ORGANISATION
Culture & Change I

Learning outcomes
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Outline the meaning and nature of organisational development; Examine the nature, types and main features of organisational culture; Evaluate influences on the development of culture and the importance of culture; Detail the characteristics of organisational climate and employee commitment; Explore the nature of organisational change and reasons for resistance to change; Examine the management of organisational change, and human and social factors of change; Review the importance of organisational culture and the ability of the organisation to adapt to change.

Culture and Change
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A central feature of the successful organisation is the diagnosis of its:
Culture, Health and performance, and the Ability of the organisation to adapt to change. The manager needs to understand the nature and importance of:

a) b) c)

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1) 2) 3) 4)

organisational culture, organisational climate, employee commitment, and the successful implementation and management of organisational change.

Organisation Development
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French and Bell defined organisation development as, ‘a long term effort, led and supported by top management, to improve an organisation’s visioning, empowerment, learning, and problem-solving processes, through an ongoing, collaborative management of organisation culture – with emphasis on the culture of intact work teams and other configurations – utilising the consultant-facilitator role and the theory and technology of applied behavioural science, including action research’.

Organisational Development (OD)
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OD is concerned with attempts to improve the overall performance and effectiveness of an organisation. OD embraces a wide range of intervention strategies into the social processes of an organisation aimed at the development of: individuals, groups, and the organisation. It is an applied behavioural science approach to planned change and development of the organisation. Organisational culture and organisation change are two central and critical features of OD.

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1) 2) 3)

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Relationship between Organisation Development, Organisation Culture and Organisation Change

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French and Bell include culture prominently in their definition of OD as they believe culture is the bedrock of behaviour in organisations.

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According to Church, OD ought to be about largescale organisational change that is based on people’s perceptions and behaviours.

The implementation of OD
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In order to bring about desired change, OD makes use of a number of intervention strategies. These are: Survey research and feedback – involving the use of questionnaire surveys to help determine the attitudes of members to the functioning organisation. T-groups (or sensitivity training) – which involves small, unstructured , face-to-face groupings who meet without a planned agenda and training is intended to concentrate on the feeling level of communication rather than on the informational value of communication. Team building is the process of diagnosing task procedures and patterns of human interaction within a work group and the basic objective is to improve overall performance of the organisation through improvements in the effectiveness of teams. Grid training is a development from the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid approach. The goal of grid training is that changes are aimed at attaining a 9,9 orientation (maximum concern for both production and people) on the Grid.

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The implementation of OD – a pluralistic approach

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No two organisations are the same. Each organisation has its own types of problems and most appropriate remedies. OD is action-oriented and tailored to suit specific needs. It takes a number of forms with varying levels of intervention. OD concerns itself with the examination of organisational health and the implementation of planned change.

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