Practicing Organization Development: Leading Transformation and Change, 4th Edition

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Convergence of Organization Development and Human Resource Management

David W. Jamieson and William J. Rothwell

According to human resource (HR) professor David Ulrich, human resource management can play the role of change agent in organizational settings (Ulrich, Younger, Brockbank, and Ulrich 2012). Ulrich's perspective is important, since it is possible to get an MBA degree from a leading U.S. school and never hear a word about how to bring about change in organizational settings. And, maybe, the leading skill of business leaders will be to initiate and manage change. More professionals in organization “helping roles” are being called on to assist with change, and human resource management (HRM) is at the center of that effort in most organizations. One value of organization development (OD) is to bring a mindset, theories, methods, and skills to change planning and execution.

This chapter examines recent changes and trends in both HRM and in OD; provides a brief history of the relationships of these two fields of practice; presents conceptual overviews of HRM and OD; describes similarities and differences of HRM and OD; and describes present and future challenges in the relationship between HRM and OD, centering on mindsets, skills, acceptance of new roles by client managers, and the design of organization units and departments.

The Growing Convergence of Human Resource Management and Organization Development

For the past 50 years, HRM and OD ...