Top-down change management creates the problem of resistance with leaders battling to motivate and engage. OD supports organizational change by utilizing their people resource. Rather than creating barriers and a culture of fear, OD intervention methods should be designed to enable people to speak up.

Once the Diagnostic Phase has been completed, the feedback report should provide the information needed to design a robust action plan for OD interventions that will enable the organization to continue its change journey. By this point the disturbance process should be in full effect and options for OD techniques and methodologies can drive real behavior change as well as change to structure, process, and policy. Interventions can be devised to address a number of organization system requirements sustaining and maintaining some elements, consolidat- ing progress made, building on strengths, or preparing for future changes. Interventions can be limited to examining a single issue or an ongoing program of interventions designed for progressive development. At the core of each OD intervention is the search for existing organizational capacity, which can help progress the organization toward prospective futures.

Based on the theoretical underpinning of OD practice, there are a number of OD tools and techniques available to the OD practitioner. Key questions to be addressed during that the Intervention Phase are:
■ Where and at what level within the organization should the intervention be deployed?
■ What specific areas of change are required and to whom: individuals, teams, functions, or the whole organization?
■ What is the focus of the intervention: task, process, or people?
■ Given the organization culture should interventions be rigorously planned or will the change journey be emergent?
■ What intervention tools and techniques best t the organizational environment and have the potential to deliver the outcome required?
■ Who within the organization will be in- volved in codesigning interventions alongside the OD practitioner?
■ What actions can the OD practitioner take to improve the client’s ability to deal with future problems?

An Intervention Model—Harnessing the Human Resource
OD interventions should engage with the tripartite of thinking, feeling, and being, which is central to human endeavor. Harnessing the Human Resource within the organization requires that each intervention engages with rational logic, awareness and self-awareness, and transpersonal elements of the change process.

Reasoning
OD creates space for individuals to think using iterative methods of action and re- ection. It grants access to the full range of intellectual capacity and knowledge depositories within the organizational boundary allowing for a high-level interchange of ideas and information. Reasoning creates an arena, which allows individuals to utilize the intellectual capacity available within the organization, resulting in solutions that are broader in scope, thought through, innovative, and creative.

Observance
The links to behavioral science mean that OD interventions encourage people to watch, notice, perceive, and observe their own behavior and that of others within the organization. Sometimes referred to as emotional intelligence, the act of increasing awareness into how people behave and exploring why they behave in that way in- creases an observance of behavior, which, once noticed, can be developed.

Appreciation
OD engages with individuals to appreciate their own, and others’, feelings, values, and beliefs. This appreciation transcends the requirement to be right, and instead develops a connection even in difference. Clear perception and recognition of how individuals activate their beliefs and values results in greater levels of understanding and appreciation, which enables personal peak performance.

The OD Tool Kit—What you Need for the Intervention Phase
The intervention phase is the beating heart of the OD program and harnesses the human resource in the organization to create a safe environment where ideation, creativity, and innovation are utilized to overcome challenges and pursue opportunities. The techniques and methods required for the intervention phase of the OD cycle are:

• Acknowledgment of complexity
• Cultural sensitivity
• Knowledge and methods relating to adult learning and learning through play
• Knowledge and skills in employing OD Methods, for example:
  • Community Learning (Fulton, 2005)
  • World Café (Brown and Issacs, 2007)
  • Open Space Technology (Owen, 2008)
  • Charrettes (Lennertz, 2003)
  • Theory U (Scharmer, 2009)
  • Work-Out (Ulrich et al, 2002)
  • Sustained Dialogue (Saunders, 2012)

• Ability to develop supportive and safe environments
• Flexibility and adaptability to respond to the ow and messiness of the intervention environment

Summary
■ OD supports organizational change by utilizing the people resource.
■ The feedback report from the Diagnostic Phase should provide the information needed to design a robust action plan for OD interventions.
■ At the core of each OD intervention is the search for existing organizational capacity, which can help progress the organization toward prospective futures.
■ Harnessing the Human Resource within the organization requires that each intervention utilizes reasoning, observance, and appreciation.

The beginning of the OD cycle is the contracting phase, which includes the agreement of terms relating to the OD programme and covers practicalities similar to an employment contract such as budget or fees, time frame, resource, objectives, reporting hierarchy and agreed responsibilities. In addition to the formal and structural aspects of the agreed OD programme, the contracting phase has two further, arguably more important aspects: establishing the psychological contract between the OD practitioner and the programme sponsor and a preliminary investigation of the organizational context.

