CHAPTER – 01

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Continuation of 1ST Chapter

Overview of Entering and Contracting Diagnosing.

The Organization could be experiencing problems such as poor product quality, High
rates of absenteeism etc., Hence it is important for the organization to be more innovative,
Competitive and effective. For which Entering and contracting are the initial steps in the OD
Process.
The initial parameters for carrying the stages of OD are: -
1. Diagnosing the organization
2. Planning and Implementing changes
3. Evaluating
4. Institutionalizing.

Diagnosing
Diagnosing refers for identifying /recognizing the problems which are faced by the
organization and to determine their causes to plan solution.
Diagnosis is also known as “Consulting Process”.

MODELS FOR DIAGNOSING ORGANIZATIONAL SYSTEMS IN OD

A. AT ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL

I. Inputs -
a. The General Environment:
It consists of all external forces that can be directly or indirectly affect an organization.
It includes social, Technological, Economic, Ecological and political forces.
b. The Task Environment:
It includes the supplier power, Buyer power, rivalry among competitors and threats
of entry.
II. Design Components –
a. Strategy: The way an Organization uses its resources (Human, Economic or
technical) to achieve its goals and to gain a competitive advantage.
b. Technology: It is concerned with the way a company converts inputs into
products and services. It represents the core transformation process.
c. Structure: It is the basic organizing mode for -
 Dividing the overall work of an organization into subunits that can assign tasks
to groups or individuals and
 Coordinating these subunits for completion of the overall work.
d. Human Resource Systems: It includes selecting, developing, appraising and
rewarding the organization members. These influences the mix of skills,
personal characteristics and behaviors of employees.
e. Culture: It represents the basic assumptions, Values and norms shared by the
organizational members.

III. Outputs.
a. Organization Performance (Profits, Sales, Stock Price)
b. Productivity (measurement of efficiency, Waste, Error rates, Quality sales per
employee)
c. Stake holder satisfaction.

B. AT GROUP LEVEL

I. Inputs
a. Organizational Design: It is the process of aligning the structure of an organization
with its objectives, with the aim of improving efficiency and effectiveness.
b. Culture: It represents the basic assumptions, Values and norms shared by the
organizational members.
II. Design Components
a. Goal Clarity: It refers to the extent to which the group understands its objectives.
It is important to constantly clarify the goals of any team.
b. Task Structure: It refers to the degree to which the task is made clear to the
employees. It includes the extent to which the tasks are defines and have detailed
descriptions and procedures.
c. Team Functioning: It refers to the quality of group dynamics among members. It
includes how the team or group is actually communicating and functioning within
the organization.
 d. Group Composition: It refers to the characteristics of group members within the
organization. It includes the ability, achievement level, gender, ethnicity, age etc.
e. Group norms: Group norms centers on how hard a person should work in a given
group.

III. Outputs
Team/Group effectiveness: These include a positive team spirit, increased
productivity, high-quality work achieved and objectives met. It in mainly influenced
by the rewards provided by the organization.

C. AT INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

I. Inputs
a. Organizational Design: It is the process of aligning the structure of an
organization with its objectives, with the aim of improving efficiency and
effectiveness.
b. Culture: It represents the basic assumptions, Values and norms shared by the
organizational members.
c. Group Design: It refers to mobilizing the team, aligning the team’s
understanding, preparing the team and holding the team accountable.
d. Personal Characteristics: This includes people’s characteristic patterns of
thoughts, feelings and behaviors. It simply implies on consistency and stability.
II. Design Components

a. Task identity: It involves the extent to which a job requires a jobholder to perform all
the tasks required to complete that job from the beginning t the end.
b. Skill variety: It refers to the number of skills used to do the job.
c. Autonomy: Autonomy in the workplace means giving employees the freedom to
work in a way that suits them. With autonomy at work, employees get to decide
how and when their work should be done.
d. Task significance: It is the degree to which employees realize their work importance
as it creates the impacts on other people within or outside the organization.
e. Feedback about the results: Effective feedback is important for the organization as it
motivates employees to improve their job performance by enhancing ability, effort
and results.
 IV. Output
Individual effectiveness: It includes employees job satisfaction, performance,
absenteeism, personal development of employee within the organization.

COLLECTING AND ANALYZING DIAGNOSTIC INFORMATION

Data gathering involves gathering the information on specific organizational features,
such as the inputs, design components and outputs.
The process begins by establishing an effective relation between the OD
Practitioner and those from whom data will be collected within the organization.
The four methods usually used to collect data in the companies are:
1. Questionnaires
2. Interviews
3. Observations
4. Unobtrusive measures.

1. Questionnaires
 It is one of the most efficient ways to collect data is through questionnaires.
 It contains fixed-response queries about various features of an organization.
 This method of data collection cab be used to get information from large
number of people simultaneously.
 It can be analyzed quickly with the use of computers, hence permitting
quantitative comparison and evaluation.
 The questionnaires are used widely in variety of organizations with employees
in both blue-collar and White-collar jobs.
 There are 2 types of Questionnaires which are usually used by the
organizations.
 Structured Questionnaires
 Unstructured Questionnaires
 Structured questionnaire has a fixed alternative like multiple choice, yes/no or
true/false questions and mostly used for quantitative answers.
 Unstructured questionnaire is open ended questions and the respondents are
not restricted to a fixed choice.
 These are used to provide valid and reliable data focusing on the issues the
organization is facing.

