MGT426 Questions

3 The Organization Development Practitioner

Learning objectives

• Discuss the roles and characteristics of OD practitioners.

• Describe the competencies required of effective OD practitioners.

• Compare the internal versus external OD practitioner.

• Understand the values and ethics guiding the practice of OD.

Chapters 1 and 2 provided an overview of the field of organization development and a description of the nature of planned change. This chapter extends that introduction by examining the people who perform organization development (OD). A closer look at OD practitioners can provide a more personal perspective on the field and can help us understand how and why OD relies so heavily on personal relationships between practitioners and organization members.

   Much of the literature about OD practitioners views them as internal or external consultants providing professional services—diagnosing systems, developing interventions, and helping to implement them. Perspectives that are more recent expand the practice scope to include professionals in related disciplines, such as industrial psychology, human resource management, and strategic management, as well as line managers who have learned how to carry out OD to change and develop their organizations.

   A great deal of opinion and some research studies have focused on the necessary skills and knowledge of an effective OD practitioner. Studies of the profession provide a comprehensive list of basic skills and knowledge that all effective OD practitioners must possess.

   Most of the relevant literature focuses on people specializing in OD as a profession and addresses their roles and careers. The OD practitioner's role can be described in relation to its position: internal to the organization, external to it, or in a team comprising both internal and external consultants. The OD practitioner's role can also be examined in terms of its marginality in organizations, of the emotional demands made on the practitioner, and of where it fits along a continuum from client-centered to consultant-centered functioning. Finally, organization development is an emerging profession providing alternative opportunities for gaining competence and developing a career. The stressful nature of helping professions, however, suggests that OD practitioners must cope with the possibility of professional burnout.

   As in other helping professions, such as medicine and law, values and ethics play an important role in guiding OD practice and in minimizing the chances that clients will be neglected or abused.

3-1 Who Is the Organization Development Practitioner?

Throughout this text, the term organization development practitioner refers to at least three sets of people. The most obvious group of OD practitioners are those people specializing in OD as a profession. They may be internal or external consultants who offer professional services to organizations, including their top managers, functional department heads, and staff groups. OD professionals traditionally have shared a common set of humanistic values promoting open communications, employee involvement, and personal growth and development. They tend to have common training, skills, and experience in the social processes of organizations (for example, group dynamics, decision making, and communications). In recent years, OD professionals have expanded those traditional values and skill sets to include more concern for organizational effectiveness, competitiveness, and bottom-line results, and greater attention to the technical, structural, and strategic parts of organizations. That expansion, mainly in response to the highly competitive demands facing modern organizations, has resulted in a more diverse set of OD professionals geared to helping organizations cope with those pressures.1

   The second set of people to whom the term OD practitioner applies are those specializing in fields related to OD, such as human resource management, organization design, quality control, information technology, and business strategy. These content-oriented fields increasingly are becoming integrated with OD's process orientation, particularly as OD projects have become more comprehensive, involving multiple features and varying parts of organizations. For example, the integrated strategic change intervention described in Chapter 18 and the dynamic strategy-making intervention presented in Chapter 21 are the result of marrying OD with business strategy.2 A growing number of professionals in these related fields are gaining experience and competence in OD, mainly through working with OD professionals on large-scale projects and through attending OD training sessions. Most of the large accounting firms, for example, diversified into management consulting and change management.3 In most cases, professionals in these related fields do not subscribe fully to traditional OD values, nor do they have extensive OD training and experience. Rather, they have formal training and experience in their respective specialties, such as industrial engineering, information systems, or corporate strategy. They are OD practitioners in the sense that they apply their special competence within an OD-like process, typically by engaging OD professionals and managers to design and implement change programs. They also practice OD when they apply their OD competence to their own specialties, thus spreading an OD perspective into such areas as compensation practices, work design, labor relations, and strategic planning.

   The third set of people to whom the term OD practitioner applies are the increasing number of managers and administrators who have gained competence in OD and who apply it to their own work areas. Studies and recent articles argue that OD increasingly is applied by managers rather than by OD professionals.4 Such studies suggest that the faster pace of change affecting organizations today is highlighting the centrality of the manager in managing change. Consequently, OD must become a general management skill. Along those lines, Kanter studied a growing number of firms, such as General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, and 3M, where managers and employees have become “change masters.”5 They have gained the expertise to introduce change and innovation into the organization.

   Managers tend to gain competence in OD through interacting with OD professionals in actual change programs. This on-the-job training frequently is supplemented with more formal OD training, such as the various workshops offered by the National Training Laboratories (NTL), USC's Center for Effective Organizations, the Center for Creative Leadership, the Gestalt Institute, UCLA's Extension Service, the Tavistock Institute, the Institute for Socio-Economic Enterprises (ISEOR), and others. Line managers increasingly are attending such external programs. Moreover, a growing number of organizations, including Capital One, Disney, and General Electric, have instituted in-house training programs for managers to learn how to develop and change their work units. As managers gain OD competence, they become its most basic practitioners.

   In practice, the distinctions among the three sets of OD practitioners are blurring. A growing number of managers have transferred, either temporarily or permanently, into the OD profession. For example, companies such as Procter & Gamble have trained and rotated managers into full-time OD roles so that they can gain skills and experience needed for higher-level management positions. Also, it is increasingly common to find managers and staff specialists using their experience in OD to become external consultants. More OD practitioners are gaining professional competence in related specialties, such as business process reengineering, reward systems, and strategic planning. Conversely, many specialists in those related areas are achieving professional competence in OD. Cross-training and integration are producing a more comprehensive and complex kind of OD practitioner—one with a greater diversity of values, skills, and experience than a traditional practitioner.

3-2 Competencies of an Effective Organization Development Practitioner

The literature about OD competencies reveals a mixture of personality traits, experiences, knowledge, and skills presumed to lead to effective practice. For example, research on the characteristics of successful change practitioners yields the following list of attributes and abilities: diagnostic ability, basic knowledge of behavioral science techniques, empathy, knowledge of the theories and methods within the consultant's own discipline, goal-setting ability, problem-solving ability, ability to perform self-assessment, ability to see things objectively, imagination, flexibility, honesty, consistency, and trust.6 Although these qualities and skills are laudable, there has been relatively little consensus or research about their importance to effective OD practice.

