Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 1
Grand Canyon University: PSY 834
July 22, 2020
Organizational development
Organization development can be operationalized as an evidential process that enables an organization to build its ability to change or become more active through developing and implementing strategies through critical process to enhance growth (Schneider, Gonzalez-Roma, Ostroff, & West, 2017). Growth can be discussed in terms of maximizing profit margins, nurturing moral principles, expanding the market share as well as improving the general ability of the organization to adapt to this dynamic world. Organizational development targets both financial and human resources within an organization; this ensures that the company achieves their set of objectives.
The world is changing rapidly, in terms of technology, innovation, and personnel mindset. Many organizations are attempting to fight for their niche; hence for an organization to stay stable; there is need to iron out mechanisms that improve efficiency and the overall process. This includes being competitive through retaining and expanding market share.
As the organization changes, it creates a pull of sanction that sees the people involved also change. The difference in the people translates to the overall evolution of the organization (Julmi, 2017). Individual interventions such as training on improving communication, improving interpersonal skills, and team management enhance the behaviors and attitudes of each, translating to a positive change in the entire organization.
Comparison between organizational culture and organizational climate
Organizational culture and organizational climate are interrelated and used interchangeably to derive their impact on the development of an organization. Organizational culture is a way of life for a particular group of people. Therefore, in any organization, the people present always have a way in which they feel about the organization and have a set of values and principles that govern their identity and behavior attributing to their way of life. This is in terms of how each individual relates to the organization. Culture denotes how people live and undertake their daily activities in the organization (Julmi, 2017). This orients the organization giving it a distinctive identity. An organizations culture can be viewed in terms of innovations: how innovative are the people in that organization in terms of developing new ideas and new technologies and relating this to its competitive capability. With regards to stability: is it secure in the face of rapidly changing ecosystems? Is it resilient enough? How flexible is it? With regards to quality: can it be qualified as satisfactory in terms of output?
Therefore, culture provides boundaries and directions that guide the personnel in the organization with providing a landscape to the correct way of undertaking their job. It therefore sticks and rarely changes. Some scholars mirror an organization's culture to a person's personality (Schein, 2003).
Contrary to the culture, organizations' climate entails the people's experience of the work environment at any given period. It is an atmosphere created by an organization's culture that is felt by the people working in the organization. The narrative here concerns the shared perceptions among the people in the organization. Therefore, climate outlines a set of attributes that differentiate one organization from another, influencing the behavior of its individuals and is based on a collective perception of these behaviors (Vandaveer, Lowman, Pearlman, & Brannick, 2016).
The organizational climate tends to question, how it feels to work and operate in the organization, describing the morale or behaviors of the personnel being affected by the business conditions of the organizations as well as the decisions being made by the management. Therefore, it is concerned with the general behavior well-being of the individuals, their emotions, attitude changes impacted upon by the organization, and how these affect the organization. Climate also takes into account a collective experience of talents present within the organization.
As mentioned earlier, the organizational climate can be attributed to individual moods. Hence, it's prone to change over time, depending on the external forces, which is the culture of the organizations (Julmi, 2017). This change, however, is easily managed and shaped by the organization's management.
Contrasting organizational culture and climate
Organizational climate denotes the present atmosphere of a given organization in which the personnel is affiliated. In contrast, an organization's culture indicates an organization's atmosphere that has evolved over a long period, which mirrors the organization's reputation in the outside world (Julmi, 2017). Secondly, organizational climate is easily manipulated and, therefore, changes depending on the current needs of the environment and employee behavior; organization culture, on the other hand, is more difficult to change.
From the above discussion, we see that organizational culture and climate related to an organizations' development. Once structure and strategies have been developed in organizations' growth; organization culture focuses on the best procedures can be guarded and how the set goals can be achieved. Organizational culture could be referred to as an engine and the organization development as the entire body of the vehicle. The body cannot move without the engine. On the other hand, the organizational climate provides immediate response to any progress that will be made towards achieving the organization's goals (Julmi, 2017). In the analogy above, the organization climate would represent the personnel on the steering wheel whose behavior determines and experience determines the progress being made in terms of growth and development (transition in this case).
For an organization to achieve organizational development, the corporate culture will be directly affected. However, such growth can only be made in the organization's personnel, accepting the change, and adapting to it (organizational climate).
Organizational development (OD) interventions
Intervention techniques are essential because they help individuals and organizations work towards achieving the set objectives. OD intervention measures aim to improve the individual working within the organizations and the overall performance of the organization (Vandaveer, et al., 2016). There are activities implemented by the organization to ensure that the company's productivity is improved, which, in turn, leads to the company's overall performance. All the OD interventions are aimed at bringing positive changes within the organization.
