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Organization
Development & its
Interventions
WHAT IS OD?
Beckhard (1) defines Organization Development (OD) as "an effort, planned, organizationwide, and managed from the top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through
planned interventions in the organization's processes, using behavioral-science knowledge."
In essence, OD is a planned system of change.
Managed from the top. To be effective, OD must have the support of topmanagement. They have to model it, not just espouse it. The OD process also needs
the buy-in and ownership of workers throughout the organization.
Increase organization effectiveness and health. OD is tied to the bottom-line. Its goal
is to improve the organization, to make it more efficient and more competitive by
aligning the organization's systems with its people.
What is an OD Intervention?
The term Intervention refers to a set of sequenced, planned actions or events intended to
help an organization to increase its effectiveness. Interventions purposely disrupt the
status quo; they are deliberate attempts to change an organization or sub-unit toward a
different and more effective state.
Criteria for Effective Interventions
In OD three major criteria define the effectiveness of an intervention:
1. The Extent to Which it (the Intervention) fits the needs of the organization.
2. The degree to which it is based on causal knowledge of intended outcomes
3. The extent to which the OD intervention transfers change-management
competence to organization members.
Factors That Impact the Success of OD Interventions
I. Factors relating to Change Situation: These relate to the environment of the
interventions are broader in scope, usually affecting the whole organization (socio-technical
systems). OD interventions are sponsored by the CEO and supported and owned by staff at
the different levels of the organization.
OD professionals must have a solid understanding of the different OD interventions to choose
the most appropriate, or mix and match them -based on the expected results and a solid
analysis of the organization and its environment.
WHY DO OD?
Human resources -- our people -- may be a large fraction of our costs of doing
business. They certainly can make the difference between organizational success and
failure. We better know how to manage them.
Changing nature of the workplace. Our workers today want feedback on their
performance, a sense of accomplishment, feelings of value and worth, and
commitment to social responsibility. They need to be more efficient, to improve their
time management. And, of course, if we are to continue doing more work with less
people, we need to make our processes more efficient.
Global markets. Our environments are changing, and our organizations must also
change to survive and prosper. We need to be more responsible to and develop closer
partnerships with our customers. We must change to survive, and we argue that we
should attack the problems, not the symptoms, in a systematic, planned, humane
manner.
Implication
Total Quality Management
TQM programs are directed at the entire organization including the suppliers and its
customers. Although quality at the individual level is important, the successful TQM
program calls for quality from every person, at every level of the organization, in every
capacity within the organization. In short, TQM programs require a change in the
organizational philosophy and culture.
4. EFFECTIVENESS CRITERIA:
In all Total Quality Management programs the ultimate effectiveness criterion is customer
satisfaction. According to the research, to reach this ultimate goal of effectiveness requires
that the organization measure several other criteria on a continual basis (Weaver, 1991;
Hackman & Wageman, 1995; Dahlgaard, 1999; Clark, 2000). The appropriate criteria to
measure depends on the type of organization, and whether they deliver a product or a service.
In a production-based organization, the effectiveness criteria are divided into product
measures and employee measures. The possible measures for the product include: increases
in production, increases in sales, increases in market share, increases in stock prices,
reductions in the product cycle time, reductions in the number of reworks, reductions in the
inventories, and reductions in customer returns. The employee measures include: satisfaction
with the company, commitment, performance, turnover, absenteeism, and grievance activity
(Clark, 2000). In service organizations the measures of effectiveness may include reductions
in customer complaints, increases in return customers, increase in customer referrals, higher
customer volume, higher employee satisfaction and commitment.
5. EVIDENCE OF EFFECTIVENESS:
Research into the effectiveness of TQM programs focuses mainly on the increase in market
shares, and the increase in stock prices. Many organizations measure the success of their
programs in the reduction in cycle time and product failures. The success of quality
programs are most often related to percent increases in the market share, and overall capital
of the organization. (Creech, 1994). Successful organizations like Harley-Davidson, Ford
Motor Company, Johnson & Johnson, Motorola, Xerox, and others, tell of a long, arduous
journey and complete re-organization of their companies from centralized, out-put focused, to
de-centralized customer focused before they were capable of reaching their goals of Quality
at all levels of the organizations.
may take years to complete. It is important to keep in mind that a successful TQM program
is an ongoing program, which involves all phases of the organization at all times until the
organization is no longer viable. If a TQM program is to succeed quality has to become the
culture for the organization (Deming, 1986; Weaver, 1991; Cartin, 1993; Creech, 1994;
Reylito, 1999; Clark, 2000).
there is no research to indicate specific consulting needs, it is important for the leadership to
seek advice from qualified individuals. Ideally, consultants should have experience in
guiding the organization away from out-put production techniques to team based quality
programs.