   Two projects have sought to define, categorize, and prioritize the skills and knowledge required of OD practitioners. In the first effort, a broad group of well-known practitioners and researchers were asked to review and update a list of professional competencies. This survey resulted in a list of 187 statements in nine areas of OD practice, including entry, start-up, assessment and feedback, action planning, intervention, evaluation, adoption, separation, and general competencies.7 The statements ranged from “staying centered in the present, focusing on the ongoing process” and “understanding and explaining how diversity will affect the diagnosis of the culture” to “basing change on business strategy and business needs” and “being comfortable with quantum leaps, radical shifts, and paradigm changes.” Other items added to the list relate to international OD, large group interventions, and transorganization skills.

   To understand the relative importance of this long list, Worley and his colleagues collected data from 364 OD practitioners.8 The average respondent had about eight years of OD experience, a master's degree, and came from the United States. The results suggested an underlying structure to the list. Twenty-three competencies were generated that reflected both the skills and knowledge necessary to conduct planned change processes and the individual characteristics necessary to be an effective OD practitioner. Similar to other lists, the competencies included the ability to evaluate change, work with large-scale change efforts, create implementation plans, and manage diversity. One of the more surprising results, however, was the emergence of “self mastery” as the most important competence. The results supported the long-held belief that good OD practitioners know themselves and that such knowledge forms the basis of effective practice.

   The second project, sponsored by the Organization Development and Change Division of the Academy of Management,9 sought to develop a list of competencies to guide curriculum development in graduate OD programs. More than 40 OD practitioners and researchers worked to develop the two competency lists shown in Table 3.1. First, foundation competencies are oriented toward descriptions of an existing system. They include knowledge from organization behavior, psychology, group dynamics, management and organization theory, research methods, and business practices. Second, core competencies are aimed at how systems change over time. They include knowledge of organization design, organization research, system dynamics, OD history, and theories and models for change; they also involve the skills needed to manage the consulting process, to analyze and diagnose systems, to design and choose interventions, to facilitate processes, to develop clients' capability to manage their own change, and to evaluate organization change.

   The information in Table 3.1 applies primarily to people specializing in OD as a profession. For them, possessing the listed knowledge and skills seems reasonable, especially in light of the growing diversity and complexity of interventions in OD. Gaining competence in those areas may take considerable time and effort, and it is questionable whether the other two types of OD practitioners—managers and specialists in related fields—also need that full range of skills and knowledge. It seems more reasonable to suggest that some subset of the items listed in Table 3.1 should apply to all OD practitioners, whether they are OD professionals, managers, or related specialists. Those items would constitute the practitioner's basic skills and knowledge. Beyond that background, the three types of OD practitioners likely would differ in areas of concentration. OD professionals would extend their breadth of skills across the remaining categories in Table 3.1; managers would focus on the functional knowledge of business areas; and related specialists would concentrate on skills in their respective areas.

   Based on the data in Table 3.1 and the other studies available, all OD practitioners should have the following basic skills and knowledge to be effective.

3-2a Intrapersonal Skills or “Self-Management” Competence

Despite the growing knowledge base and sophistication of the field, organization development is still a human craft. As the primary instrument of diagnosis and change, practitioners often must process complex, ambiguous information and make informed judgments about its relevance to organizational issues.

   The core competency of analysis and diagnosis listed in Table 3.1 includes the ability to inquire into one's self, and as noted above, it remains one of the cornerstone skills in OD.10 Practitioners must have the personal centering to know their own values, feelings, and purposes as well as the integrity to behave responsibly in a helping relationship with others. Bob Tannenbaum, one of the founders of OD, argued that self-knowledge is the most central ingredient in OD practice and suggested that practitioners are becoming too enamored with skills and techniques.11 There are data to support his view. A study of 416 OD practitioners found that 47% agreed with the statement, “Many of the new entrants into the field have little understanding of or appreciation for the history or values underlying the field.”12 Because OD is a highly uncertain process requiring constant adjustment and innovation, practitioners must have active learning skills and a reasonable balance between their rational and emotional sides. Finally, OD practice can be highly stressful and can lead to early burnout, so practitioners need to know how to manage their own stress.

3-2b Interpersonal Skills

Practitioners must create and maintain effective relationships with individuals and groups within the organization and help them gain the competence necessary to solve their own problems. Table 3.1 identifies group dynamics, comparative cultural perspectives, and business functions as foundation knowledge, and managing the consulting process and facilitation as core skills. All of these interpersonal competencies promote effective helping relationships. Such relationships start with a grasp of the organization's perspective and require listening to members' perceptions and feelings to understand how they see themselves and the organization—a process called “active listening.” This understanding provides a starting point for joint diagnosis and problem solving. Practitioners must establish trust and rapport with organization members so that they can share pertinent information and work effectively together. This requires being able to converse in members' own language and to give and receive feedback about how the relationship is progressing.

   To help members learn new skills and behaviors, practitioners must serve as role models of what is expected. They must act in ways that are credible to organization members and provide them with the counseling and coaching necessary to develop and change. Because the helping relationship is jointly determined, practitioners need to be able to negotiate an acceptable role and to manage changing expectations and demands.

3-2c General Consultation Skills

Table 3.1 identifies the ability to manage the consulting process and the ability to design interventions as core competencies that all OD practitioners should possess. OD starts with diagnosing an organization or department to understand its current functioning and to discover areas for further development. OD practitioners need to know how to carry out an effective diagnosis, at least at a rudimentary level. They should know how to engage organization members in diagnosis, how to help them ask the right questions, and how to collect and analyze information. A manager, for example, should be able to work with subordinates to determine jointly the organization's or department's strengths or problems. The manager should know basic diagnostic questions (see Chapter 5), some methods for gathering information, such as interviews or surveys, and some techniques for analyzing it, such as force-field analysis or statistical means and distributions (see Chapter 6).

