While acknowledged by most sources as the founder of organization development, there is no evidence Lewin ever used the term. Instead, according to “…Lippitt, the name was coined independently but simultaneously by two groups of NTL consultants: Robert Blake and Herbert Shepard working at Esso and Richard Beckhard and Douglas McGregor working at General Mills. It is also clear that most of those who became leading figures in the OD movement were involved in the NTL and shared its zealot-like commitment to the promotion of T-groups, which created the conditions for the rapid expansion of OD in the 1960s (Burnes and Cooke, 2012, p1400).”
Bernard Burnes tells this version (in another article – one of ...
