College of Business and Management

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration

Handout in
Mgt. 406 – Organizational Development
Effective 1st Semester, School Year 2022-2023

CHAPTER 3

THE ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT PRACTITIONER

Much of the literature about OD practitioners views then as internal or external consultants providing
professional services -diagnosing systems, developing interventions and helping to implement them. An
organizational development practitioner is someone who helps create organizational change. Whether
an in-house professional or consultant, they create organization-wide or department-wide strategies to
implement change.

WHAT IS AN ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT PRACTITIONER?

The term organization development practitioner refers to at least three sets of people:

 They are generalist organization development practitioners.

 They are specialist organization development practitioners.
 They are the functional organization development practitioners.

COMPETENCIES OF AN ORGANIZATION PRACTITIONER

The Organization Development Network developed a framework for practitioners competencies of an

effective OD practitioner. According to the Global OD Competency Framework (TM), an OD practitioner
has 5 roles:

 Efficient designer
 Business advisor
 Credible strategist
 Informed consultant
 Systems change expert

KNOWLEDGE OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT PRACTITIONER

A unique individual with core competencies is essential for effective organization development,
combining personality traits, experiences, knowledge, and skills to facilitate change processes.

They include knowledge in the following areas:

1. Individual psychology: Understanding learning, motivation, and perception theories is crucial for
effective communication, requiring the ability to deal with individuals, understand their unique
qualities, and harness their potential.
2. Group dynamics: This involves overseeing diverse roles within the organization, making
informed decisions, fostering group growth, and enhancing the communication process.
3. Organizational behavior: Organizational culture understanding, task design, interpersonal
relations, conflicts, ethical standards, goal setting, transformational leadership, and power
management are essential skills for effective leadership.
4. Functional knowledge: This includes expertise in information technology, project management,
logistics, new business developments, marketing, finance, production, and human resource
development.
5. Management: Proficiency in supervising administrative functions requires planning, organizing,
leading, and controlling skills, a holistic and strategic perspective, and knowledge of contingency
and systems theories.
6. Cultural diversity : This involves understanding and working with diverse cultures, enhancing
multicultural awareness for high performance, adopting cultural differences and similarities, and
effectively managing conflict in multicultural work environments.
7. Research methods and statistics: this involves expertise in handling data and information ,
preparing research designs and using inferential statistics in decision-making.

SKILLS OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS/PRACTITIONERS

 Behavioral skills that will make one see things objectively, maintain impartiality at all times,
think professionally, speak maturely, and act ethically.
 Leadership skills that will enable him/her to motivate employees, initiate action, inspire them to
undergo change, recognize thoughts, feelings and behaviors associated with change situations
and create change work environments where emotional honesty and energy are required.
 Communication skills that will help him/her listen to everyone and effectively share his/her
ideas with all concerned key players with clarity and conviction.
 Negotiation skills that will help him/her minimize, if not eliminate resistance, settle conflicts,
and bring about understanding, at the least, acceptance, cooperation, and collaboration among
the parties concerned.
 Problem-solving skills that will enable him/her to accurately perform assessments,
systematically diagnose problems, clarity goals, set priorities, provide corresponding solutions
and make critical decisions.
FUNCTIONS OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS

 Environmental scanning
 External and internal diagnosis
 Implementation phase
 Monitors the change

ACTIVITIES OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS

Organization Change: The organization development practitioner can assess the organization’s readiness
to change and help the organization in overcoming emotional and intellectual challenges.

Employee Development: The organization development practitioner can help develop human resources
with respect to standardizing recruitment, hiring and selection policies and procedures, develop
employee career “pathing”, professional growth and enrichment and emphasize rewards and recognition
systems.

Strategy Development: The organization development practitioner can illustrate to the organization how
to align strategic planning goals through integration of strategy, objectives, metrics and performance.

Management Development: The organization development practitioner can help enhance the
leadership change skills of management.

Technology Integration: The organization development practitioner can share his/her knowledge in
information and communication technology production and operations management, systems,
development, hardware and software management, total quality management and inventory, and
logistics management among others.