   In addition to diagnosis, OD practitioners should know how to design and execute an intervention. They need to be able to define an action plan and to gain commitment to the program. They also need to know how to tailor the intervention to the situation, using information about how the change is progressing to guide implementation (see Chapter 9). For example, managers should be able to develop action steps for an intervention with subordinates. They should be able to gain their commitment to the program (usually through participation), sit down with them, assess how it is progressing, and make modifications if necessary.

3-2d Organization Development Theory

The last basic tool OD practitioners should have is a general knowledge of organization development, such as is presented in this book. They should have some appreciation for planned change, the action research model, and the positive approaches to managing change. They should be familiar with the range of available interventions and the need for evaluating change programs. Perhaps most important is that OD practitioners should understand their own role in the emerging field of organization development, whether it is as an OD professional, a manager, or a specialist in a related area.

3-3 The Professional Organization Development Practitioner

Most of the literature about OD practitioners has focused on people specializing in OD as a profession. In this section, we discuss the role and typical career paths of OD professionals.

3-3a Role of Organization Development Professional Positions

Organization development professionals have positions that are either internal or external to the organization. Internal consultants are members of the organization and may be located in the human resources department or report directly to a line manager. They may perform the OD role exclusively, or they may combine it with other tasks, such as compensation practices, training, or employee relations.13 Many large organizations, such as Boeing, Raytheon, Disney, Microsoft, Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Weyerhaeuser, Kimberly-Clark, and Citigroup, have created specialized OD consulting groups. These internal consultants typically have a variety of clients within the organization, serving both line and staff departments.

   External consultants are not members of the client organization; they typically work for a consulting firm, a university, or themselves. Organizations generally hire external consultants to provide a particular expertise that is unavailable internally, to bring a different and potentially more objective perspective into the organization development process, or to signal shifts in power.14 Table 3.2 describes the differences between these two roles at each stage of the action research process.15

TABLE 3.2 The Differences between External and Internal Consulting

   During the entry process, internal consultants have clear advantages. They have ready access to and relationships with clients, know the language of the organization, and have insights about the root cause of many of its problems. This allows internal consultants to save time in identifying the organization's culture, informal practices, and sources of power. They have access to a variety of information, including rumors, company reports, and direct observations. In addition, entry is more efficient and congenial, and their pay is not at risk. External consultants, however, have the advantage of being able to select the clients they want to work with according to their own criteria. The contracting phase is less formal for internal consultants and there is less worry about expenses, but there is less choice about whether to complete the assignment. Both types of consultants must address issues of confidentiality, risk project termination (and other negative consequences) by the client, and fill a third-party role.

   During the diagnosis process, internal consultants already know many organization members and enjoy a basic level of rapport and trust. But external consultants often have higher status than internal consultants, which enables them to probe difficult issues and assess the organization more objectively. In the intervention phase, both types of consultants must rely on valid information, free and informed choice, and internal commitment for their success.16 However, internal consultants' strong ties to the organization may make them overly cautious, particularly when powerful others can affect a career. Internal consultants also may lack certain skills and experience in facilitating organizational change. Insiders may have some small advantages in being able to move around the system and cross key organizational boundaries. Finally, the measures of success and reward differ from those of the external practitioner in the evaluation process.

   A promising approach to having the advantages of both internal and external OD consultants is to include them both as members of an internal-external consulting team.17 External consultants can combine their special expertise and objectivity with the inside knowledge and acceptance of internal consultants. The two parties can use complementary consulting skills while sharing the workload and possibly accomplishing more than either would by operating alone. Internal consultants, for example, can provide almost continuous contact with the client, and their external counterparts can provide specialized services periodically, such as two or three days each month. External consultants also can help train their organization partners, thus transferring OD skills and knowledge to the organization.

   Although little has been written on internal-external consulting teams, studies suggest that the effectiveness of such teams depends on members developing strong, supportive, collegial relationships. They need to take time to develop the consulting team, confronting individual differences and establishing appropriate roles and relationships. Members need to provide each other with continuous feedback and also make a commitment to learn from each other. In the absence of these team-building and learning activities, internal-external consulting teams can be more troublesome and less effective than either internal or external consultants working alone.

   Application 3.1 provides a personal, first-person account of the internal and external consulting positions as well as interactions between them.18

Marginality A promising line of research on the professional OD role centers on the issue of marginality.19 The marginal person is one who successfully straddles the boundary between two or more groups with differing goals, value systems, and behavior patterns. Whereas in the past, the marginal role always was seen as dysfunctional, marginality now is seen in a more positive light. There are many examples of marginal roles in organizations: the salesperson, the buyer, the first-line supervisor, the integrator, and the project manager.

   Evidence is mounting that some people are better at taking marginal roles than are others. Those who are good at it seem to have personal qualities of low dogmatism, neutrality, open-mindedness, objectivity, flexibility, and adaptable information-processing ability. Rather than being upset by conflict, ambiguity, and stress, they thrive on it. Individuals with marginal orientations are more likely than others to develop integrative decisions that bring together and reconcile viewpoints among opposing organizational groups and are more likely to remain neutral in controversial situations. Thus, research suggests that the marginal role can have positive effects when it is filled by a person with a marginal orientation. Such a person can be more objective and better able to perform successfully in linking, integrative, or conflict-laden roles.20

application 3.1 PERSONAL VIEWS OF THE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CONSULTING POSITIONS

THE INTERNAL CONSULTANT'S VIEW

I am an agent of change. I am also a member of this organization. I was hired for my OD skills, but also for the fact that I was seen as a “cultural fit.” Sometimes I struggle between my dual roles of “team member” and “free radical.” After all, it is my job to disrupt the status quo around here, helping leaders to find ways to make the organization more effective.

   I have the great advantage of knowing and understanding how my organization works—its processes, policies, norms, and areas of resistance. I can usually anticipate how difficult a given change will be for members of the organization, and where the resistance will come from. Because I believe in the mission of my organization, I am able to cope with the inevitable challenges of the change process. Still, I am frequently a magnet for resistance and a receptacle of institutional anxiety. While I understand how people can be frustrated and frightened by change, it can still be difficult for me to bear the disruption I help to create.