Drive out Fear: The organization must communicate the plan of action to
every employee, supplier, including short term and long-term goals. If the
program is to be totally accepted management must communicate to the
employees their vision for the future.
2.
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quality circles in which each employees inputs were actively sought and
followed up on.
4.
Eliminate inspection. Learn to build products right the first time: This is
perhaps the hardest point in the implementation of TQM. According to
Creech, (1994), inspection of products is necessary until that point in time
when the processes and the product is at the highest possible quality. Only
when the product is quality can inspection be eliminated. The idea that one can
learn to make a product right the first time is great in theory, but often it takes
many prototypes and revisions before the product is superior in quality. In
addition to the need to design and try the products for production,
improvements may be needed and the easiest way to measure if the improvements are effective is to inspect the product before releasing it to market.
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10.
End the practice of awarding business based on the price tag. Move
toward a single supplier for any one item. Base this long-term relationship
on loyalty and trust: One of the keys to successful implementation of TQM
programs is identifying your suppliers, and communicating your philosophy
and visions to them. According to Deming organizations must end the
practice of selecting suppliers based on price. The organization must seek out
suppliers that share their vision of quality and build a relationship with these
suppliers built on loyalty and trust. This is a crucial step in insuring that the
implementation of a quality program succeeds. The structure of organizations
is such that often completion of a single product may involve the utilizing the
products of several different organizations. This dependence on others for the
necessary parts or services means that organizations must actively seek out
suppliers who are willing to meet the quality standards required, and abandon
those suppliers whose products are sub-standard (Burt, 1989). Often the
failure of TQM programs can be traced back to poor quality parts of services
from suppliers (Gurnani, 1999).
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equipped to be effective in the analysis of his or her own job and is prepared
when he or she becomes a team member. This approach is somewhat
mechanistic and, for large organizations, less effective. It has been the
experience of organizations that used this approach, that if skills are not
applied a short time after training they are lost. A more effective approach is
what the Northrop Corporation calls just-in-time training. After each team is
formed, it is trained in the skills needed to begin, and then during its operation,
it is trained further as specific new skills are needed. The learning is then
immediately reinforced through application (Cartin, 1993). In order to be
successful a team or individual must know how to solve problems, know the
processes, know the work rules, how to plan, conduct good meetings, manage
logistics and details, gather useful data, measure process performance, analyze
data, implement change, and measure its effectiveness. The ability to do these
things effectively is called having the soft skills of decision-making and
problem solving. This is compared to the many hard skills of various job
specialties, which are traditionally all that are taught. Implementing TQM
involves a planned change form one management system to another that is
quite different. It is a management process improvement. Everyone in the
organization from the top down must understand its scope direction objectives
and methodologies. It requires extensive ongoing training, this training must
be planned so that all the required skills are identified and scheduled. The plan
must also be able to identify the resources required. . If employees are not
trained to think in terms of quality, they cannot recognize the need for changes
within the process. Training employees to be aware of the process and what
the end result should be is crucial. Too often organizations fail to realize that
employees can be taught how to make the product, but they may not b able to
move form making the product to improving the product. Training is
necessary and should be ongoing if the organization is to maintain a quality
driven production.
14.
**Note: In practice most organizations tailor their TQM programs to meet their own
organizational needs and goals. Demings original fourteen points serve as a basis for
designing these programs. As noted by Creech (1994), Although, the name Total Quality
Management now covers a very broad tent encompassing all sorts of management practices
and has become the buzz phrase to describe a new type of quality-oriented management,
there are no bad TQM programs, only incomplete programs that lack in the total involvement
of all employees and all processes within the organizations. According to Creech, all TQM
programs must meet four criteria if they are to be successful: first they must be based on a
quality mindset and quality in all activities at all times (every process and every product),
second, they must be strongly humanistic to bring quality to the way employees are treated,
included, and inspired; third, TQM must be based on a de-centralized approach that provides
empowerment at all levels especially at the frontline, so the enthusiastic involvement and
common realities are realities and not slogans. Finally, TQM programs must be applied
holistically so that its principles, policies, and practices reach every nook and cranny of the
organization.
16. FOLLOW-UP:
TQM programs by nature dependent on constant follow up. Following the product
throughout the entire production process is crucial to maintaining the quality of the product.
If changes are implemented in the process, follow up must also be implemented to ensure that
the change leads to improvement of the product. Failure to follow up on product changes can
lead to substandard products and less customer satisfaction. To implement follow up on the
effectiveness of TQM programs, management must facilitate feedback from within the
organizations and create opportunities for customers to provide feedback to the company.
Harley Davidson sponsors Bike Weeks, through which they actively seek follow up
information from their customers (Reid, 1990).