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

THE ORIGINS OF OD TIME-LINE

Co-author Billie Alban has done a huge service for everyone who ever practices OD by creating what we are calling “The Origins of OD Time-Line” (presented earlier in Figure 3.1). Developed using a process she and her colleagues pioneered in the now well-established practice of Large Scale Change (Bunker & Alban, 1997; Weisbord & Janoff, 2000), the time-line shows us clearly:

• What was happening as OD came into being—and evolved;

• The core OD concepts and when they emerged;

• The major contributors—theorists, researchers, writers, practitioners;

• The significant external forces and events that paralleled—and impacted—the birth and early years of our field; and

• The institutions that were first to adapt OD as ...