Organisation Development Theory

Introduction

It is a common belief that an organization when formed serves a basic purpose. It could be that a group of individuals wanting to galvanise efforts to “cumulate savings” from members of their immediate community seek to establish a cooperative. A cooperative is an organization which is closest to a completely democratic model of organization. Every member has one vote and every major decision is decided upon a general body of members at an annual general meeting. Yet again, another individual together with like-minded friends decide to incorporate an entity solely for commercial reasons: to make money for themselves and share the resulting profits after the hard work and diligence. The two examples cited above are at the two extreme

Organisation Development (OD): a journey of ideas and concepts

Organisation Development theory is a branch of knowledge which seeks to make sense of the various changes processes on how practitioners and managers ought to view organizations and their dynamics.

Organisation as system and living organism (ref:Artashes Gazaryan, 2006:Organisation Development (OD) “a manual for managers and trainers”. FPDL- partners for local development Foundation)^1

Open System

Biological sciences have been rich resources to today’s s management science, in particular OD, a science on how an organisation operates as one whole and complete system. Taken these principles, as Gareth Morgan (1997)^2 simply refers to his ‘ images of an organisation ‘ the following five features are important

These technologies could be a result of prolonged experimentation or a constellation of shadowy undertakings or the painstaking efforts by different groupings of engineers and scientists. Driven in large part by the consumerism tendencies to consume more of nature's abundant albeit depleting resources, and come up with better gadgets and products and so forth: a materialism world.

Coupled to that of an ever expanding internet infrastructures of worldwide network of undersea cables and relaying transporter stations, the internet and social media systems have become pervasive and intrusive as well. The extent is mind boggling: in the past, news and information were relayed via TVs and print media with a time lapse. With the latter, the flow is reverse -the smartphone becomes all-in-one gadget of choice- the news and information filter in unimpeded whether you like it or not, 24/7.

Life