Items Description of Module

Subject Name Management

Paper Name Organisational Change and Development
Module Title Organisation Development Interventions: An Overview
Module Id Module no.- 26
Pre- Requisites Basic knowledge of management
Objectives To study OD interventions and guidelines for their effective implementation
Keywords Activities, Goals, OD practitioner, OD intervention, Target group
 QUADRANT-I

Module 26: Organisation Development Interventions: An Overview

1. Learning Outcome
2. Meaning
3. Features of OD interventions
4. Classification of OD interventions
5. Blake and Mouton ‘s contribution in the field of consultation and intervention
6. Guidelines for OD practitioners while structuring activities
7. Guidelines for effective integration and implementation of intervention activities
8. Outcomes of OD interventions
9. Summary

1. Learning Outcome:
After completing this module, the students will be able to:
 Understand the concept of OD interventions.
 Describe classification of OD interventions.
 Discuss guidelines for structuring and implementing interventions.
 Explain benefits of OD interventions.

2. Meaning
Interventions are planned set of actions or activities initiated systematically to change situations
in the organisation which the organisation members want to change.

‘‘ OD interventions are set of structured activities in which selected organizational units (target
groups or individuals) engage in a task or a sequence of tasks with the goals of organizational
improvement and individual development.’’- French, Bell and Vohra.

The field of OD uses a wide variety of approaches, processes, techniques or methods (often
termed as interventions) to address organizational issues and problems in order to increase
performance. Team building, role analysis, parallel learning structures, quality of work life,
quality circles, MBO, total quality management (TQM) are few examples of OD interventions.
The range and scope of OD interventions have increased the power of OD as a complete
strategy for change.

3. Features of OD Interventions
The OD interventions are vehicles for causing change and have certain distinguishing features
explained as follows:
(i) Interventions are structured activities used individually or in combination to improve task
performance or processes.
(ii) Most OD interventions have twin goals: educational goal and accomplishing a task goal.
(iii) Some problem solving OD interventions focus on real problem central to organisation’s
needs rather than hypothetical problem.
 (iv) OD interventions use several learning models. For example, traditional learning model is
used when learning precedes doing and there is another model of learning i.e. deficiency
model in which action precedes learning.
(v) Most interventions are directed to solve problems related to human side of organisations.
(vi) OD interventions bring desired results when these are carefully planned, implemented and
monitored.
(vii) Interventions can be classified on the basis of goals they tend to achieve.

4. Classification of OD Interventions
OD practitioners have created a variety of interventions to help organisation members address
specific problems in an effective way. These have been classified on the basis of goals to be
achieved through their implementation or target group to be focused. The following
classification is based on the goals to be achieved.

 Diagnostic Activities:- These activities are fact finding activities which aim at
ascertaining the true state of problem or system. Such activities explore the way things
are happening so that scope for improvement can be determined. Questionnaires, surveys,
interviews, meeting, examination of organizational records are some of the traditional
methods of data collection. Projective device like asking individuals to build a collage
representing their place in the organisation is modern method of diagnosing the situation.

 Training and Educational Activities:- Such activities aim at improving individuals’

abilities and skills. T-group consisting of strangers can be used to educate/ train
individual in isolation from his or her own work group to improve individual skill or
individual in his/ her work group can be educated to learn how to better manage
interpersonal conflict. Thus, technical skills necessary for performing tasks, other skills
like decision-making, problem solving, goal-setting, leadership and interpersonal
competence are improved through such activities. The individuals also learn about
responsibilities and functions of group members.

 Techno-structural or Structural Activities:- These activities are designed to improve

effectiveness of organisation structure either by experimenting with new organisation
structure or devising new ways to use technical resources. In other words, these activities
include wide range of change efforts such as changes in the task, structural systems and
technological systems to enhance organisation effectiveness. Management by objectives,
job enrichment, collateral organisations, sociotechnical system are few examples of
structural activities.

 Team Building Activities:- A team is a small number of people with complementary

skills who have higher commitment to common goal and higher degree of
interdependency than ordinary group. The team-building activities are designed to
improve team’s effectiveness through effective management of task demands,
relationship demands and team processes. Some team building activities focus on intact
work team comprising of boss and subordinates called as formal group or natural team.
Other activities focus on special teams such as cross-functional teams, startup teams,
newly constituted teams due to changes in organisation structure or mergers. Various
techniques and exercises used in team building include role analysis technique,
interdependency exercise, role negotiation technique, the appreciations and concerns
exercise, responsibility charting, forced- field analysis and visioning.

 Intergroup Activities:- These activities aim at improving effectiveness of interdependent

groups. When the joint efforts of the groups are necessary to produce common output,
there is a need of better intergroup relations. Intergroup interventions aim at increasing
communications and interactions between work-related groups, creating awareness of the
necessity for best efforts on the part of both groups and reducing the amount of
 dysfunctional competition. Activities designed to enhance work effectiveness of two
groups are called interface or intergroup activities whereas activities focused at more than
two groups are called organizational mirroring.

