Introduction
Change intervention techniques are required when organizational change is scheduled. Organizational Development and techniques is the intervention techniques availed to facilitate the organization change. According to Margulies wt al, organization development (OD) is an applied arm of organizational behavior, which itself, is a vital ingredient of organization management (Margulies, Wright, and Scholl, pp. 428-448). Organization behavior is used to facilitate change in the company through various change techniques.
Change intervention techniques or intervention methods are a set of variables that facilitate enlightening members of the organization about transition from a certain organization culture. These change intervention techniques are vital ingredients of organization improvement. They facilitate in rapid adaptation to societal and organization change. Most importantly, as argued by Margulies et al, organization development techniques can improve organization problem-solving capacity. The organization will also be able to adopt new business cultures within markets they operate (Margulies, Wright, and Scholl, pp. 428-448)
Organization development techniques are used to provide organizations managers an overview of change. Managers are able to gain insight about what are the correct methods to use in the organization when developing new business process and how to help the employees adopt the new changes in the organization. As such, organization development and techniques provide managers with more precise concepts for organization development. In addition, managers are updated with a variety of methods for managing their organizations.
Paucity of research on organization development and techniques has led to less aggressive approach towards the latter. This paper explores various techniques used to facilitate organization development. We discuss how managers make use of them to achieve this objective. The paper borrows from existing OD research and brings out a more neo-theoretical framework for proper organization development and techniques. As such, we provide an improved approach to organization development and propose a direction for future OD techniques for organizations managers (Margulies, Wright, and Scholl, pp. 428-448).
Background information
Organizational development and techniques is intended to facilitate the establishment of organizational environment and weather. It is argued that, OD and techniques aims at establishing an organization climate that create employee satisfaction while propagating a development of a norm in the organization. The norm is divided into two, behavior, and culture. Organization development and techniques are intended to provide an organization with structures that support employee understanding of his role or their roles in the organization. In actual words, organization development creates norms and frameworks that provide insight about roles and at the same level, promote employee freedom at personal levels. At this level, employees become aware of their greater roles in the organization, their freedoms, and responsibility.
Here, we identify organization development bringing social equity if we view an organization as a micro-society, of which it is. As a micro society, the organization should develop techniques to promote social equity to its members who are predominantly employees. Organization development techniques tackle the paucity of such provisions and theory of providing the social equity. We realize that, managers have a greater role to play when understanding how the organization functions and the organization climate helps organization members communicate, manage emerging conflicts in processes, and benchmark.
The role of manager when organization development and techniques come to surface is resolve constraints that develop when communication, setting goals and managing organizational conflicts are on process. Besides, managers should develop or adapt new organization development techniques solve organization problems. These techniques should help improve decision-making and determine the overall sequence of the development process. As such, Organization development techniques rather map the structure of the development process. It also provides a sequence of organization development activities through a macro-design platform.
Managers involved in the change process should view the background of the problem or the need for change, and then set the agenda straight. Understanding what caused the concern for change and the subsequent planned change. The context of organization development techniques, as such, is rather a way to examine the causes for the concern with the need for change in the organization and the types of techniques, efforts, and activities in pursuit for organization development.
Problems that require Organization Development; A literature review
Qureshi and Afzal propose that organization development is the improvement of organization by providing the human resource with planned change techniques and other sorts of interventions through human behavior approaches (Qureshi, and Afzal, pp. 1-11). Change and development are in themselves, variables that are fostered by the needs within the environment in which the organization functions. These could be technological, business weather, prices, competitions, or business downturns. The problems observed in many organizations are because of shift in paradigms within the business climate forcing market alignment. Within organizations, it is vital that the managers go along with these changes to remain competitive.
The need to develop the organization is because, there are problems mitigating against the development of the organization to ideal competitiveness in the industry. Developing the organization requires a comprehensive structural alignment, which aims at reversing decline in functionality and organizations employee capacity to meet demand. Restructuring the organization structurally and diversifying the balancing of the business process through increasing employee capacity, and liberalizing the business process enough to attract more partnerships within distribution levels is core in organization development (Manu, pp. 2-3).