STYLES OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS

Goal Attainment and Effectiveness

Safe Player: He/she is one person who keeps a low profile. He/ she is someone who does not want to
“rock the boat”. He/she feels comfortable by simply following the directives of top management. He/she
lacks initiative. He is not popular with the employees. He/ she is “diplomatic” and always wants to play
safe.

Thinker: He/she is one person who has self-confidence by virtue of his/her knowledge and expertise.
He/she is concerned with achieving goals like knowing and solving problems affecting the workplace.
He/she is low when it comes to employee morale and relationships.

Cheerer: He/she is one person who does not emphasize goal accomplishment. Instead, he/she puts
importance on employee morale and relationships. He/she seeks to bring about and maintain a warm
working environment with employees.

Leader: He/she is none person who emphasizes employee growth and satisfaction. He/she is an achiever
who aims for goal accomplishment while at the same time, stresses personal, team and inter-group
relationships.

PROFESSIONALISM OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANTS

Professionalism refers to the internalization of a value system that is inherent in the concept and of the
profession. To be a professional organization development consultant, one must possess the following:

 Specialized knowledge and skills

 Independence in the practice of one's profession
 A professional approach as portrayed by emotional balance
 A high degree of responsibility with a sense of commitment to the discipline

PROFESSIONAL VALUES

Values have played an important role in organization development from its beginning. Traditionally, OD
professionals have promoted a set of values under a humanistic framework, including a concern for
inquiry and science, democracy and being helpful. They have sought to build trust and collaboration; to
create an open, problem-solving climate; and to increase the self-control of organization members.

PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

Inherent in the organization development practice is a high degree of ethical standards. Although
professional ethics implies strong adherence to ethical standards, finding oneself in ethical dilemmas is a
common reality. Ethical dilemmas are classified into:

 Misuse of data: This includes mishandling, misinterpreting, and manipulating data or event
using them to harm the organization or individuals.
  Technical ineptness: To be technically incompetent is to commit errors like coming up with
wrong organization development interventions, proposing organization development
interventions when the organization is not ready for the intended change, or implementing
organization development interventions that are not aligned with the set objectives of the
organization.
 Misrepresentation: Organization development practitioners may be accused of dishonesty like
putting damaging slants on issues at hand, falsifying and fabricating facts, distorting findings,
misleading interpretations and analysis, altering arrived-at conclusions and suggesting wrong
and inappropriate change activities.
 Power and Coercion: Forms of coercion happen when organization members participate in
organization development interventions under intimidation and compelling circumstances.
 Conflicts in Values and Goals: Conflicts in values and goals occur when there is a discrepancy in
organizational beliefs and attitudes, when the organizational set goals are unclear, not prioritized
and too many and when the means to achieve these goals are ambiguous and incongruous.

THE ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT CONSULTANT-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP

The practice of organization development consulting involves the following steps:

1. The organization development consultant has to establish the organization’s readiness for
change.
2. The organization development consultant has to identify his/her clients adequately and clearly.
3. The organization development consultant has to commit and develop a trust relationship with
his/her client.
4. Lastly, the consultant has to formalize the ground rules with his/her client.

CHANGE BEHAVIOR OF ORGANIZATION MEMBERS

Basic dimensions in the organization development consultant- client relationship serve as indicators of
the climate for change. Eric Neilsen, in his book entitled Organizational Behavior and Administration,
stated that to bring about change in the corporate culture, there is a need for organization members to
share their feelings and ideas and accept personal responsibility.
Indifferent: The organization members usually follow established routines. They avoid accepting
responsibility for their actions and generally keep their real ideas about self- fulfilment and
organizational effectiveness to themselves.

Gamesmanship: The organization members take high responsibility for their actions and make their own
decisions on how to behave. However, they are not open when it comes to their shared feelings and
ideas.

Charismatic: The organization members openly share their ideas and feelings although they avoid any
form of personal responsibility.

Consensus: The organization members share perceptions and feelings openly coupled with an
acceptance of responsibility for decisions made.

REFERENCES:

https://work.chron.com/skills-needed-od-practitioners-18228.html