Talk:Organization development

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flaw in the beginning of the text

Flaw in the beginning of the text "Organization development (OD) is a planned, organization-wide effort to increase an organization's effectiveness and viability." only to be followed a few sentences later by: "The term "Organization Development" is often used interchangeably with Organizational effectiveness". I removed the sentence. While "development" is an effort and not a property, "effectiveness" is a property - therefore they cannot be used "interchangeably". I am not an expert in the field, so if I missed a point please reverse my post. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Postdeborinite (talk • contribs) 08:07, 12 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled

This article is extremely incomplete and idiosyncratic. Anyone reading it in search of substantive knowledge about OD will be either misinformed (if they are naive or uninformed on arrival) or will simply disregard it (if they already have some understanding of the topic.) It requires much attention, and if time permits, I (a recognized expert) will return and work on it.

incomplete? absolutely. i was hoping others would come along and help fix it.

idiosyncratic? thank you!User:Thseamon

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Please take a look at the organizational studies topic - it would be good to merge the two, or at least reference them, in some way. --Goodoldpolonius 03:47, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Hello Goodoldpolonius, It took me a while (years!), but I finally added OD to the Org Studies page See Also list.User:Thseamon

Marked for cleanup. Needs major work... The field is called Organization Development. Let's get it right. Perspective 18:49, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I agree with you, Perspective. Change the title to Organization Development. User:Thseamon

Done. (OK, so it took a while). -Willmcw 05:57, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Important figures

I deleted Kaushik Kumar and Olusegun Samuel from the list, because I couldn't find a trace of them with Google. If anyone has specific information about them and their importance to the field, please let us know. -Willmcw 05:57, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've further trimmed the list. Some appear in Google, some with an OD background, but so do thousands of others. We need some quality control. Perhaps having a valid wikipedia entry about the individuals work is a starting point. Spamburger 10:31, 17 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

cleanup

Once again marked for cleanup. The article is little more than a series of lists. It needs content, expansion and explanation. --Buridan 21:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Organization = Group

I think that the definition of organization as "two or more people working together toward one or more shared goals" is misleading. This, to me sounds like the definition of group. See wikipedia article on Group_(sociology).

If the same definition of group is used for organization, we would be equating a company such as IBM with a group of 3 software engineers working together. It will also mean that what we know about how a group develops is all we need to know about how a company, an organized religion, or a sports organization develops. Anybody has a better definition? I recall Robert Bales, a famous researcher of small groups, writing somewhere that the difference between small groups and large groups is that in a small group people are able to remember pretty much everything that was said by everybody in a group interaction. Btw, I am working on a page on group development if others are interested. Jsarmi 19:28, 19 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Change is not (necessarily) related to "problems"

The article suggests, change is only required when an organization is "ill"

There is a direct analogy here to the practice of psychotherapy: The client or patient must actively seek help in finding a solution to his problems.

This, of course, is not true. Many reasons for change exist and having problems may be one of them. A "healthy" organization will still need to change to match the requirements from the changing environment it is operating in, including social, competitive and renewal aspects. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.85.117.14 (talk) 08:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think OD is really very new

I have a reference to an earlier edition of Organization Development and Transformation: Managing Effective Changethat dates back to 1983, and they talk about 'traditional OD techniques'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.234.197.105 (talk) 04:08, 19 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

And it's now deleted.