The Psychological Contract

OD is a practice reliant on human relationship. Establishing a collaborative relationship between the OD practitioner and the programme sponsor, organizational leadership and key stakeholders in the client organization are an essential foundation to the successful execution of an OD intervention. If such relationships are ignored or fragile then the OD programme will falter and fail to establish the necessary human endeavour required for success.

The focus of the contracting phase therefore is on establishing the expectations that both the OD practitioner and the client have in regards to the working relationship, inputs, involvement and success factors. The psychological contract is based upon trust between practitioner and sponsor, and it is through dialogue that this contract is properly explored and unveiled. The exploration of expectation during this phase will set a firm foundation upon which OD can take place, developing a shared understanding, commitment and amenity between sponsor and practitioner.

Preliminary Investigation

Until the diagnostic phase is completed it is difficult to predict what interventions may be required or what development is needed to help the organization achieve effective performance. It is a journey into the unknown because until the process starts the end point is not yet clarified. From a contracting perspective this creates an issue with establishing boundaries in regards to resource and objectives. A preliminary investigation allows the OD practitioner to establish some of the key systemic issues, challenges and possible opportunities, which are presenting symptoms upon which the OD programme can be directed. Key questions to be addressed during this investigation are:

• What are the presenting problems and are they real or perceived?
• How are stakeholders with predetermined ideas about the diagnosis of the problem and predetermined solutions to be managed?
• What power does the sponsor have to influence the organization to allow change to happen within the organization?
• Who are the programme sponsors and how should the multiple stakeholders to be managed?
• How ready for change is the organization, how can it be readied further to the point where change can be sustained?
• What expertise does the organization have internally, what expertise does the OD practitioner offer?
• What mechanisms need to be in place to manage confidentiality whilst surfacing issues that may have previously been off limits?
• How can trust in both the practitioner and the OD process be developed and maintained?
• What conflicts exist in regards to ethics, value and belief systems?
• What does success look like and what measures will signal that success has been achieved?

Walking Away

The contracting phase provides an opportunity for the OD practitioner to understand what is expected and whether what is expected can be achieved considering the organization context, change readiness and political will. Where resistance or opposition by key stakeholders exists the likelihood of success is reduced, similar to trying to push a rock uphill, a lack of power from the sponsor to influence the organization to allow change to take place will have a negative effective upon any programme. Furthermore, exploring the psychological contract might reveal wildly opposed values, beliefs and ethical frameworks that would make a working relationship impossible. The contracting phase may very well resulting in exiting an OD programme before it starts. A passion to help organization’s change and achieve sustainable performance, and a belief in of OD as a powerful methodology for change cannot override a situation, which is futile and impossible

The OD Tool-Kit

The more skills or tools that the OD practitioner has at their disposal the better they are able to adapt and flex to situations, react to problems or lead opportunities. The OD tool-kit offers possible resources, behaviour or skills that the OD practitioner can explore further with an emphasis on the practical and competencies required. The techniques and methods required for the Contracting Phase of the OD cycle are:

• Humanistic and democratic assumptions
• Social Inquiry skills
• Personal self-awareness and management of internal responses
• Partnership with the programme sponsor and agreement of shared goals and intentions
• Attend to building relationship and trust with key stakeholders
• Engagement with Senior Management/Leadership team
• Engagement with individuals, teams and departments to foster support and become part of the on going interaction.
• Assessment of organizational readiness for OD
• OD Design Team and/or Steering Committee
• Agreement of deliverables – what does success look like?

As a discipline Organization Development (OD) is over 60 years old, but the movement towards a more human economy means that the philosophy and approach offered by OD is in tune with what is happening in the wider social, political and economic systems. Knights (2016: 4) stated that, “to expect ‘the leader’ to always come to the best solution alone is unrealistic especially in our modern complex world.” The world of the charismatic leader that always had the answer has been exposed as problematic, and once feted leaders revealed as flawed. Organizations are facing unprecedented pressures on their operations and this environment is often referred to using the acronym VUCA;

• Volatility: Unexpected challenge over an unknown time period
• Uncertainty: Unknown causes and effects of change
• Complexity: Overwhelming interconnection between variables
• Ambiguity: Unknown, unknowns.