Drawbacks of Questionnaires:
1. The responses are limited to the questions asked in the questionnaire.
2. It provides little opportunity to include additional data or to as for points
of clarification.
3. Sometimes, Questionnaires tend to be impersonal.
4. Employees may not be willing to provide honest answers.
5. The questionnaire prepared should be in a socially acceptable manner to
the employees.
2. Interviews
 Interviews are the most widely used technique for collecting data in OD.
 They permit the interviewer to ask the respondent direct questions.
 But this flexibility is invaluable for gaining private views and feelings about the
organization and also for exploring new issues that emerge during the
interview.
 There are 2 types of interviews which are usually conducted.
Structured interview
Unstructured interview
 Structured interview based on organizational-level design components,
technology, strategy, organizational structure, measurement systems, Human
resource systems and organizational culture.
 Unstructured interviews are more general and includes the questions
regarding:
 Goals and objectives of the organization or department
 Organization’s Strengths and weakness
 Organization’s current performance etc.

3. Observations
 One of the direct way of collecting data is to simply observe organizational
behaviors in their functional settings.
 The OD practitioner may do this by walking casually through a work area and
looking around the behaviors
 They are free of the biases inherent in self-report data.
 It involves the real-time data, describing behaviors occurring in the present
rather than the past.
 The observer may use film, videotape and other methods to record behaviors.
 The observer is trained and skilled in knowing what to look for, how, where
and when to observe and how to record data systematically.
 The observer must choose people, time period, events in which to make those
observations.
 The problem with the observations are difficulties interpreting the meaning
underlying the observations.

4. Unobtrusive Measures
 Unobtrusive data are not collected directly from respondents but from
secondary sources such as company records and archives.
 These data are generally available in organisations and include records of
absenteeism, grievances, quality and quantity of production or services,
Financial performance and minutes of meeting.
 At organizational level it measures the market share, return on investment.
 At individual level it measures the individual performance, productivity,
progress etc.
 At departmental level, it measures the group performance such as team
efficiency, production of the team etc.
 FEEDING BACK DIAGNOSTIC INFORMATION
The most important step in the diagnostic process is feeding back diagnostic
information to the client organization. Although the data may have been collected with the
client’s help, the OD practitioner often organizes and presents them to the clients.

Determining the content of the Feedback

1. Relevant: Organization members use feedback data for problem solving when they
find the information meaningful. Including managers and employees in the initial data
collection activities can increase the relevance of the data.
2. Understandable: Data must be presented to the organization members in a form that
is readily interpreted.
Ex: -Statistical data can be made understandable by graphs and charts.
3. Descriptive: Feedback data need to be linked to real organizational behaviors. The use
of examples and detailed illustrations can help employees gain a better feel for the
data.
4. Timely: Data should be fed back to members as quickly as possible after being
collected and analyzed. This will help ensure that the information is still valid and is
linked limited.
5. Verifiable: Feedback data should be valid and accurate if they are to guide action.
Thus, the information should allow organization members to verify whether the
findings really describe the organization.
6. Limited: People can be easily become overloaded with too much information,
feedback data should be limited to realistic process.
7. Significant: Feedback should be limited to those problems that organization members
can do something about because it will energize them and help direct their efforts
towards realistic change.
8. Comparative: The feedback information which is acquired should be in such a way
that it should be easy to compare with other benchmark as a reference.
9. Unfinalized: Feedback is primarily an encouragement process for action and for
problem solving. Members should be encouraged to use the data as a starting point
for more in-depth discussion for organizational issues.

POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF FEEDBACK

1. People are motivated to work with the data in the organization.

2. The feedbacks are appropriately structured.
3. The right people are in attendance with the right knowledge, right power and
influence and interest.
4. The feedback is properly facilitated.
5. The effective meeting of feedback is conducted.
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FEEDBACK PROCESS
1. Motivation to work with the data: Working with the feedback data will have
beneficial outcomes. This may require explicit sanction and support from powerful
groups so that people feel free to raise issues and identify concerns during the
feedback sessions.
2. Structure for the meeting: Feedback meeting needs some structure. An agenda or
outline for the meeting and the presence of a leader can usually provide the
necessary direction.
3. Appropriate attendance: This involve a fully intact work team or groups comprising
members from different functional areas or hierarchical levels. People who have
common problems and can benefit from working together should be included in the
feedback meeting.
4. Appropriate power: Members need to know on which issues they can make
necessary changes, on which they can only recommend changes and over which
they have no control.
5. Process help: People in feedback meetings require help in working together as a
group. An OD practitioner with group process skills can help members stay focused
on the subject and improve feedback discussion.

SURVEY FEEDBACK
Survey feedback is a process of collecting and feeding back data from an
organization or department using a questionnaire or survey.

STEPS IN SURVEY FEEDBACK

1. The Objectives of the survey should be clearly analyzed.

2. To prepare standardized questionnaires and to ensure that the questions has been
constructed properly.
3. To analyze the survey data, to tabulate the results, suggests approaches to diagnosis
4. To train client members to lead the feedback process.
5. Data feedback usually begins at the top of the organization (Waterfall approach)
mostly and sometimes bottom-up also begins.
6. The last step is feedback meeting should be conducted which provides an
opportunity to work with the data.

LIMITATIONS OF SURVEY FEEDBACK

1. No guarantee of honest answers from the respondents.
2. Poorly constructed questions can lead to incorrect interpretations.
3. Sometimes the Feedback process might disturb the organization on whole.
4. Feedback sometimes stops the employees from performing other productive task.
5. More chances for the organizations to conduct the feedback process without any
particular purpose.