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

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The Shifting Field of OD Practice

Jane Magruder Watkins

 

 

 

 

 

If we are living in a so-called post-modern era in which everything we believed about how human systems “work” seems to be turned upside down, what are OD consultants supposed to do now? How do we work in this environment? Is everything that we have known and practiced now “out-of-date?”

Well, not very out-of-date! The good news is that the OD required in this emerging era is deeply rooted in the early experiences, theories, and practices developed by the founders of the field. In the 1940s, Kurt Lewin and fellow behavioral scientists were musing about democracy, autocracy, and leadership in human systems. They pondered group phenomena such as the persecution ...