OD can offer organizations tools and techniques to combat these challenges by harnessing the human power and creativity within the organization to deliver sustainable organization performance. It offers a human approach to an industrial problem.

Organization Development: What it is, and why you need it.

Organization Development is variously described in academic terms based upon its behavioural and social science background.

OD is first and foremost a practice informed by theory, and in practical terms the practice of OD encompasses activities, which deliver organizational change through people. Or, simply put, OD is people led change. OD activities influence people to behave in line with their values and beliefs, embracing self and building an organization through using the combined knowledge of the organizational community. OD decision-making and judgement requires high levels of communal communication, which transcends the rational and logical processes preferred by business process engineering. It makes full use of the conscious and subconscious processes of innovation, creativity, intuition, instinct and corporate insight available within the organizational system.  Human endeavour requires a tripartite of thinking, feeling and being to be truly effective. Even the most rational of decisions are in some way informed by human behaviour and the underlying values of the person making the decision.

OD has become more widely acknowledged by contemporary organizations because of the prevalence of change and the need for change methods that work following a failure of change programmes to deliver their promised outcomes. There is a growing recognition that organizations that ignore the people bit of change in favour of the more tangible process reengineering and organizational restructures in isolation do so at the risk of resistance to change, cultural malignancy and a risk to return on investment.

Embedding OD as a way of working within an organization requires that organizational leaders create a safe environment where everyone’s ideas are treated respectfully and trust is placed in their employees’ capability to develop ideas which will help overcome challenges and pursue opportunities. The result is an end to a trickle down of strategic plans and documents, and instead a creative connection between personal values and beliefs with the purpose of the organization. Furthermore, the aim of OD is not just about bottom line profit growth for that quarter, but an approach, which seeks to secure a sustainable future for the organization.

Want to read more?  Coming Soon…

1st September 2016 – Kings College London

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• Brains and bodies
• Allowing creativity in a complex organisation
• Systems leadership in the public sector
• Drama as a lens to create different outcomes
• Wicked problems
• Coaching contracting in complex systems

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• Relational
• Constellations
• Structural Dynamics
• Gestalt and Transactional Analysis

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If you are introducing a group to a new topic, whether in a training session or in an OD workshop where you what to open them up to new ideas and also get them to realise that they probably have some of the knowledge they need already – try this focused conversation.

Opening

Well Today we’re going to launch into a new topic – [NAME TOPIC] Let’s talk about this a bit. We all have some experience of this area.

Objective Questions

• When was your first experience of this topic?
• As you think about this, what images jump into your mind?
• What are some of the things we already know about this?

Reflective Questions

• What feelings do you associate with this topic?
• What are some of your past experiences related to the topic?
• What colour do you associate with this?
• What animal does it remind you of?
• What aspects of it do you enjoy?
• What don’t you like about it?
• What is the most challenging things about it?

Interpretative Questions

• Why is this topic important?
• How will if affect you? Your work? Other aspects of your life?
• What are your major questions in this area?

Decisional Questions

• How can we help each other learn about this topic?

Closing

As we share our insights like this, we have already taken the first steps in grasping this topic.

Answers the Question

How do organizations successfully utilize virtual teams?

How it began

Research into virtual teams continues with the growth of global organizations and remote working. The improvements in communication technology has enabled virtual teams to become normalized in most organizational settings but the setting is recognized as being messy.

They share many challenges as those experienced by face-to-face teams but these challenges are exacerbated by their virtuality: poor line management;

Underperformance from individual members leads to greater levels of dysfunction.

Other theoretical issues are also raised including: Where does team boundaries begin and end? How can technology be used to improve performance? What is the balance between local responsiveness and global integration?

Key Terminology

Virtual Teams – groups of interdependent coworkers who are geographically dispersed, dependent on technology, structurally dynamic and culturally diverse

Emergent states – important mediational influences with explanatory power accounting for variability in team performance.

In Brief

Input-process-output (IPO) Framework (Hackman & Morris 1975; McGrrath, 1984)
Inputs are factors that are controllable by organisations for example; leadership behaviours, team composition; HR policies; job design
Team processes are the interdependency of team activities required for teamwork leading to the achievement of team goals. Categories include action, transition or interpersonal. The lack of understanding of group values; regulative information and social cues negatively affect individual’s ability to reduce ambiguity, establish social identity to establish collaborative partnerships
Outputs include performance; attitudes and behaviours.