The first OD technique is team building, where tasks are handled by the team instead of focusing on individualism. Through teamwork, individuals can learn from others hence improving on their individual's skills and experience in handling the work within the organization (Vandaveer, et al., 2016). The weakness of individuals is also identified through working in teams, and they get support from others on how to overcome their weaknesses. When individual gaps are addressed, workers within the organization can work in one direction towards achieving the organization's objective.
Team building is one way of strengthening the relationship between employees working within the organization (Gregory & Levy, 2016). It is essential to have a better relationship between workers as it helps them focus on achieving the organization's objective instead of wasting time on ego or personality clashes; which can hinder the organization from achieving its goal.
In team building, activities are planned, and team members interact with each other to solve the organization's challenges. Events are handled collectively, as this will allow the company to improve its performance. Through teamwork, employees with different skills share ideas to come up with better decisions than individual minds.
Team building can take a form of different things such as social events for employees within the organization; in hopes of strengthening their relationship bond so that they can work with each other in harmony with the only objective of improving their performance as well as that of the organization.
T-group training is the second OD intervention mechanism where individuals are arranged into unstructured groups and interact while performing different tasks within the organization (Cummings, & Worley, 2014). Through the interaction, individuals can learn about themselves better and capitalizes on their strengths as they minimize their weaknesses. Through T-group, training individuals can change their behavior to improve productivity to meet the organization's objective. Individuals are the primary determinant of the performance of the organization. When the performance of individual workers is low, the company's overall performance is also low.
Therefore, T-group training helps the company build a more significant and cohesive workforce, which is essential in creating an enabling working environment necessary for higher performance. A cohesive workforce makes it hard for the organization's enemies, especially the competitors, to get a competitive advantage of understanding the operations of the organization, hence coming up with better strategies to compete with the organization.
Survey feedback is the third technique that can be used to ensure organizational development. This method allows the organization management to assess the employees' attitudes and perceptions concerning the activities being carried out by the organization. The command generates some questionnaires for the staff to complete. Through the survey, the employees give their perception concerning the current individual and organizational performance. They also propose changes that need to be done to ensure that productivity is maximized (Kharde, & Sonawane, 2016).
Through the survey feedback, the discrepancies that exist between the individuals working for the organization are addressed to ensure that they all have the same view about the activities that are supposed to be performed—having differences within the same workforce makes it difficult for the company to achieve its objectives. Though the survey, the management can also get the challenges facing the employees and come up with better strategies that would ensure that the company maximizes the available opportunities.
Application of OD intervention technique
Team building can be applied in an organization in different forms depending on the resources and the management style of the organization. The organization can organize a bonding exercise where members have fun as they exchange ideas with each other to establish g a strong bond between them. This type of team building can be an event organized by the organization to be attended by all the members of the organization, and in the process, members get to know each other better. Activities to be performed within the organization can also be arranged and assigned to teams and not individuals. As they work together, they build a relationship that improves their performance and the overall organization.
The management team's survey feedback can be implemented, where they generate a questionnaire to be used in the survey. They distribute to all the works to understand their perception. In the process, the management identifies the discrepancies among its members and addresses them to ensure that they work towards the same direction of achieving the organization's objectives.
T-group training is applied by organizing members into unstructured groups to allow them to interact with each other and learn better practices to improve their performance. Through the interaction, the employees of the organization change their behaviors as one way of achieving the company's objective.
Understanding appreciative inquiry and its influence on organizational development
Appreciative inquiry is the process of searching for the best from the organization's employees to ensure that the organization achieves the best performance from the individual effort of each employee (Lewis, Passmore, & Cantore, 2016). It is where the organization's leadership looks for the strengths of the organization and its employee and comes up with better ways of ensuring that benefits from its advantages. It enables individuals working for the organization to work towards achieving the shared vision of the organization. Appreciative inquiry involves four stages: the discovery stage where the management team discovers the better qualities that its employee has in performing the organizational tasks. The second stage is dreaming where the management figure out how it requires to use the identified better classes. The third stage is designing where the administration comes up with better strategies to ensure that the organization capitalizes on the better qualities of its employees to improve the organization's performance. The last stage is the destiny which describes the final product expected after using the classes available within the organization effectively.
Conclusion
Organizational development techniques enable the organization to improve the individual performance of employees working for the company. When own performance is developed, it leads to improvement in the overall performance of the organization. Team building, T-group training, and survey feedback are critical OD interventions designed to improve the performance of employees and the organization.