Response to Farias and Johnson’s Commentary

Abstract

McGill Uni ver sityEven the field's lead ers admit that orga ni za tional devel op ment (OD) has had problems adapt ing to the need for better approaches to man ag ing change. For exam ple, Burke (1997) observed that OD prac ti tio ners stood on the side lines and watched while new man age ment tech niques were being intro duced. In a review of the sociotechnical sys tems (STS) tra di tion, Mathews (1997) con cluded that there were prac ti cally no exam ples of com pa nies that had cho sen STS over com pet ing approaches such as business pro cess reengineering. Around the world, busi ness pro cess reengineering was the choice for firms intend ing to trans form their work pro cesses through the use of informa tion tech nol ogy (IT). Although we can all agree that the reengineering approach was flawed in some respects, it behooves OD prac ti tio ners to crit i cally exam ine why their con ven tional frame works and meth ods lost out in the mar ket place so com pletely. As Mathews noted, more effort was spent by pro po nents of STS on ideo log i cal contests than on devel op ing sound meth od ol o gies and pro ce dures that would have taken STS into the main stream and linked it with IT inno va tions. 380Nicolay Worren is a con sul tant at Andersen Con sulting's Oslo office. He is cur rently on a pro j ect at the firm's Insti tute for Stra te gic Change in Boston.

Review Article: The past, present and future of organization development: Taking the long view

“…The interplay of the three developments discussed in this section appear to have led to an intellectual renaissance in OD. It has also led to a blurring of the boundaries between OD and other approaches and given rise to a debate about whether to replace OD with a new profession-discipline of 'change management', which could incorporate both business and human needs (Farias and Johnson, 2000;Worren et al, 1999Worren et al, , 2000. Certainly the field of change is much broader now than it was in the 1960s and 1970s when it was almost synonymous with OD.…”

Organizational Development and Change Management

“…Finally, Worren et al (2000) responded by providing examples of how OD has fallen short in its ability to serve business (e.g., the "failures" of sociotechnical systems design when compared with the "successes" of business process reengineering). Worren et al spoke out of both sides of their mouths when they once more criticized OD for its exclusively humanistic perspective, but also said that it was important to consider the human contribution to business change.…”

“…The issue is not a matter of semantics, even though Worren et al (1999Worren et al ( , 2000 seem to be characterizing it that way. The issue remains as it has been for many years: although business is primarily rewarded by Wall Street and shareholders for short-term financial performance, the processes needed for effective change management are a joint optimization of the work and human systems that may require up-front investment (i.e., time and money) in order to realize the substantial payoff that actually is possible (Becker & Huselid, 1998).…”