Individual-Level

Four themes are highlighted at individual level; 1) Communication effects caused by technology; Computer mediated communication is highlighted where individual or social identity will determine conformity to either personal or social norms. 2) relational demography where diversity affects individual expectations about teamwork 3) individual differences; where individual differences including personality characteristics and cognitive styles and the resulting commitment to virtual teams and 4) task type and characteristics; where relation to positive individual outcomes including trust, task attraction, social attraction and self rated task success impact adherence to a set of team work rules.

What does this mean for OD

1. Reviewing technology to ensure leaner media (video-conferencing; e-mail) is used to facilitate communication clarity when team members have less task-relevant knowledge
2. Check team composition; heterogeneous virtual teams are more superior that Face to Face teams, but Homogeneous teams are more satisfied, cohesive and experience less conflict.
3. Keep virtual teams small – smaller teams participate more actively, are more committed to the team, have high goal and team member awareness and higher levels of rapport.
4. Pay attention to the four critical success factors for virtual teams – communication; culture; technology and project management.
5. The most successful virtual teams have more concentrated leadership behaviour focused on performance and keeping track of group work.
6. Length of leader’s tenure increases levels of trust and technology support.
7. Social communication is linked to building trust early in global virtual teams.
8. Substantive and timely response and leadership are involved in maintaining trust at later stages.

References

Hackman, J. R. and Morris, C. G. (1975) Group tasks, group interaction process and group performance effectiveness: A review and proposed integration. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.) Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 8 pp. 47 – 101). New York. Academic Press

Kirkman, B. L, Gibson, C. B. and Kim, K. (2012) Across Borders and Technologies: Advancements in Virtual Team Research. In Kozlowski, S. W. J. (Ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Psychology (Vol. 2. pp. 789 – 858). Oxford. Oxford University Press

McGrath, J. E. (1984). Groups, interaction and performance. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall

Garden, A. (2015) The Roles of Organisation Development. Gower Publishing

I have been practicing OD for over ten years, and in that time have never found an adequate way of describing exactly what it is that I do… until now.

Thanks to Annamaria Garden, The Roles of the OD practitioner are articulated in a way that makes sense,  that actually mean something and explains what we do.  I also absolutely love the way the end of each chapter provides the opportunity for you to self assess using questions and exercises, so you can build your own practitioner personal development plan.

The roles are:

Seer – It is the skill of seeing things; of seeing through appearances and looking into the future. Knows what to begin to prioritise or pay attention to.  They may know before other do, what needs to be focused on.

Translator – The hearing equivalent to seeing.  It is the skill of listening in order to translate one person to another.  Listens to the organisation’s speech, looking for the intentions and purpose behind the problems in the organisation.

Cultivator – A role of understanding the rhythm and pacing in the organisation.  Recognizing when to go slow, or when to operate at great speed.  Aims to heal people and the organisation, focusing on organisational wellness.

Catalyst – Hits the bullseye.  Good at combining different things or people to create something quite new and exciting.

Navigator – Charts people and the organisation through psychological space.  Knowing the direction, the current space as well as propelling people to get to the direction.

Teacher – Focuses on teaching well.

Guardian – Creates an ethical, not just effective organisation.  Being aware of oneself and having disciplines to encourage that.

Each chapter is joyous to read.  It’s like unveiling a mirror and understanding what an OD practitioner looks like for the first time.  Its also clearly written, practical as well as theoretical and… well just makes sense.

This is a truly excellent book, but a word of warning, it is also one of the most irritating books I have read as well.  I blame the burgeoning academic in me, which given that Garden has such as stella academic background perhaps is more a reflection on my failings than her.  If you don’t mind her name dropping the OD greats every other sentence, this book will probably not be irritating in the slightest, but I found myself mentally thinking “lets just pick that up from the floor” for every name she dropped… which is often.  To my British sensibilities its all a bit boastful.  Furthermore there is something rather smug (and academically wrong) about the way she calls Shutz, “Will”, Schein, “Ed” and Beckhard “Dick” – yes we get it, you were mentored and taught by the greats, you don’t have to remind us every five seconds.

But despite my personal irritation this is still an excellent book and one I would highly recommend you get for your bookshelf. 

