Understanding Organisation Development - Essay Example

Organization Development (OD) is a planned effort to increase the overall effectiveness of an organization by changing the existing beliefs, attitudes, values, and structure of the organizations. It is not possible for an organization to stick with the conventional methods in a world which undergoes rapid changes, literally in every second. This paper briefly explains the importance of organization development in a changing world. There are no organized or standard definitions for organization Development because of the vast areas it covers. ODportal.com defined organization development as changing people and organizations for positive growth (ODportal.com, n. d).

Gallos defined OD as an effort; planned, organization- wide, and managed from the top to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization’s process using behavioural science knowledge (Gallos, 2006, p.1). People or the workforce is the backbone of every organization. Even though other resources like materials, machines and money are important for an organization, all these resources are controlled by the manpower and the importance of manpower cannot be underestimated in development of an organization.

People or the workforce is undergoing constant changes every day. The requirement of the current generation is different from that of ancient generation. Science and technology has developed a lot and the life styles and the living standards were also changed a lot. Based on the changing workforce and changing customers or consumers, organizational principles also need changes. Organizational culture, climate, attitude, behaviour, structure etc need to be changed or updated in order to meet the demands of the changing world.

OD is the only option available for organizations to accomplish this task. “Organizational Development (OD) is all about managing change” (Devalt, 2008). “As our children growing up, we used the tool of OD in our parenting”