(Abstract of presentation by Eric Gaynor Butterfield during the Congress of Organizational Change and Development, Buenos Aires, Argentina - 2003. Organized by The Organization Development Institute International, Latin America - www.theodinstitute.org
Organizational Development: Its Origins
Not all people are familiar with the origins of the Organizational Development Profession; Neither was I when I started my Ph.D. studies in 1973 in the United States of America.
He had already participated in various “Reorganization” projects - this was the name assigned at that time to Business Consulting services - in more than 50 organizations, including among others companies of the magnitude of ESSO (today Exxon), General Motors, Chrysler, Swift - Armor in both line and service functions and carried out work in the Consulting department at Price Waterhouse Peat & Co, both in Latin America and the United States of America. In some cases, Price Waterhouse Peat & Co.'s services were performed in association with other leading companies in the world in professional advisory services (such as Arthur D. Little).
The provision of these services were carried out under the modality of "expert" in two areas where it had competitive strengths: finance and what is now known as information technology. This perspective from the position of expert in the provision of consulting services has been radically altered at the University when I started my PhD program where I began to become familiar with Organizational Behavior in the first instance and later with Organizational Development.
Having entered the world of Organizational Development, the perspective that I had registered within me regarding organizations was "myopic", to say the least. And to transform that myopia, I had the enormous fortune of acquainting myself with the monumental work and perspectives of authors and consultants of the caliber of Edgar Schein, Carl Frost, Karl Weick, Herbert Simon, Arnold Tannenbaum. Never again would my vision of organizations be like “before”.
The "Behavioral Sciences" both at the individual, group and organizational level, as well as their respective dynamics that give rise to the processes of transition, change and development, became from then on the foundational block of the exercise of my profession as a consultant.
Through my association with The Organization Development Institute, founded by Dr. Donald W. Cole in 1968 - President since then and until now - I dedicate part of my energy to share with others both the knowledge and practices of Organizational Development since This benefits both companies and their organizational participants. Dr. Donald W. Cole has been a constant illuminator in my career in this regard, exhibiting the importance so often noted by Professor Chris Argyris, regarding the concordance between what is verbalized and what is performed within the world of organizations.
I constantly hear within the corporate and organizational world within the different Latin American countries “… that Organizational Development is something applicable within the United States but of little practicality within companies and organizations in Latin America, since the prevailing organizational model is the bureaucratic". It only remains for me to answer that "If it is really true that the bureaucratic model prevails in Latin America, this means that we have enormous potential for Organizational Development"; This IS the competitive advantage that we can now access taking into account current globalization.
Recently, a participant in a Leadership Workshop of a leading oil company stated that "In my company I get good results with the authoritarian system" so I think I can continue applying it. My answer was the following: "How can you be sure that you cannot achieve BETTER RESULTS if you learn to relate under other leadership options applicable to a complex situational spectrum?"
Something similar happens with "Consultants" who are experts in some discipline… and who do not always take into account that ANY application of their specialties (finance, IT, Marketing, Communications, etc.) must be carried out with (and in) People, and more especially to produce Changes and Transformations with (and in) said Persons. Many of the negative experiences resulting from consulting services could have been avoided if it had been taken into account that to the professional competence resulting from a University Diploma that is in the hands of a consultant, knowledge of "Behavioral Sciences" must be added.
In a field work carried out in 1999 we have found that most of the consultants are unaware of more than 70% of the authors who have made important contributions in the area of Organizational Behavior and Development, and of those authors who claim to know they do not always know identify which are the basic hypotheses of the same. For which it is worth asking the following question to consultants: WHAT DO THEY SEE when they enter a company with the purpose of improving it? At the moment, within the website of “The Organization Development Institute International, Latin America” (www.theodinstitute.org) we are disseminating about 50 authors, researchers and consultants who have made notable contributions.
In order to have a more complete vision of Organizational Development, those interested can benefit from the report made by Dr. Donald W. Cole. To this end, a development by Dr. Cole himself is included below, which is identical to the one included in the annual publication of The Organization Development Institute - International Registry, which will surely be of interest to the reader since it also includes some questions that one can formulate and that remain valid in today's world.
The Organization Development Institute - AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In the late 1970´s we started receiving a number of strange telephone calls. We got one telephone call from a person who introduced himself as being with a major US Corporation. He had just been hired as their OD consultant. He had no training in OD and no experience in OD His boss wanted him to do team building with the corporation's top team. And, the caller wanted information on a weekend workshop he could attend in order to learn how to do this. About the same time, we got another call from a professor at a major Midwest university. His Dean wanted him to start an OD program at their university. He had no training in OD and no experience in OD He wanted the name of a good book he could read. To local ODacademic program had used their students to run a “touchy feelie” T-group in a local manufacturing division of a major US Corporation. A member of their personnel department reported to me that almost this entire group had been fired or transferred because they had returned from this program engaging in behaviors that company management felt were inappropriate for their company.