   To keep myself sharp and healthy, I breathe, run, meditate, and read. I take every learning opportunity that comes my way, and work diligently to create and maintain a network of colleagues who can support me through the rough patches. I find that my best support comes not from friends, but from people who know and understand the hard work of planned change.

   As an internal consultant, I have exposure to many of the same people over time—executives, managers, and employees get to know who I am and what I do. I get to know who they are and what they do. I have the opportunity to leverage my executive relationships from project to project; over time the executives here have come to understand my work and trust my skills as a consultant. This understanding and trust saves us time and energy each time we work together. Of course, I realize that if I fail one of my executive clients, my life in this organization could become less pleasant. That can stress me out when I'm working on a messy or unpopular project. After all, my performance review is affected by client feedback, and my compensation is tied to people's perceptions of my performance. This can make it difficult to press forward with risky interventions. I am proud of my reputation around here—proud of the fact that I have built solid relationships at the executive level, that managers respect my work, and that employees value having me in the organization. Still, I am ever aware that I must walk the fine line between “respected insider” and “paid agitator.”

   Sometimes I'm lonely—often I'm the only OD person working in an organization; sometimes there are two or more of us, but we're always spread so thin that connecting is difficult and truly supporting one another is virtually impossible. I may work with other staff people—HR for instance—but they don't always understand my role and can't really relate to my challenges. Sometimes they can be resentful of my relationship with the client, which makes me feel alienated. I enjoy my client groups, but I must be careful not to over-identify with them; the greatest value I bring to my clients is a clean “outsider” perspective. I can't do hard change efforts with them if I'm worried about them liking me. Being a lone ranger can be thrilling, but being an outsider can get tiring.

   Occasionally I bring in an external consultant to work on a specific project or problem in my organization. This can be both challenging and rewarding for me. It is time-consuming to bring an outsider up to speed on my organization's business, processes, and politics. I seek external consultants who will fit in our culture, while helping us see our issues more clearly and realistically. I enjoy the process of partnering with people who have exposure to other organizations, who possess different skills and strengths from mine, and who understand the inherent discomfort of the change process. Still, this can be risky, because my reputation will be affected by this person's work and the outcomes we are able to achieve. When it works best, my partnership with the external consultant leads to improved effectiveness for my organization, while affording me a valued learning opportunity and professional support.

   The best thing to me about being an internal consultant is knowing that I am contributing to the mission of my organization with every client I work with, every day.

THE EXTERNAL CONSULTANT'S VIEW

I am an agent of change. I work for many different organizations of varying sizes with different missions and goals. I spend most of my time helping managers, HR people, and internal consultants initiate and manage change—both planned and unplanned. I enjoy the variety in my work and the learning that comes from seeing the way change happens in different organizations and contexts.

   But it is hard being an “outsider.” I must work quickly to understand each new organization I work with. As an outsider it can be frustrating to navigate the inner workings of the organization—its politics, pecking order, and culture—and to root out what's important and what's not. In my role, I'm not around while the unglamorous, time-consuming, and important work of nurturing a change along is being done. So, although I experience the risk and excitement of some part of the change, I do not always get to experience the whole change process from start to finish. I rarely get to see the project bear fruit and the organization become more effective as a result of the work I've done. Sometimes the process feels incomplete, and I almost always wonder how much I've actually helped.

   Being an external consultant is both rewarding and risky work. On the one hand, I am seen as an expert. I am appreciated for my assistance, applauded for my knowledge, and liked for my interpersonal skills. I have the benefit of many revenue sources, so I'm never overly dependent on one client. I am often rewarded handsomely for my time and effort, although most people mistake “daily fee” as actual income and forget about self-employment taxes and the health benefits I have to pay myself. The other truth is that I am always at risk—economic crises, budget cuts, personnel changes, executive shake ups, organizational politics, and the occasional hostile HR person are but a few of the land mines an external consultant faces. For the most part, I feel pleased and rewarded for my work as a consultant. But I always know that my situation is dependent on my client's situation, and I can never afford to get too comfortable.

   When I'm hired by an executive or manager, sometimes the HR person or internal consultant may be resistant, feeling threatened by my presence. When this happens, I have to find ways to address their concern, partner with them, and still do the important work of organizational change. Sometimes just creating space for the conversation by using simple probes—”You seem very concerned about this situation” or “You must feel pretty unsupported right now”—help me uncover their discomfort so we can move forward. Sometimes these relationships are difficult throughout the engagement. It's the downside of being brought in as an “expert.”

   I am asked by clients to perform a wide variety of tasks ranging from content expert to process expert to personal coach. Regardless of the request, however, I am frequently aware of an unspoken need on the part of the client—manager, HR person, or internal consultant—to have me support his or her project, position, or person. When the request is to support a project, it is usually clear. When the request is to support a position, it is less clear but typically surfaces during the course of our work together. However, when the request is to support the individual personally, the request is almost never overt. This is where my self-as-instrument work serves me best, helping me to understand the unspoken—the question behind the question. While my goal is always to help my client organizations become more effective, I never forget that change can happen many different ways and at multiple levels of the system. It is my work to be aware of opportunities to intervene, and to have the skill and courage to do so as an outsider.

   A study of both external and internal OD practitioners showed that external professionals were more comfortable with the marginal role than were internal professionals. Internal consultants with more years of experience were more marginally oriented than were those with less experience.21 These findings, combined with other research on marginal roles, suggest the importance of maintaining the OD practitioner's marginality, with its flexibility, independence, and boundary-spanning characteristics.

