class discussion.
This text is accompanied by Cases and Exercises in Organization Development & Change, Second Edition (ISBN 978–1-5063–4447–8), which follows the same chapter organization as this text. A bundle of this text with the cases and exercises book is also available.
Acknowledgments
SAGE Publishing would like to thank the following reviewers for their contributions to the manuscript:
Barry Davis, Tri-State Bible College and Graduate School
Drew Thomas Foley, California State University, Northridge
Dawn M. Newman, Saint Louis University
Peter F. Sorensen Jr., Benedictine University
Dr. Barbara S. Wallace, Webster University
T. Craig Williams, East Carolina University
Chapter One What Is Organization Development?
Think for a moment about the organizations to which you belong. You probably have many to name, such as the company where you work, a school, perhaps a volunteer organization, or a reading group. You are undoubtedly influenced by many other organizations in your life, such as a health care organization like a doctor’s office or hospital, a church group, a child’s school, a bank, or the local city council or state government. Using an expansive definition of organization, you could name your own family or a group of friends as an organization that you belong to as well. With just a few moments’ reflection, you are likely to be able to name dozens of organizations that you belong to or that influence you.
Now consider an organization that you currently do not belong to, but one that you were dissatisfied with at some point in the past. What was it about that organization that made the experience dissatisfying? Perhaps you left a job because you did not have the opportunity to contribute in the way that you would have liked. Maybe it was a dissatisfying team atmosphere, or you were not appreciated or recognized for the time and energy that you dedicated to the job. It could have been a change to your responsibilities, the team, or the organization’s processes. Some people report that they did not feel a larger sense of purpose at work, they did not have control or autonomy over their work, or they did not find an acceptable path to growth and career development. Perhaps you’ve witnessed or been part of an organization that has failed for some reason. Perhaps it went out of business or it disbanded because it could no longer reach its goals.
You’ve likely had some excellent experiences in organizations, too. You may have had a job that was especially fulfilling or where you learned a great deal and coworkers became good friends. Maybe your local volunteer organization helped a number of people through organized fundraisers or other social services activities. Perhaps you joined or started a local community group to successfully campaign against the decision of your local city council or school board.
All of this is to demonstrate what you already know intuitively, that we spend a great deal of our lives working in, connected to, and affected by organizations. Some of these organizations function quite well, whereas others struggle. Some are quite rewarding environments in which to work or participate, but in others, organizational members are frustrated, neglected, and disengaged.
The purpose of this book is to introduce you to the field of organization development, an area of academic study and professional practice focused on making organizations better—that is, more effective and productive and at the same time more rewarding, satisfying, and engaging places in which to work and participate. By learning about the field of organization development and the process by which it is conducted, you will be a more effective change agent inside the organizations to which you belong.
Master the content at edge.sagepub.com/andersonod5e
Organization Development Defined
Organization development (OD) is an interdisciplinary field with contributions from business, industrial/organizational psychology, human resources management, communication, sociology, and many other disciplines. Not surprisingly, for a field with such diverse intellectual roots, there are many definitions of organization development. Definitions can be illuminating, as they point us in a direction and provide a shared context for mutual discussion, but they can also be constraining, as certain concepts are inevitably left out, with boundaries drawn to exclude some activities. What counts as OD thus depends on the practitioner and the definition, and these definitions have changed over time. In a study of 27 definitions of organization development published since 1969, Egan (2002) found that there were as many as 60 different variables listed in those definitions. Nonetheless, there are some points on which definitions converge.
One
