Organisation development, change and OD interventions
OD is a planned, organisation-wide effort to improve effectiveness using behavioural science. Lewin frames change as unfreeze, change, refreeze, and OD interventions target individuals, groups or the whole system.
Models of change
| Model | Author | Stages or idea |
|---|---|---|
| Three-step model | Kurt Lewin | Unfreeze, change (move), refreeze |
| Force-field analysis | Kurt Lewin | Driving forces vs restraining forces; reduce resisters rather than only push harder |
| Action research | Kurt Lewin (developed by French and Bell) | Diagnosis, feedback, joint action planning, action, evaluation, repeat |
| Eight-step model | John Kotter | Urgency, guiding coalition, vision, communicate, empower, short-term wins, consolidate, anchor in culture |
| ADKAR | Jeffrey Hiatt (Prosci) | Awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement |
| Leavitt's diamond | Harold Leavitt | Task, structure, technology and people are linked; change one and the others shift |
Resistance to change
- Individual sources: habit, security, economic fear, fear of the unknown, selective information processing.
- Organisational sources: structural inertia, limited focus of change, group inertia, threat to expertise, threat to power and resource allocation.
- Kotter and Schlesinger's six ways to overcome resistance: education and communication, participation, facilitation and support, negotiation, manipulation and co-optation, explicit and implicit coercion.
- Co-optation means giving resistance leaders a key role in the change decision so that they endorse it.
OD interventions by target
| Target | Interventions |
|---|---|
| Individual | Sensitivity (T-group) training, coaching, career and life planning, transactional analysis |
| Group | Team building, process consultation (Edgar Schein), role analysis technique (Dayal and Thomas), inter-group team building, third-party peacemaking (Richard Walton) |
| Organisation-wide | Survey feedback (Rensis Likert), Grid OD (Blake and Mouton, six phases), confrontation meeting (Richard Beckhard), appreciative inquiry |
| Techno-structural | Job enrichment, quality circles, TQM, work redesign, restructuring, sociotechnical systems |
| Strategic | Culture change, organisational learning, integration after mergers |
Two interventions NET often contrasts
Senge's five disciplines of a learning organisation: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning and systems thinking (the fifth discipline).
NET asks you to sequence Lewin's and Kotter's steps, match OD interventions with their authors, and classify interventions as individual, group or organisation-wide.
Typical MCQ: “What are the three steps of Lewin's change model?” Unfreeze, change (move), refreeze. Trap: Kotter's model has eight steps; do not mix the two.
Typical MCQ: “Who designed the confrontation meeting?” Richard Beckhard. Trap: process consultation is Schein's; survey feedback is linked with Likert.
Lewin melts, moves and sets: unfreeze, change, refreeze. Kotter starts with urgency and ends with culture.