Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change: A Third Edition

THE RELATIONSHIP OF ORGANIZATION DESIGN TO ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT

The first question to address is, “What is organization design?” Organization design is what John Boudreau calls a “decision science” (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2007, p. 15). In many fields there is a decision science that focuses on setting frameworks and making sound choices among competing alternatives. Those fields often have a complementary “practice area” that is focused on implementing the appropriate tools and interventions to successfully execute on the selected framework. For example, marketing is a decision science: where and how we compete, how we differentiate our products and services. Sales is the complementary practice area, which identifies how we use our skills ...