STRENGTHS OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT

Successful organization development is a total system effort, a process of planned improvement but not a program with a temporary quality. It is aimed at developing the organization’s internal resources fhr effective change in the future. Its real thrusts are for organizational members to draw out and help to develop the mutual resources and to increase the range of behavioral options open to individuals and teams. Furthermore. it is collaborative process of managing the culture of the organization but not something that is done to somebody, hut a transactional process of people working together to improve their mutual effectiveness in attaining their mutual objectives.

Organization development draws upon a large number of models. theories and practices; it borrows freely from the proven procedures for improving the functioning of individuals, groups and organizations. Organization development is an amalgam, a culmination from diverse sources and as such represents the resultant of some of the best thinking from the behavioural sciences. The foundations and characteristics of organization development suggest that it is firmly grounded in practice, theory and research, The action research model, a systems approach to understanding organizational dynamics, and a change strate that focuses on the culture of work teams and the organization but all these features of oiganization development serve to make it more powerful and relevant than change strategies of the past. In addition, a systematic, planned approach utilising an overall improvement strategy assures that the desirable features of organization development are capitalised upon.

The action research model, for example, is a model for tracking, for staying on target, for discarding alternatives that do not meet the test of efficacy in the real world. Not only is it a good model for improvement of an organization (with its emphasis on goal setting, data collection and action planning by the organization members themselves), it is also good model for keeping the practice of organizational development flexible, responsive to changing demands and open to new ideas and practices.