Emotional Demands The OD practitioner role is emotionally demanding. Research and practice support the importance of understanding emotions and their impact on the practitioner's effectiveness.22 The research on “emotional intelligence” in organizations suggests a set of abilities that can aid OD practitioners in conducting successful change efforts. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize and express emotions appropriately, to use emotions in thought and decisions, and to regulate emotion in one's self and in others.23 It is, therefore, a different kind of intelligence from problem-solving ability, engineering aptitude, or the knowledge of concepts. In tandem with traditional knowledge and skill, emotional intelligence affects and supplements rational thought; emotions help prioritize thinking by directing attention to important information not addressed in models and theories. In that sense, some researchers argue that emotional intelligence is as important as cognitive intelligence.24

   Reports from OD practitioners support the importance of emotional intelligence in practice. From the client's perspective, OD practitioners must understand emotions well enough to relate to and help organization members address resistance, commitment, and ambiguity at each stage of planned change. Despite the predominant focus on rationality and efficiency, almost any change process must address important and difficult issues that raise emotions such as the fear of failure and of the unknown, rejection, anxiety, and anger.25 OD practitioners can provide psychological support, model appropriate emotional expression, reframe client perspectives, and provide resources. OD practitioners must also understand their own emotions. Ambiguity, unfamiliarity, or denial of emotions can lead to inaccurate and untimely interventions. For example, a practitioner who is uncomfortable with conflict may intervene to defuse an argument between two managers because of the discomfort he or she feels, not because the conflict is destructive. In such a case, the practitioner is acting to address a personal need rather than intervening to improve the system's effectiveness.

   Evidence suggests that emotional intelligence increases with age and experience.26 Research also supports the conclusion that competence with emotions can be developed through personal growth processes such as sensitivity training, counseling, and therapy. It seems reasonable to suggest that professional OD practitioners dedicate themselves to a long-term regimen of development that includes acquiring both cognitive learning and emotional intelligence.

Use of Knowledge and Experience The professional OD role has been described in terms of a continuum ranging from client-centered (using the client's knowledge and experience) to consultant-centered (using the consultant's knowledge and experience), as shown in Figure 3.1. Traditionally, OD consultants have worked at the client-centered end of the continuum. Organization development professionals, relying mainly on process consultation and team building (see Chapter 10), have been expected to remain neutral, refusing to offer expert advice on organizational problems. Rather than contracting to solve specific problems, the consultant has tended to work with organization members to identify problems and potential solutions, to help them study what they are doing now and consider alternative behaviors and solutions, and to help them discover whether, in fact, the consultant and they can learn to do things better. In doing that, the OD professional has generally listened and reflected upon members' perceptions and ideas and helped clarify and interpret their communications and behaviors.The recent proliferation of OD interventions in the structural, human resource management, and strategy areas has expanded that limited definition of the professional OD role to include the consultant-centered end of the continuum. In many of the newer approaches, the consultant may have to take on a modified role of expert, with the consent and collaboration of organization members. For example, managers trying to bring about a major structural redesign (see Chapter 12) may not have the appropriate knowledge and expertise to create and manage the change and need the help of an OD practitioner with experience in this area. The consultant's role might be to present the basic concepts and ideas and then to work jointly with the managers to select an approach that might be useful to the organization and to decide how it might best be implemented. In this situation, the OD professional recommends or prescribes particular changes and is active in planning how to implement them. This expertise, however, is always shared rather than imposed.

   With the development of new and varied intervention approaches, the OD professional's role needs to be seen as falling along the entire continuum from client-centered to consultant-centered. At times, the consultant will rely mainly on organization members' knowledge and experiences to identify and solve problems. At other times, it will be more appropriate to take on the role of an expert, withdrawing from that role as managers gain more knowledge and experience.

3-3b Careers of Organization Development Professionals

In contrast to such long-standing occupations as medicine and law, organization development is an emerging practice, still developing the characteristics of an established profession: a common body of knowledge, educational requirements, a recognized code of ethics, and rules and methods for governing conduct. People enter professional OD careers from various educational and work backgrounds. Because they do not have to follow an established career path, they have some choice about when to enter or leave an OD career and whether to be an internal or external consultant.27

   Despite the looseness or flexibility of the field, most professionals have had specific training in OD. That training can include relatively short courses (one day to two weeks), programs, and workshops conducted within organizations or at outside institutions (such as NTL, USC, University Associates, Columbia University, the University of Michigan, Stanford University, and UCLA). OD training also can be more formal and lengthy, including master's programs (for example, at Pepperdine University, American University, Benedictine University, Bowling Green State University, Case Western Reserve University, Loyola University, and the Fielding Institute) and doctoral training (for example, at Benedictine University, Case Western Reserve University, Columbia University Teachers College, the Fielding Institute, and George Washington University).

   As might be expected, career choices widen as people gain training and experience in OD. Those with rudimentary training tend to be internal consultants, often taking on OD roles as temporary assignments on the way to higher managerial or staff positions. Holders of master's degrees generally are evenly split between internal and external consultants. Those with doctorates may join a university faculty and do consulting part-time, join a consulting firm, or seek a position as a relatively high-level internal consultant.

   External consultants tend to be older, to have more managerial experience, and to spend more of their time in OD than do internal practitioners. However, one study suggested there were no differences between internal and external consultants in pay or years of consulting experience.28 Perhaps the most common career path is to begin as an internal consultant, gain experience and visibility through successful interventions or publishing, and then become an external consultant A field study found that internal consultants acquired greater competence by working with external consultants who purposely helped develop them. This development took place through a tutorial arrangement of joint diagnosis and intervention in the organization, which gave the internal consultants a chance to observe and learn from the model furnished by the external consultants.29

   There is increasing evidence that an OD career can be stressful, sometimes leading to burnout.30 Burnout comes from taking on too many jobs, becoming overcommitted, and generally working too hard. The number one complaint of OD practitioners is constant traveling.31 OD work often requires six-day work weeks, with some days running as long as 15 hours. Consultants may spend a week working with one organization or department and then spend the weekend preparing for the next client. They may spend 50%-75% of their time on the road, living in planes, cars, hotels, meetings, and restaurants. Indeed, one practitioner has suggested that the majority of OD consultants would repeat the phrase “quality of work life for consultants” this way: “Quality of work life? For consultants?”32

   OD professionals increasingly are taking steps to cope with burnout. They may shift jobs, moving from external to internal roles to gain more predictable hours or avoid travel. They may learn to pace themselves better and to avoid taking on too much work. Many are engaging in fitness and health programs and are using stress-management techniques, such as those described in Chapter 17.

