For Further Reading
Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1996). Organizational learning II: Theory, method, and practice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Bradford, L. P. (1974). National Training Laboratories: Its history, 1947–1970. Bethel, ME: National Training Laboratory.
Bradford, L. P., Gibb, J. R., & Benne, K. D. (Eds.). (1964). T-group theory and laboratory method. New York, NY: Wiley.
Burnes, B., & Cooke, B. (2012). The past, present and future of OD: Taking the long view. Human Relations, 65, 1395–1429.
Kleiner, A. (1996). The age of heretics: Heroes, outlaws, and the forerunners of corporate change. New York, NY: Doubleday.
Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York, NY: Harper & Brothers.
Likert, R. (1961). New patterns of management. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
MacGregor, D. (1960). The human side of enterprise. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
Seo, M., Putnam, L. L., & Bartunek, J. M. (2004). Dualities and tensions of planned organizational change. In M. S. Poole & A. H. Van den Ven (Eds.), Handbook of organizational change and innovation (pp. 73–107). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Note
1. The historical record differs as to how enthusiastic the researchers were about this development. Some have written that the participants were “encouraged” to sit in on the sessions by the researchers (French & Bell, 1999, p. 33), some remark that the request to sit in was simply “assented to” (Hirsch, 1987, p. 18), and others emphasize the “anxiety” (L. P. Bradford, 1974, p. 35) and “misgivings” (Lippitt, 1949, p. 114) that the researchers felt by the request.
Chapter Three Core Values and Ethics of Organization Development
As we discussed in the previous chapter, organization development (OD) consists of more than just the application of surveys and tools or facilitating meetings, though these are all general activities that can fall within the scope of an OD engagement. As each client application of OD principles and practices is somewhat unique, OD is not the rigid following of a systematic procedure. It involves the kinds of assessments, dialogues, and decisions that we cover in detail throughout this book. Consequently, developing OD skills is less about learning a standard toolkit and more about internalizing the factors that influence an OD practitioner’s decisions. Those decisions are guided by a set of values and ethical beliefs about how organizations should be run, how people should be treated, and how organizational change should be managed. OD values and ethics help to direct choices about what client engagements to accept, what data gathering strategy to employ, how feedback to the client should be managed, what interventions to select, and how the intervention should be structured. In this chapter, we will define the core values held by OD practitioners and describe the ethical beliefs that influence their choices and decisions.
The values that have been adopted by OD practitioners have been formed and shaped by its history, so many of the pronouncements of OD values that you will see in this chapter will resonate with what you read in Chapter 2. The work of MacGregor, Likert, and others resulted in a series of statements about the best ways to manage people in organizations, and over time these have been internalized and shaped into a series of explicit values for the field of OD.
Defining Values
A great deal of psychological research and writing has defined and examined the concept of values and how values affect our thinking and behavior.1 Rokeach (1973) defined a value as “an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence” (p. 5). Values express what a person believes should happen or ought to happen, and they are relatively stable and enduring from situation to situation, though they can also change and become more complex, particularly as a person gains more experience. Value statements are organized into a person’s value system, which is “a learned organization of rules for making choices and for resolving conflicts” (Rokeach, 1968, p. 161). As a system, values help us decide what action to take and how to assess both our actions and the actions of others.
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Why Are Values Important to the OD Practitioner?
Values are significant for organization development because they are the underlying beliefs that are enduring and broader than any single consulting engagement or intervention. Values have been a part of the field since its founding, and they have held such an important place in the practice of OD that the field has been somewhat derisively referred to as a “religious movement” (Harvey, 1974). Yet failing to take values into account leaves OD as a list of intervention techniques to be studied without understanding the reasons why those interventions were developed or when the practitioner should apply them. Management scholar Edgar Schein (1990a) wrote of his frustration in completing a questionnaire about OD intervention techniques that “I did not see OD as a set of techniques at all, but as a philosophy or attitude toward how one can best work with organizations” (p. 13). Margulies and Raia (1990) put the point more bluntly, noting that OD
is value-based and more importantly its core values provide the guiding light for both the OD process and its technology. The very identity of the field is reflected in the existence and application of the values it advocates. Without them, OD represents nothing more than a set of techniques. (p. 39)
Others agree, going so far as to predict that the future of OD rests on the applicability of its core values to practitioners and clients (Wooten & White, 1999).
Values are important to OD practitioners for the following reasons:
1. They guide choices about how to proceed. Returning to our values helps to guide us when we are uncertain how to proceed with a client or when we have multiple courses of action that are possible. When a client does not know which solution is best, for example, the OD value of participation and involvement may encourage the practitioner to recommend including organization members in the decision about which solution is most desirable. OD values can give direction and tend to specify guiding principles rather than exact behavior.
2. They provide a larger vision that extends beyond any individual intervention. For the OD practitioner, values provide a constancy of purpose that is greater than any single consulting engagement, providing a larger mission for one’s career. Many OD practitioners hold values of environmental and social responsibility and social justice, and they see results in those areas as enduring effects of their work. Developing better working conditions in more humanistic and democratic organizations is an overarching value that many practitioners hold, core beliefs that endure regardless of the situation.
3. They distinguish OD from other methods of consulting and change. OD and other types of management consulting share important similarities but also important differences. One of these differences relates to the values of OD work. Focusing interventions and the consulting process to ensure growth, development, and learning is a key value that does not show up as a purpose of most other management consulting activities. “It is the humanistic value structure and concern for people that differentiates organization development from many of its competing disciplines” (Church, Hurley, & Burke, 1992, p. 14).
4. They can help to prompt dialogue and clarify positions. Being explicit about our values and