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By definition, all organizations that survive as their environment evolves are learning, at least to some degree, but proposes that the learning capabilities of most organizations are extremely limited, especially when learning requires that diverse constituencies build shared understanding of dynamically complex business environments. As such, learning capabilities become increasingly needed, and those organizations which possess them will have unique advantages. Discovering how organizations might develop such learning capabilities represents a unique opportunity for partnership between researchers and practitioners. Suggests that to do this will require consensus about the research territory, research methods and goals, and how meaningful field projects can be designed and conducted.

Career anchor theory developed by Ed Schein in 1978 has been subject to limited further research, despite being widely used as a career tool within organisations. This article describes the importance of career anchor data for organisational as opposed to individual use and reports on a study of the career anchors of 374 employees in the UK. The results show that age, gender and length of service have no significant effect on the distribution of anchors, although there are grade‐related differences. Suggestions are made on how career anchor distribution data could be used by organisations to determine appropriate career development strategies.

A scholarly collaborative partnership is a capability that develops over time. Its quality is an outcome of the collaborative context, the alignment of purpose, development of work and learning processes, development of shared language and success stories. In this chapter, the authors engage in a metalogue where their shared reflection on the formation and development of their collaborative scholarship in the field of organization development and change is itself an instance of a process of shared scholarship. By adopting the format of a metalogue, they provide the voices of their individual thinking and their reflective conversation so as to offer an expression of the process of theorizing to scholars who wish to embark upon or study shared scholarship.

For 30 years the series, Research in Organizational Change and Development (ROCD) has provided an extensive range of scholarly research and philosophical reflections on the field of organization development and change (ODC). On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the first volume, this chapter poses the question as to how we might learn about the philosophy of ODC research from the 24 published volumes. Taking the author’s explicit pursuit of the question as a process of interiority, it invites readers to engage with the question themselves and thereby enact interiority within ODC itself.

This paper examines the relationships between career anchors, age, culture, gender, employment experience and the impact of downsizing on career planning. Presents the results drawn from 423 graduate business students in Australia, the USA, Malaysia, South Africa and the UK. Aims to explore Schein’s contention that employees develop a self‐concept or career anchor that holds their “internal career” together even as they experience a dramatic change in their “external career” that leads to greater self‐discovery. Previous studies have examined differences in career orientations in Europe, the USA and the UK. This research allows examination of the distribution of career anchors within a multi‐cultural sample across age groups, gender, culture and work experience. The data also enable investigation of the relationship between career anchors and reported impact of organisational downsizing on career decisions.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Organization Development (OD) is one of the newer HR buzzwords, driven by a variety of business needs such as leadership development, change management, internal communication and business process re‐engineering. Text book definitions of OD make it sound as if it should be a lot more systematic and methodical than it is in practice. While OD writers such as Warner Burke, Richard Beckhard and Ed Schein define specific phases of organization development, the reality within an organization is different, with the HR or OD practitioner having to work more opportunistically.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.Originality/valueThe briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.

Scholarship on workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is voluminous. Nevertheless, there is relatively little work that examines DEI from an organization development and change (ODC) or systems perspective. As a result, there is no unified framework ODC practitioners can use for DEI diagnosis and intervention. The purpose of this chapter is to review the ODC literature with respect to DEI and propose a diagnostic Context-Levels-Culture (CLC) framework for understanding and addressing diversity-related challenges in organizations. We also present a case example of how this framework can be used in DEI consulting, including implications for future research and practice.