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As HR becomes more strategic, there’s a potential overlap in roles and skill sets with organizational development. Rather than compete, Fiona Ellis, a director of the Bath Consultancy Group, argues that the two should work in partnership. She draws on the experiences of OD and HR professionals in a range of organizations to explore the nature of this evolving relationship.

This applied position piece discusses the potential advantages of applying a mass customization framework to the field of organization development (OD). Mass customization, adapted from the manufacturing industry, is posited as a potential way to address the OD identity (or lack thereof) debate. Four speculative applications of mass customization to OD are presented, as well as a real-world example of how mass customization is currently being applied in one organization. Implications at the individual-, group-, and systems level are discussed.

After key arguments are introduced, a case study is presented to illustrate the application of mass customization to an OD process.

Implementation of mass customization can be successful in traditional OD practices.

This paper addresses a common debate in the field of OD: should we limit our scope, or will that sacrifice inclusivity? By applying a mass customization framework, OD can retain its flexibility while still applying boundaries to the field.

This paper addresses a common debate in the field of OD: should we limit our scope, or will that sacrifice inclusivity? By applying a mass customization framework, OD can retain its flexibility while still applying boundaries to the field.

Aims to explain how application of organizational development (OD) can facilitate compliance with regulations imposed by an external government agency on university operations.

A total of 2,000 students and 150 staff were directly affected by the regulation, with the remaining university population potentially affected. The strategy utilized project management and change agent processes where analysis of the problem, design and implementation of interventions, and evaluation of intervention effect were carried out through a project working party with highly centralized leadership by senior management. There was regular progressive and summative evaluation of project goal attainment.

Use of project management, change agents and centralized senior project leadership provided the practical means to support successful OD. OD worked well within the devolved, multi‐campus, multidisciplinary and organizationally complex environment of the university. OD proved to be an effective and efficient approach for large‐scale change in technical organizational sub‐systems, in particular structure and technology. By the end of the 18‐month intervention, no staff incidents had been reported, and of 2,000 students directly affected, only seven incidents had been identified and these were ultimately resolved by the project management group.

OD can be used effectively and efficiently to facilitate mandated change in multi‐site, multidisciplinary, large organizations. This case study demonstrated that project management, centralized leadership and the use of change agents were practical, efficient and effective within the OD framework.

This is the first study to describe and evaluate the use of OD to facilitate mandated change in universities in response to regulation.

Occupy was a leaderless, resistance movement that started as Occupy Wall Street in New York City on September 17, 2011 but soon spread around the world, becoming a truly global movement. This chapter provides a detailed description and analysis of the processes of learning consensus decision-making in Occupy Dame Street in Dublin, Ireland.The analysis draws on more than five months of “militant ethnographic” and participatory action research within the Occupy movement. The chapter points to the ways in which uncertainty impacted on the processes of learning in Occupy and how it intersected with responsibility and commitment of the participants.

Organisational development is a well‐known and important methodology used by experts in group dynamics and organisational behaviour for improving groups and organisations. It is a process‐oriented approach of change and is believed to be more effective and valuable than the classic expert approach because it teaches people to improve their situations themselves, which emancipates and stimulates learning. Some organisation consultants seek a mix between the analytical and process approaches whereas others add “harder” aspects of human relations. The inherent limitations of organisation development are considered and alternative paradigms to improve social structures explored.

Contemporary organizations are facing an operating environment characterized by volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous, and “permanent whitewater.” To sustain high performance in this context, organizations must be able to change and develop as efficiently and effectively as possible. Within organizations, there are actors who catalyze and advance change in this manner; these actors are known as “champions.” Yet the scholar who wishes to conduct research concerning champions of change and organizational development is likely to be met by a highly fragmented literature. Varying notions of champions are scattered throughout extant research, where authors of articles cite different sources when conceptualizing champions; often superficially. Furthermore, many types of highly specific and nuanced non-generalizable champions have proliferated, making it difficult for practitioners and researchers to discover useful findings on how to go about making meaningful changes in their context. The purpose of this study was to address these problems for practitioners and researchers by engendering thoroughness, clarity, and coherence within champion scholarship. This was done by conducting the first comprehensive, critical yet insightful review of the champion literature within the organizational sciences using content analysis to re-conceptualize champions and develop a meaningful typology from which the field can be advanced. The chapter first suggests a return to Schön (1963) as the basis from which to conceptualize champions and, second, offers a typology consisting of 10 meta-champions of organizational change and development – Collaboration, Human Rights, Innovation, Product, Project, Service, Strategic, Sustainability, Technology, and Venture Champions – from which change practice and future research can benefit.

Examines how to successfully apply one theoretical model of organizational development (OD) and organizational culture, the cognitive model, through theoretically consistent, i.e. cognitive, interventions to solve the organizational problem of downsizing. Reports a case study on use of a variety of such interventions. Summarizes what can be gained from such an approach. The cognitive model of OD as schemata change found to be a viable and useful approach to organizational downsizing.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly to review what appear to be major long term changes in the social system which are likely to require planned reciprocal change in the way large scale corporate enterprises are managed; secondly, to review the ways in which the emerging discipline of Organizational Development may be relevant to organization change, in particular to the development of more satisfactory in‐company Industrial Relations climates.

Having a good idea, product or system is often not enough to ensure the adoption and diffusion of an innovation. Using an organisational power and politics perspective, several published accounts of product and administrative innovation are analysed. The interplay of political tactics or games are found to be present at both the observable surface level and the deep structural level of power relationships in all areas of activity – individual, group, organisational and societal. The viability of two overall political influence strategies, “asking for forgiveness” versus “seeking permission” are contrasted in terms of their implications for the eventual success or failure of a proposed product or administrative innovation. Several propositions and future research directions which focus on the political nature and processes of innovation are suggested.

Examines the impact of cultural values on the effectiveness and use of 19 organization development interventions. Uses a qualitative, expert consensus methodology to collect data from seven culturally diverse countries: Taiwan, the United Kingdom, Bangladesh, Denmark, the People′s Republic of China, Venezuela, and Japan. Results support the hypothesis that the more congruent a culture is with the values of organization development, the more interventions will have both greater use and effectiveness. Suggests that specific cultural values, i.e. masculine/feminine, appear to be closely linked to specific interventions′ effectiveness.