Organizational Development Strategy in the 21st Century

Introduction

The greatest competitive strength an organization can seek today is exceptional agility — the intelligence to sense and respond to market opportunities and threats — along with an organizational culture and structure that can flex under extraordinary stresses and strains. Organizational Development (OD) must correspondingly create the foundations for greater levels of collaboration at the process and system layers of organizations (Karakas, 2009). The roles of managers in organizations also need to become more transformational and less authoritarian, as cultures seek to cultivate greater initiative, insightful analysis, and meaningful recommendations from employees (Raz, 2009).

Organizational Development in the 21st Century

With global economies at their most turbulent in decades, and organizations seeking to rapidly redefine their relevancy to customers as a result, the need for continually investing in training and human resource development has never been more important. OD must therefore shift from being subordinate to Human Resource Management (HRM), since in many organizations OD is more cross-functional and strategic in scope. OD has in fact become integral to the strategic plans of many organizations, as the rapid acquisition of new skill sets to support entirely new operations strategies takes on added significance (Darling & Heller, 2009).

While human resource development is certainly related to OD, the urgency to add new skills in support of entirely new strategic plans is forcing OD to stand alone as a distinct area in many organizations. The aspect of OD-based strategies focused on modifying corporate cultures — admittedly a long-term undertaking — has increasingly relied on transformational leadership and participative management to make the cultural change process more efficient (Raz, 2009). Due to the need for aligning skill sets critical to the attainment of a company's strategic plan, and the need for defining cultural shifts that make organizations more responsive to market conditions, OD has emerged as an independent entity within organizations (Darling & Heller, 2009).

Resistance to Change in OD Strategy

The greater the impact of a series of strategies, initiatives, or programs on an organization, the greater the resistance to change that follows. In the case of OD strategies, it is advisable that clients have a readiness to change, as the modification of processes, procedures, systems, and roles is significant and does cause disruption. Only by having a leadership strategy in place that anticipates these disruptions and minimizes them through participative, open management can resistance to change be effectively reduced (Raz, 2009). It is difficult to convince clients of the need to change and motivate them to undertake large-scale process, procedure, and system changes unless there is recognition of a problem. That is why it is critical to approach OD strategies with clients who have a readiness-for-change mindset.

Conclusion

OD has emerged as a strategically important area within organizations that rely intensively on their associates' skills, intelligence, and insight to compete more effectively. An example would be the OD efforts within enterprise software companies such as Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, all of which are aligning their specific organizational culture strengths to the development of more competitive product and service strategies. Their reliance on OD as a means to increase the level of knowledge and training their employees receive — while remaining focused on strategic objectives — illustrates the enduring value of OD in a turbulent global economic environment.