Answers the Question

How can organisations leverage their human resources to meet complex challenges?

How it Began

Interest in empowerment and participation can be traced back to Kurt Lewin’s classic research on leadership styles and the 1930’s Hawthorne studies.  Individual agency needs (e.g. need for control and achievement) have long supported motivation provided by employee involvement and empowerment.  At an organisational level the growing importance of self-managed and self empowered teams has led to a growing interest in participation and empowerment especially with the shift to a knowledge economy and delayering within organisations.

Much research into empowerment has been conducted at an individual level.  However, Kirkman and Rosen (1997, 1999) explored empowerment at a team level, arguing that team members can share the belief that their team has autonomy, performs meaningful tasks, is competent and can make an impact.  There is an assumption that these dimensions have the same conceptual meaning as those at individual level analysis.  However, team empowerment is distinct from individual empowerment in that individual members may differ in their beliefs about personal empowerment but have a shared belief and experience among the team members.

A closely related concept is that of Team Participation which entails greater engagement of team members in the processes contributing to team success.  There are three key processes; transition processes, how team task strategies, goals and plans are generated; action processes, how the team coordinate and regulate effort to achieve team goals; interpersonal processes, how teams manage conflict and morale in the team.

Both empowerment and participation assumes that involving team members in core team functions would lead to improved team effectiveness and improve team outcomes.  This would prove satisfying for team members and would further motivate and engage the team further in their work.  Thus capturing important aspects of engagement.   However, team empowerment captures the psychological engagement among team members whereas team participation involves collective behavioural engagement of team members.  The interconnectedness between empowerment and participation across both individual-level and team-level reflect both a bottom up and a top down process through which individual members influence their team, and the team influences individual members.

Key Terminology

Empowerment – an employee’s actual (subjective) sense of being empowered determined by a set of believes or states; autonomy, meaning, competence and impact

Autonomy –  An employee’s sense that they have latitude to choose how and where to get their job done

Team Participation – A process of information exchange and knowledge transfer.  The extent to which team members collectively and actively engage in transition, action and interpersonal processes.

In Brief

Job Characteristics Model (Hackman & Oldham, 1976) – The key to employee motivation  is the task itself.  Monotony stifles motivation to perform well, whereas challenge enhances motivation. Variety, autonomy and the ability to make decisions are three ways of adding challenge to a job. Job enrichment and job rotation are the two ways of adding variety and challenge.

Self-determination theory (Deci, Connell, & Ryan, 1989) is concerned with supporting our natural or intrinsic tendencies to behave in effective and healthy ways.  Thereby capturing the belief that employees possess the competence to perform effectively work tasks and roles and the belief they can make an impact on the workplace.

Participation in Decision Making (Locke and Schweiger, 1979, Locke et al., 1997) assumes that encouraging and allowing employees to be involved in decision making processes motivates employees and promotes decision quality and outcomes.  Perceived fairness, nature of task and employee knowledge contribute to understanding how participation in decision making is related to performance and motivation outcomes.

Proactive and Citizenship Behaviours Personal Initiative (Frese & Fay, 2001), Voice (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998) and Citizenship Behaviours (Podsakoff, Mackenzie, Paine & Bachrach, 2000) directly consider employees’ active and proactive engagement in work.  Employee choose, and are encouraged, to actively participate in and contribute to organizational work.

Self-Managed and Autonomous Work Teams (Cohen & Bailey, 1997) is where members of self-managed work teams are encouraged to be involved and participate in making decisions that previously were made by supervisors and managers.  Self managed teams are reliant on team design and structural empowerment.

What does this mean for Organisation Development?

The OD practitioner must recognise that teams consist of a social system of interdependent individual members – that is, individual team members cannot accomplish their roles effectively, and the team as a whole cannot function effectively, unless members work together in a coordinated fashion.  In this respect individual and team empowerment are positively related.

At an individual level developing individual employees in respect to positive self-views, including self-esteem and general self-efficacy are positively related to psychological empowerment.

Supporting individuals to interpret work experience more positively, as well as enabling individuals to be more proactive at work will enhance the likelihood of an individual being more empowered.  Working with individual’s through coaching and self-awareness can help develop motivational attributes; increase awareness of cultural differences; develop an understanding of employee expertise and highlight the quality of leader-employee relationships.

