Organization Development--The Process of Leading Organizational Change.
Kumar, Neeraj
Organization Development--The Process of Leading Organizational
Change by Donald L Anderson, 2nd South Asian Ed., Sage Publications
India Private Limited, 2013, New Delhi, Pages 379, Price Rs.595/-.
After Leadership, it is Organizational Change that has been most
written about in the field of Organizational Behaviour. As a process for
Organizational Change, Organizational Development has been a subject
matter of research and practice for academicians, researchers and
managers alike. The number of books on the subject are too many to count
and it becomes a challenge to really differentiate one from another. I
have looked at this book from a teacher's lens and my views might
reflect this bias.
Though not stated, the book can be seen to have been broadly
structured into three parts viz a viz--OD as a discipline, OD as a
practice and OD as an intervention.
With structure as above, the book is comprehensive in scope and
contemporary in treatment of subject matter. Starting from the origins
of the subject, it delineates the scope, tenets and values of
organizational development. The first three chapters brings one up to
speed on the subject, right from its' origin in the late 1940s to
the contemporary models and practices. Tips to analyse cases right at
the beginning will prove to be very valuable. The chapter on
organizational change captures the major approaches and models and has
classified different models under the two main approaches of systems
theory and the social constructs approach but, at times, the prose runs
into pages without a break.
The second part i.e. the OD practice (Chapters 5 to 8) describe the
OD Consulting process and the practitioner. It goes on to describe the
initial contracting, data collection and diagnosis phases of the
process. Drawing mainly from the action research studies, the chapters
cover the critical stages of the process. The chapters cover a wide
range of studies, capturing almost every significant approach in a
structured and concise manner.
The heart of the book, of equal value to a practitioner, an
academician and a student is the third part of the book (chapters 9 to
12) that dwells on the interventions in organization development. The
interventions have been dealt with systematically, at individual, team
and organization levels. Every major intervention has been dealt with in
a balanced way with crisp explanations. To a practicing or aspiring OD
consultant this could well be a ready reckoner. The chapter on
whole-organisation interventions takes into account the latest
developments in the field of OD whereas the chapter 13 ends the book
appropriately by looking at the changing world of organizations and
future challenges in the field of OD.
A comprehensive treatment of the subject in a concise form is what
differentiates the book from others of the kind. However, to be a
text-book, more chapter end exercises and discussion questions would
have made this book a complete text book.
Neeraj Kumar
Associate Professor, FORE School of Management.
