Organization Development: A Process of Learning and Changing, Third Edition

1. What Is Organization Development?

The term organization development, or OD, the label most commonly used for the field, has been in use since at least 1960. In the ’60s and early ’70s, jokes about what the abbreviation OD meant were common. Today, few people in the world of large organizations associate OD with overdose, olive drab, or officer of the day, however. Organization development as a field may not yet be sufficiently known to be defined in the dictionary or explained in the Encyclopedia Britannica, but it has survived some turbulent times and will be around for the foreseeable future. Although not defined in these well-known standards for definitions, organization development is defined in the Encyclopedia of Management Theory,