Other areas to focus on through Management Development is for Managers to support the individuals need for achievement and openness and emotional stability.  This can be achieved through review job characteristics to ensure that job tasks are less ambiguous; there is access to more information; greater skill variety; autonomy; team based rewards, role expectations; task significance and job feedback.  The quality of relationship between employees and their supervisor and co-worker must also be developed through social support structures.

Social-orientated inputs also need tackling, specifically leadership behaviours and climate which exert social influences on teams, and play a major role in allowing, encouraging and enabling team empowerment.  Developing empowering leadership behaviours will help team members to set their own goals, delegate responsibility, enhance the teams’ sense of control and autonomy and raise team members’ expectations regarding team outcomes.

An empowerment climate and participative leadership can be developed through making use of organisational structures, encouraging information sharing, team accountability, policies and practices which support employee empowerment.

References

• Cohen, S. G., & Bailey, D. E. (1997). What makes teams work: Group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite. Journal of management, 23(3), 239-290.
• Deci, E. L., Connell, J. P., & Ryan, R. M. (1989). Self-determination in a work organization. Journal of applied psychology, 74(4), 580.
• Frese, M., & Fay, D. (2001). 4. Personal initiative: An active performance concept for work in the 21st century. Research in organizational behavior, 23, 133-187.
• Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational behavior and human performance, 16(2), 250-279.
• Kozlowski, S. W. J., (2012) The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Psyhcology Volume 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pg. 767 – Pg. 788
• Kirkman, B. L., & Rosen, B. (1999). Beyond self-management: Antecedents and consequences of team empowerment. Academy of Management journal, 42(1), 58-74.
• Kirkman, B. L., & Rosen, B. (1997) A model  of work team empowerment. Research in Organizational Change and Development, 10, 131 – 167
• Locke, E. A.,Alavi, M., & Wagner, J. A. (1997) Participation in decision making: An information exchange perspective. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 15, 293-331
• Locke, E. A., & Schweiger, D. M. (1979). Participation in decision-making: One more look. Research in organizational behavior, 1(10), 265-339.
• Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., Paine, J. B., & Bachrach, D. G. (2000). Organizational citizenship behaviors: A critical review of the theoretical and empirical literature and suggestions for future research. Journal of management, 26(3), 513-563.
• Van Dyne, L., & LePine, J. A. (1998). Helping and voice extra-role behaviors: Evidence of construct and predictive validity. Academy of Management Journal, 41(1), 108-119.

What question does it answer?

How does the science of psychology apply to work and organizations?

How it Began

Organizational Psychology developed from Industrial Psychology as a field of inquiry which endeavours to understand how people working together in organizations.  Since work is central to societal functioning, giving us both material benefits, identity, psychological well-being and a structure to our time and activity, organizational psychology necessitates an understanding of work as a fact of life.

The nature of work has changed as our society has evolved.  Moving from basic subsistence to a modern understanding of work which seeks to be more meaningful to the individuals.  Work and organizations are not fixed, they are socially constructed and they change and evolve alongside our society and cultural changes.

Key Terminology

Industrial Psychology – Testing, selection and Training applicable to industry

Employee Well Being – That part of an employee’s overall well-being that they perceive to be determined primarily by work and can be influenced by workplace interventions.

Organizational Effectiveness – how effective an organization is in achieving the outcomes the organization intends to produce

In Brief

The purpose of organizational psychology is to “understand the psychology of organizations and people, and to apply that basic psychological science to help people become more fulfilled and to help organizations become more effective.” (Kozlowski, 2012)

There are different approaches to Organizational Psychology which demonstrate the complexities and challenges of studying organizations and the behaviours that occurs within them.

Industrial and Organzational Psychology – Not an either or, but an and.  Industrial and Organizational psychology represent domains of research and application that have evolved historically, focusing on areas such a human characteristics, behaviour and organizational performance.

Employee Wellbeing and Organizational Effectiveness – Applying psychological principles to improve the experience of workers and the effectiveness of the organization and how this work in tandem to improve organizational performance.

Basic and Applied Science – Developmental, Social or Neuroscience.  The fields are vast but the goal is the same – to discover generalized principles of human behaviour that cut across a wide range of situations

Science and Practice – Explaining important phenomena through the development of meta-theories, systematic research, investigation, codification of knowledge and the development of tools – applied by practitioners in the workplace.

What does this Mean for Organization Development?