The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of the Psychology of Leadership, Change and Organizational Development

19

A Critical Review of Organization Development

Bernard Burnes

19.1 Introduction

Organization development is the name given to the emerging applied behavioral science ­discipline that seeks to improve organizations through planned, systematic, long-range efforts focused on the organization’s culture and its human and social processes. The goals of organization development are to make the organization more effective, more viable, and better able to achieve both the goals of the organization as an entity and the goals of the individuals within the organization (French & Bell, 1973, p. xiv).Organization development is a systemwide application and transfer of behavioral science knowledge to the planned development, improvement, and reinforcement of the strategies, structures, and processes that lead to organization effectiveness (Cummings & Worley, 2005, p. 1).

This chapter undertakes a critical review of OD by chronicling the major stages, disjunctures, and controversies in its history. Though there has been a tendency in recent years to write of “classical OD” and “new OD” (Marshak & Grant, 2008; Oswick, 2009), this tends to obscure its continuously-evolving nature. Throughout its history, OD has been driven by the twin forces of academic rigor and practical relevance. There has been much debate in recent years concerning the need to achieve both rigor and relevance in organizational theory and practice (Bartunek, 2007; Polzer et al., 2009). However, it was the founding father of OD, ...