3-4 Professional Values

Values have played an important role in organization development from its beginning. Traditionally, OD professionals have promoted a set of humanistic values, including a concern for open inquiry, democratic principles, and personal well-being.33 They have sought to help organizations build trust and collaboration among members, an open, problem-solving climate, and member self-control. More recently, OD practitioners have added to those humanistic values a concern for improving organizational effectiveness (for example, to increase productivity or to reduce turnover) and environmental sustainability (for example, to reduce the organization's carbon imprint). They have shown an increasing desire to promote human, economic, and ecological values in practicing OD.34

   The values of humanizing organizations, improving their effectiveness, and sustaining the environment have received widespread support in the OD profession as well as increasing encouragement from executives, employees, labor leaders, government officials, and global organizations such as NATO. Indeed, it would be difficult not to support those joint concerns. However, in practice, OD professionals face serious challenges in simultaneously promoting human, economic, and ecological values.35 More practitioners are experiencing situations in which there is conflict between employees' needs for greater meaning and the organization's need for more effective and efficient use of its resources. For example, expensive capital equipment may run most efficiently if it is highly programmed and routinized, but people may not derive satisfaction from working with such technology. Should efficiency be maximized at the expense of people's satisfaction? Can technology be changed to make it more humanly satisfying while remaining efficient? What compromises are possible? How do these trade-offs shift when they are applied in different regional cultures? These value dilemmas are inherent in trying to optimize human benefits, organizational effectiveness, and environmental sustainability.

   In addition to value issues within organizations, OD practitioners are dealing more and more with value conflicts with powerful outside groups. Organizations are open systems and exist within increasingly turbulent environments. For example, hospitals are facing complex and changing task environments. This has led to a proliferation of external stakeholders with interests in the organization's functioning, including patients, suppliers, medical groups, insurance companies, employers, the government, stockholders, unions, the press, and various interest groups. Those external groups often have different and competing values for judging the organization's effectiveness. For example, stockholders may judge the firm in terms of earnings per share, the government in terms of compliance with equal employment opportunity legislation, patients in terms of quality of care, and ecology groups in terms of hazardous waste disposal. Because organizations must rely on these external groups for resources and legitimacy, they cannot simply ignore these competing values. They must somehow respond to them and try to reconcile the different interests.

   Recent attempts to help firms manage external relationships suggest the need for new interventions and competence in OD.36 Practitioners must have not only social skills like those proposed in Table 3.1 but also political skills. They must understand the distribution of power, conflicts of interest, and value dilemmas inherent in managing external relationships, and be able to manage their own role and values with respect to those dynamics. Research suggests this is especially true in interorganizational and international applications of OD.37 Interventions promoting collaboration and trust may be ineffective in this larger arena, especially when there are power and dominance relationships among organizations and competition for scarce resources. Under those conditions, OD practitioners may need more power-oriented interventions, such as bargaining, coalition forming, and pressure tactics, which traditionally have not been associated with OD.

   For example, organizations are coming under increasing pressure to align their practices with ecologically sound principles. Popular and scientific concerns over global warming, toxic waste, and natural resource depletion each have formidable nonprofit groups, citizen action committees, and professional lobbyists representing them. In addition, an increasing number of consulting firms are marketing services to help organizations achieve a more sustainable relationship with the environment. In response, more and more firms have “gone green,” announced contributions to environmental funds, and created alliances with environmental, nongovernmental groups. Critics argue that these changes are more window-dressing than real, more political than operational, and more public relations than substantive. To be fair, a growing number of organizations are making important changes in their business practices, strategies, and resource allocations. As a result, the relationships between organizations and environmental groups range from benign to hostile to collaborative. OD practitioners increasingly may need to help organizations manage these relationships and implement strategies to manage their constituencies effectively. That effort will require political skills and greater attention to how the OD practitioner's own values fit with those of the organization.

3-5 Professional Ethics

Ethical issues in OD are concerned with how practitioners perform their helping relationship with organization members. Inherent in any helping relationship is the potential for misconduct and client abuse. OD practitioners can let personal values stand in the way of good practice, use the power inherent in their professional role to abuse (often unintentionally) organization members, or favor one group of stakeholders at the expense of other stakeholders.

3-5a Ethical Guidelines

To its credit, the field of OD always has shown concern for the ethical conduct of its practitioners. There have been several articles and symposia about ethics in OD.38 In addition, statements of ethics governing OD practice have been sponsored by the American Society for Training & Development (www.astd.org), Organization Development International (www.theodinstitute.org/od-library/code_of_ethics.htm), and a consortium of professional associations in OD. The consortium has sponsored an ethical code derived from a large-scale project conducted at the Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The project's purposes included preparing critical incidents describing ethical dilemmas and using that material for preprofessional and continuing education in OD; providing an empirical basis for a statement of values and ethics for OD professionals; and initiating a process for making the ethics of OD practice explicit on a continuing basis.39 The ethical guidelines from that project appear in the appendix to this chapter.

3-5b Ethical Dilemmas

Although adherence to statements of ethics helps prevent the occurrence of ethical problems, OD practitioners still encounter ethical dilemmas. Figure 3.2 is a process model that explains how ethical dilemmas can occur in OD. The antecedent conditions include an OD practitioner and a client system with different goals, values, needs, skills, and abilities. The entry and contracting phase of planned change is intended to address and clarify these differences. As a practical matter, however, it is unreasonable to assume that all of the differences will be identified and resolved. Under such circumstances, the subsequent intervention process or role episode is almost certainly subject to role conflict and role ambiguity. Neither the client nor the OD practitioner is clear about respective responsibilities. Each party is pursuing different goals, and each is using different skills and values to achieve those goals. The role conflict and ambiguity may produce five types of ethical dilemmas: misrepresentation, misuse of data, coercion, value and goal conflict, and technical ineptness.

