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

THE MEANING OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT (OD)

Before examining questions related to establishing values and standards of ethical practice, it will help to briefly reflect on the history of OD to give a perspective for thinking about what we mean by OD as it relates to HSD. To do that, we begin by retelling a slightly modified version of a story told by the late Bob Tannenbaum in introducing a plenary address to an annual OD Network conference (as remembered by Bill Gellermann and confirmed by Frank Freidlander at the 2008 OD Network Conference).

“A woman went into an ice cream store and said to the clerk, ‘May I have a quart of chocolate ice cream?’ The clerk replied, ‘I’m sorry, lady. We don’t have any chocolate ice cream.’ She paused and ...