Qureshi and Afzal propose that Organization development should mainly be a human behavior issue. Since organization development is core in improving organizations, the managers should focus on improving the employee capacity to improve the organization functionality (Qureshi, and Afzal, pp. 1-11). The main problems confronting organizations is mainly compensation and a distance between management and employees. Another problem is too many levels of management that lead to discrimination. This can be divided into two issues, the context of too many management levels and discrimination, both s problems (Qureshi, and Afzal, pp. 1-11).
Manu argues that, improving employees provides solid solution to the declining functionality. What exactly is the meaning of improving employees? Improving employees revolves around empowering them and capacitating them to become more efficient, motivated, and committed. Looking at the above mentioned problems, employee functionality can be the core of organization development. Though improving the workplace is vital, most vital is making the employees focused and committed.
What are the techniques required to develop employees as a solution to organization development? Employee synergies can be tapped through a variety of approaches. OD Synergy proposes organizations develop a culture as a way of improving the employee capacity. According to McLean, there are a set of intervention techniques available to foster organization development. McLean proposes individual intervention as one of the most effective ways to develop the organization. Individual intervention applies where the managers are involved in troubleshooting and conflict resolution. McLean further proposes Coaching, educating, mentoring, training, reflection, and managers as key organization development principles (McLean, pp. 107-110) should implement leadership training. Brown and Friedlander argue that, the workplace is a dynamic environment.
It is constantly changing and so is the culture there. As such, Brown and Friedlander propose that managers should be concerned at keeping employees in touch with the rapid organization environment changes by making the workplace flexible and responsive to the weather (Brown and Friedlander, p. 219). They further argue that, developing the organization should be through using techniques like improving the organizations social environment, the management style and the workforce. This will help employees become more loyal to the organization, more flexible and dependent on the organization (Brown and Friedlander, p.219).
Developing techniques that are concurrent with partial responses to these changes in the work environment is important in developing the organization. Though development is actually more of a behavioral context, the workplace should be developed to provide the employees with a sense of being valued by the organization. Brown and Friedlander propose employees be trained, involved in decision making, motivation, and involvement as best techniques to develop the organization (Brown and Friedlander, p. 219).
As such, organizations should take up the role of educators in keeping their employees apt with the rapid changes in the business environment, which inversely affect the workplace environment. Training and workshops should be scheduled and managers and those involved in management and operations should be trained in such trainings. Educating employees should go beyond sensitizing them about the organization behavior and culture. Education should entail to have the employees theoretically develop skills and competencies to meet challenges in the business process.
Training managers and making them aware of their roles is central in developing organizations. This will help cushion discriminatory attitudes and cultures. Employees should be involved in the process of developing the organization through involvement in development programs like improving systems and technologies. Improving the workplace will adequately provide employees with inspiration, creativity, and innovativeness.
Conclusion
Organization development and techniques is important in developing the organization to a level where the organization remains competitive and reputable externally. Internal management and systems are factors that contribute significantly in how the organization functions. As such, managers, especially, top-level managers should be effective in leading change, transforming employees work environment and providing guidance.
Organization development is mainly a behavioral science arm. It requires studying and comprehensively understanding the human character and providing for what are the shortcomings affecting functionality of the human workforce. Managers should be more concerned about their employees’ development and psychological well-being for their organizations to develop proportionally.
Organization development techniques involves first critically examining the constraints, differences and deficiencies across the operational levels of the organization then coming up with a set of appropriate interventions measures. The ideal organization development techniques include the following; Coaching, educating, mentoring, training, reflection, and managers as key organization development principles (McLean, pp. 107-110).
Works Cited
- Brown, Donald, and Frank Friedlander. “Organization Development“. Annual Review of Psychology 25. (1974): 219. Web.
- McLean, Gary. “Organization Development: Principles, Processes, Performance. Berret Koehler Publishers. San Francisco. 2006.
- Manu, Juliana. “Training and development techniques for improving organizational performance for Ghanian firms.” Minds Winsconsin (2004): 7-34.
- Margulies, Newton, Penny Wright, and Richard Scholl. “Organization Development Techniques: Their Impact on Change.” Group & Organization Management 2.4 (1977): 428-448. Web.
- Pearsons,. “Case Applications: Organization Culture and Environment.” Pearsons, My Management Lab. Pearsons, 2010.
- Qureshi, Ahmed Ali, and Saima Afzal. “Applications of Organization Development Techniques in Improving the Quality of Education“. Linköping University Electronic Press, Linköpings universite 33 (2008): 1-11. Web.