Misrepresentation Misrepresentation occurs when OD practitioners claim that an intervention will produce results that are unreasonable for the change program or the situation. The client can contribute to the problem by portraying inaccurate goals and needs. In either case, one or both parties are operating under false pretenses and an ethical dilemma exists. For example, in an infamous case called “The Undercover Change Agent,” an attempt was made to use sensitivity training in an organization whose top management did not understand it and was not ready for it. The OD consultant sold this interpersonally intense intervention as the activity that would solve the problems facing the organization. After the president of the firm made a surprise visit to the site where the training was being held, the consultant was fired because the nature and style of the sensitivity training was in direct contradiction to the president's concepts about leadership.40 Misrepresentation is likely to occur in the entering and contracting phases of planned change when the initial consulting relationship is being established. To prevent misrepresentation, OD practitioners need to gain clarity about the goals of the change effort, and to explore openly with the client its expected effects, its relevance to the client system, and the practitioner's competence in executing the intervention.

Misuse of Data Misuse of data occurs when information gathered during the OD process is used punitively. Large amounts of information are invariably obtained during the entry and diagnostic phases of OD. Although most OD practitioners value openness and trust, it is important that they be aware of how such data are going to be used. It is a human tendency to use data to enhance a power position. Openness is one thing, but leaking inappropriate information can be harmful to individuals and to the organization. It is easy for a consultant, under the guise of obtaining information, to gather data about whether a particular manager is good or bad. When, how, or if this information can be used is an ethical dilemma not easily resolved. To minimize misuse of data, practitioners should reach agreement up front with organization members about how data collected during the change process will be used. This agreement should be reviewed periodically in light of changing circumstances.

Coercion Coercion occurs when organization members are forced to participate in an OD intervention. People should have the freedom to choose whether to participate in a change program if they are to gain self-reliance to solve their own problems. In team building, for example, team members should have the option of deciding not to become involved in the intervention. Management should not decide unilaterally that team building is good for members. However, freedom to make a choice requires knowledge about OD. Many organization members have little information about OD interventions, what they involve, and the nature and consequences of becoming involved with them. This makes it imperative for OD practitioners to educate clients about interventions before choices are made for implementing them.

   Coercion also can pose ethical dilemmas for the helping relationship between OD practitioners and organization members. Inherent in any helping relationship are possibilities for excessive manipulation and dependency, two facets of coercion. Kelman pointed out that behavior change “inevitably involves some degree of manipulation and control, and at least an implicit imposition of the change agent's values on the client or the person he [or she] is influencing.”41 This places the practitioner on two horns of a dilemma: (1) Any attempt to change is in itself a change and thereby a manipulation, no matter how slight and (2) there exists no formula or method to structure a change situation so that such manipulation can be totally avoided. To attack the first aspect of the dilemma, Kelman stressed freedom of choice, seeing any action that limits freedom of choice as being ethically ambiguous or worse. To address the second aspect, Kelman argued that the OD practitioner must remain keenly aware of her or his own value system and alert to the possibility that those values are being imposed on a client. In other words, an effective way to resolve this dilemma is to make the change effort as open as possible, with the free consent and knowledge of the individuals involved.

   The second facet of coercion that can pose ethical dilemmas for the helping relationship involves dependency. Helping relationships invariably create dependency between those who need help and those who provide it.42 A major goal in OD is to lessen clients' dependency on consultants by helping clients gain the knowledge and skills to address organizational problems and manage change themselves. In some cases, however, achieving independence from OD practitioners can result in clients being either counterdependent or overdependent, especially in the early stages of the relationship. To resolve dependency issues, consultants can openly and explicitly discuss with the client how to handle the dependency problem, especially what the client and consultant expect of one another. Another approach is to focus on problem finding. Usually, the client is looking for a solution to a perceived problem. The consultant can redirect the energy to improved joint diagnosis so that both are working on problem identification and problem solving. Such action moves the energy of the client away from dependency. Finally, dependency can be reduced by changing the client's expectation from being helped or controlled by the practitioner to a greater focus on the need to manage the problem. Such a refocusing can reinforce the understanding that the consultant is working for the client and offering assistance that is at the client's discretion.

Value and Goal Conflict This ethical conflict occurs when the purpose of the change effort is not clear or when the client and the practitioner disagree over how to achieve the goals. The important practical issue for OD consultants is whether it is justifiable to withhold services unilaterally from an organization that does not agree with their values or methods. OD pioneer Gordon Lippitt suggested that the real question is the following: Assuming that some kind of change is going to occur anyway, doesn't the consultant have a responsibility to try to guide the change in the most constructive fashion possible?43 That question may be of greater importance and relevance to an internal consultant or to a consultant who already has an ongoing relationship with the client.

   Argyris takes an even stronger stand, maintaining that the responsibilities of professional OD practitioners to clients are comparable to those of lawyers or physicians, who, in principle, may not refuse to perform their services. He suggests that the very least the consultant can do is to provide “first aid” to the organization, as long as the assistance does not compromise the consultant's values. Argyris suggests that if the Ku Klux Klan asked for assistance and the consultant could at least determine whether the KKK was genuinely interested in assessing itself and willing to commit itself to all that a valid assessment would entail concerning both itself and other groups, the consultant should be willing to help. If later the Klan's objectives proved to be less than honestly stated, the consultant would be free to withdraw without being compromised.44

Technical Ineptness This final ethical dilemma occurs when OD practitioners try to implement interventions for which they are not skilled or when the client attempts a change for which it is not ready. Critical to the success of any OD program is the selection of an appropriate intervention, which depends, in turn, on careful diagnosis of the organization. Selecting an intervention is closely related to the practitioner's own values, skills, and abilities. In solving organizational problems, many OD consultants emphasize a favorite intervention or technique, such as team building, total quality management, or self-managed teams. They let their own values and beliefs dictate the change method.45 Technical ineptness dilemmas also can occur when interventions do not align with the ability of the organization to implement them. Again, careful diagnosis can reveal the extent to which the organization is ready to make a change and possesses the skills and knowledge to implement it.

   Application 3.2 presents an ethical dilemma that arises frequently in OD consulting.46 What points in the process represent practical opportunities to intervene? Do you agree with Todd's resolution to the problem? What other options did she have?

application 3.2 KINDRED TODD AND THE ETHICS OF OD

Kindred Todd had just finished her master's degree in organization development and had landed her first consulting position with a small consulting company in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The president, Larry Stepchuck, convinced Todd that his growing organization offered her a great opportunity to learn the business. He had a large number of contacts, an impressive executive career, and several years of consulting experience behind him.

