Peter F. Sorensen

Therese F. Yaeger

This second volume in the Contemporary Trends in Organization Development and Change Series addresses one of the most complex and important issues for management and organization development today -- how to plan for and create an organization capable of not only competing but excelling in an almost impossibly turbulent and uncertain environment. The book brings together a series of articles by practitioner-scholars. Those authors who have the responsibility for helping their organization create the future, and who also have the responsibility of helping us conceptually understand the process of strategic OD. In this book, you can sense the value of both of these voices – the practitioner and the scholar. These authors include organization development executives from global Fortune 500 organizations, major community service organizations, major academic contributors to the field, and OD practitioners from major consulting firms. Each author makes a unique contribution by providing strategies for planning the future, implementing change, and creating organizational capabilities for sustained success. New and current models for strategic organization development and candid discussions of issues, difficulties, and ways of coping with unanticipated events are provided. This book is dedicated to contributing to a better understanding and sharing of how major corporations, community service organizations, and OD consultants are experiencing and working with one of the most important organizational problems of today – how to manage change for success.

Managing Change for Success

Strategic Organization Development

Robert L. Reinhard

The U.S. military, as the core constituent of the Department of Defense, collectively represents the largest and most complex organization on earth. As such, the U.S. military implemented the largest formal OD programs in the world. These programs, from inception to present day, utilized diverse and evolving OD intervention typologies to garner congruence with the environment. The research for this book, accomplished using an inductive, grounded theory approach, examined the initiatives that fostered the use of OD intervention typologies. The findings revealed three major epochs of OD interventions that span a 50-year timeline. The epochs include: (1) Traditional OD; (2) Total Quality Management (TQM); and (3) Continuous Process Improvement (CPI). The epoch of Traditional OD represents the use of human process interventions while TQM and CPI represent the use of technostructural interventions. In the end, the relationship between organization design and culture, and the selection of OD intervention typologies, were best explained using variables that explicate diverse environmental occurrences that influenced senior military leaders’ perceived need for specific OD interventions. These perceived needs were predicated on the requirement to exploit vital resources in an effort to bolster warfighting operational readiness in support of the American citizenry.

The History of OD in the U.S. Military

Organization Development in the Largest Global Organization

Homer H. Johnson

This case study book provides 30 cases and responses from 90 OD consultants with expert insights specific to each particular case topic. This book is the culmination of ten years of collaboration between the Homer Johnson, Peter Sorensen and Therese Yaeger, and the OD Network that originally printed these cases in the OD Practitioner. Now with the 30 case studies compiled in one OD resource book, both practitioners and academics can experience an OD challenge and value the differing responses from OD experts.

Peter F. Sorensen

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