After a number of such experiences it became increasingly obvious that there was a Gresham's Law of OD in which “bad OD” would eventually drive out “good OD”. I felt we should put some boundaries around this new field that we were calling OD Not everyone who attended a weekend workshop on OD should be able to lay claim to doing OD and being an OD person. I felt this new field needed to become a profession and in order to become a profession a number of things were needed. The most important were: 1) an international OD code of ethics; 2) a statement on the unique body of knowledge and skill which OD people must possess in order to do OD and 3) some kind of visible boundary around the field so that the public could tell who was competent and who was not necessarily competent.
I am a charter member of the OD Network and was a member of the OD Network Board of Directors from 1979 to 1981. I tried to get them interested in developing an OD Code of Ethics and in building the field of OD into a profession. I was told, "We are not that kind of an organization." So, I decided to do it myself with help from The OD Institute.
In 1981 I wrote the first OD Code of Ethics. It was published in the OD Institute's monthly newsletter and people were asked for their comments. A revised version was published in the 1982 edition of “The International Registry of OD Professionals and The OD Handbook”. In the fall of 1981 Dr. William Gellerman, RODC, agreed to take on this task. He has done a tremendous job of writing and revising and rewriting The OD Code of Ethics in order to develop a Code that could be used worldwide by OD people in all kinds of settings. I has now gone through some 22 revisions and has been translated into five languages: Russian, Polish, Spanish, German and Hungarian. In 1984 Bill was given The Outstanding OD Consultant of the Year Award for his work in developing The OD Code of Ethics.
NTL had gotten itself sued by “certifying” that certain people would do good work. We did not want to get into that kind of difficulty. So, we decided that instead of certifying people we would register people. We immediately had some heated discussions as to who could be registered and who was competent to decide if they were competent. One very loud and vocal group maintained that only they were competent to decide who was competent. I felt that there should be some kind of objective criteria. The problem seemed unsolvable. So, in good OD fashion we found an integrative solution. We did both. We established the initials RODP (Registered OD Professional) for those who judged themselves to be competent. And, we established the initials RODC (Registered OD Consultant) for those who met more stringent requirements.We are not yet completely happy with either of these requirements and have a committee working to improve them.
In looking at the requirements for qualifying to use the initials RODC, it seemed that there was obviously a need for a knowledge test of some kind. Dr. Warner Burke is a member of The OD Institute Advisory Board. We asked him if he would do this for us and he said, “Yes”. In 1983 Warner completed work on “The Assessment Questionnaire for Knowledge and Understanding of OD” (In 1990 Warner Burke was given The Outstanding OD Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other important contributions to the field). The questionnaire I developed was based on questions proposed by students and then sent to 100 highly qualified, currently practicing USOD people.
Questions were not drawn from explicitly OD knowledge because that had not as yet been done. There was no question on ethics and no input from the international OD community. Don Donald Van Eynde, RODC, has now revised this test. (In 1996, Dr. Donald Van Eynde, RODC, was given the Outstanding OD Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other contributions to the field.)
We also became concerned about what students were learning and - more important - what they were not learning. Well over half of the OB / OD academic programs in the USA do not teach The International OD Code of Ethics and do not subscribe to current literature being published in the field. It is our opinion, that most students on graduation have never written a published paper.
In developing a test on the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in OD and in trying to evaluate the knowledge and skill needed in order to be competent, it became increasingly obvious that the field needed to define the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in OD We in The OD Institute and those of us who are trying to build a profession of OD are very grateful to Roland Sullivan, RODP, Dr. Gary McLean, RODC, Dr. William J. Rothwell, and their team of national and international practitioners & academics for the tremendous amount of time and effort they have invested in developing a statement and now a book on the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in OD (In 1997, Roland Sullivan RODP, was given the Outstanding OD Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other important contributions to the field.)
Concerned that OD students were being graduated without the knowledge and skills to be fully competent, a committee headed by Dr. Terry Armstrong, RODC, has developed criteria for the accreditation of OD / OB academic programs and we are now accrediting OD / OB programs that meet this criteria.
Dr. Donald W. Cole, RODC
Management / Clinical Psychologist
President and Founder of The Organization Development Institute - worldwide