   In fact, the firm was growing; adding new clients and projects as fast as its president could hire consultants. A few weeks after Todd was hired, Stepchuck assigned her to a new client, a small oil and gas company. “I've met with the client for several hours,” he told her. “They are an important and potentially large opportunity for our firm. They're looking to us to help them address some long-range planning issues. From the way they talk, they could also use some continuous quality improvement work as well.”

   As Todd prepared for her initial meeting with the client, she reviewed financial data from the firm's annual report, examined trends in the client's industry, and thought about the issues that young firms face. Stepchuck indicated that Todd would first meet with the president of the firm to discuss initial issues and next steps.

   When Todd walked into the president's office, she was greeted by the firm's entire senior management team. Team members expressed eagerness to get to work on the important issues of how to improve the organization's key business processes. They believed that an expert in continuous quality improvement (CQI), such as Todd, was exactly the kind of help they needed to increase efficiency and cut costs in the core business. Members began to ask direct questions about technical details of CQI, the likely timeframe within which they might expect results, how to map key processes, and how to form quality-improvement teams to identify and implement process improvements.

   Todd was stunned and overwhelmed. Nothing that Stepchuck said about the issues facing this company was being discussed and, worse, it was clear that he had sold her to the client as an “expert” in CQI. Her immediate response was to suggest that all of their questions were good ones, but that they needed to be answered in the context of the long-range goals and strategies of the firm. Todd proposed that the best way to begin was for team members to provide her with some history about the organization. In doing so, she was able to avert disaster and embarrassment for herself and her company, and to appear to be doing all the things necessary to begin a CQI project. The meeting ended with Todd and the management team agreeing to meet again the following week.

   Immediately the next day, Todd sought out the president of her firm. She reported on the results of the meeting and her surprise at being sold to this client as an expert on CQI. Todd suggested that her own competencies did not fit the needs of the client and requested that another consultant—one with expertise in CQI—be assigned to the project.

   Larry Stepchuck responded to Todd's concerns: “I've known these people for over ten years. They don't know exactly what they need. CQI is an important buzzword. It's the flavor of the month and if that's what they want, that's what we'll give them.” He also told her that there were no other consultants available for this project. “Besides,” he said, “the president of the client firm just called to say how much he enjoyed meeting with you and was looking forward to getting started on the project right away.”

   Kindred Todd felt that Stepchuck's response to her concerns included a strong, inferred ultimatum: If you want to stay with this company, you had better take this job. “I knew I had to sink or swim with this job and this client,” she later reported.

   As Todd reflected on her options, she pondered the following questions:

• • How can I be honest with this client and thus not jeopardize my values of openness and honesty?

• • How can I be helpful to this client?

• • How much do I know about quality-improvement processes?

• • How do I satisfy the requirements of my employer?

• • What obligations do I have?

• • Who's going to know if I do or don't have the credentials to perform this work?

• • What if I fail?

   After thinking about those issues, Todd summarized her position in terms of three dilemmas: a dilemma of self (who is Kindred Todd?), a dilemma of competence (what can I do?), and a dilemma of confidence (do I like who I work for?). Based on the issues, Todd made the following tactical decisions. She spent two days at the library reading about and studying total quality management and CQI. She also contacted several of her friends and former classmates who had experience with quality-improvement efforts. Eventually, she contracted with one of them to be her “shadow” consultant—to work with her behind the scenes on formulating and implementing an intervention for the client.

   Based on her preparation in the library and the discussions with her shadow consultant, Kindred Todd was able to facilitate an appropriate and effective intervention for the client. Shortly after her assignment was completed, she resigned from the consulting organization.

SUMMARY

This chapter has examined the role of the organization development practitioner. The term OD practitioner applies to three sets of people: individuals specializing in OD as a profession, people from related fields who have gained some competence in OD, and managers having the OD skills necessary to change and develop their organizations or departments. Comprehensive lists enumerate core and advanced skills and knowledge that an effective OD professional should possess, but a smaller set of basic skills and knowledge is applicable for all practitioners at all levels. These include four kinds of background: intrapersonal skills, interpersonal skills, general consultation skills, and knowledge of OD theory.

   The professional OD role can apply to internal consultants who belong to the organization undergoing change, to external consultants who are members of universities and consulting firms or are self-employed, and to members of internal-external consulting teams. The OD practitioner's role may be described aptly in terms of marginality and emotional demands. People with a tolerance for marginal roles seem especially suited for OD practice because they are able to maintain neutrality and objectivity and to develop integrative solutions that reconcile viewpoints among opposing organizational departments. Similarly, the OD practitioner's emotional intelligence and awareness are keys to implementing the role successfully. Whereas in the past the OD practitioner's role has been described as standing at the client end of the continuum from client-centered to consultant-centered functioning, the development of new and varied interventions has shifted the role of the OD professional to cover the entire range of that continuum.

   Although OD is still an emerging field, most practitioners have specific training that ranges from short courses and workshops to graduate and doctoral education. No single career path exists, but internal consulting is often a stepping-stone to becoming an external consultant. Because of the hectic pace of OD practice, specialists should be prepared to cope with high levels of stress and the possibility of career burnout.

   Values have played a key role in OD, and traditional values promoting trust, collaboration, and openness have been supplemented recently with concerns for improving organizational effectiveness and environmental sustainability. OD specialists may face value dilemmas in trying to optimize human benefits, organization performance, and sound environmental practices. They also may encounter value conflicts when dealing with powerful external stakeholders, such as the government, stockholders, and customers. Dealing with those outside groups may take political skills, as well as the more traditional social skills.

   Ethical issues in OD involve how practitioners perform their helping role with clients. As a profession, OD always has shown a concern for the ethical conduct and several ethical codes for OD practice have been developed by various professional associations. Ethical dilemmas in OD arise around misrepresentation, misuse of data, coercion, value and goal conflict, and technical ineptness.