 Process Consultation Activities:- These activities are designed to help client understand
human and social processes and learn to solve various problems that emerge from process
events. Communications, problem solving and group decision-making, leadership,
authority delegation, leader and member roles in groups, intergroup co-operation are
some of the important organizational processes. The consultant works with groups and
individuals of the organisation and helps them to develop necessary skills for diagnosing
and solving the process problems that emerge in client’s system. These activities can
better be described as approach or method which enables client to learn skills of
diagnosing and managing processes in a better way.

 Third-Party Peacemaking Activities:- Such activities are designed to help two

individuals working in the organisation to resolve their interpersonal conflicts with the
help of third-party i.e. a skilled consultant. The consultant uses confrontation tactics to
resolve conflict. The third party/ consultant know how, when and where to use
confrontation tactics which expose the conflict for examination and intervenes directly or
indirectly in facilitating dialogue between the two parties.

 Strategic Management Activities:- These activities help policy makers at top level in two
ways: one is, making them realize the organization’s mission, purpose, goals and
environmental threats as well as opportunities and other one is, engaging in long- term
action planning. These activities, thus, direct attention of key policy makers towards
consideration of external environment i.e. environmental analysis and formulation of long
term future plans of proactive and reactive nature i.e. strategic planning. Strategic
management activities are necessary for organisation’s survival and growth.

 Grid Organisation Development Activities:- Grid OD programme, involving various

activities, is a systematic organisation development programme developed by Robert R.
Blake and Jane S. Mouton. It is a six- phase change model requiring three to five years to
complete and involvement of the whole organisation. The first phase includes assessing
and upgrading individual manager’s skills and leadership styles. Next phase includes
activities focusing on development of teams and teamwork. Third phase focuses on
improvement of intergroup relations. Fourth phase comprises of activities like corporate
strategic planning with major focus on developing an ideal Strategic Corporate Model.
Next phase represents the activities for effective implementation of Strategic Corporate
Model. The last phase is the evaluation phase which comprises of activities like
measuring the progress made, knowing barriers to overcome and knowing new
opportunities which may be exploited and looking towards future directions.

 Survey Feedback Activities:- Survey feedback activities include use of attitude or climate
survey and use of feedback workshops. In other words, these activities comprise of
collecting data through questionnaire about system and providing that data to individuals
and groups at all levels for analysis and interpretation and designing corrective actions.
Objective data about system’s functioning is provided to system members so that they
can improve or change the selected aspects of the system. Well designed survey also
provides information to organisation members about progress towards goal and for
determining necessary actions.

 Organisation Transformation Activities:- These activities are designed to bring large

scale system changes. Organisation structure, selection procedure, reward systems,
management philosophy, culture, job design, training and compensation methods,
mission and values etc. are changed. Total quality programmes and programmes creating
high-performance work systems are transformational. These are initiated to bring
 fundamental changes in the organisation system. Open Systems Planning (OSP) and
Socio-technical systems theory are the bases for such activities.

 Life and Career Planning Activities:- These activities are individual specific and enable
individuals to learn their life and career goals and ways to achieve them. Such activities
include assessing individuals’ capabilities, strength, weakness and determining career and
life goals as well as need for additional training.

 Counselling Activities: Activities, that help individuals working in the organisation (a) to
get feedback about their behaviour from immediate superior or other organisation
members and (b) learning new behaviours for better achievement of goals, are covered
under counselling activities.

The above discussion indicates that OD interventions cover wide range of activities and
increase theoretical knowledge and practical experience. Some interventions are directed
towards specific problems like third-party peacemaking activities while others are directed
towards specific targets like life and career planning activities are individual specific and team
building activities are related to work teams. Few interventions are process specific like process
consultation activities.

Wendell L. French, Cecil H. Bell and Veena Vohra classified OD interventions on the basis of
primary target of the intervention i.e. individuals, dyads and triads, teams, intergroups and total
organisation. These have been explained as under:

 Interventions directed at individuals include life and career-planning activities, coaching

and counselling, education and training, grid OD phase 1, work redesign, behaviour
modelling and Gestalt OD.
 Interventions directed at dyads and triads include Gestalt OD, process consultation and
third party peacemaking.
 Interventions directed at teams and groups include Gestalt OD, grid OD phase2, process
consultation, responsibility charting, team MBO, sociotechnical system, visioning and
team building.
 Interventions directed at intergroup include organizational mirroring, partnering, process
consultation, intergroup activities, survey feedback and grid OD phase 3.
 Interventions directed at total organisation include survey feedback, search conferences,
quality of work life projects, physical settings, strategic management activities, parallel
learning structures and grid OD phase 4,5,6.
Some interventions have multiple uses and are covered under more than one category. The
interventions, mentioned above, have been discussed in detail in subsequent modules.

5. Blake and Mouton’s Contribution in the Field of Consultation and Intervention

Blake and Mouton proposed a typology, called the Consulcube, which is considered a major
contribution in the field of consultation and intervention. It is a 100-cell cube built on three
dimensions. The first dimension is what the consultant does. The consultant uses five basic types
of interventions: (i) acceptant (the consultant gives the client a sense of acceptance and support);
(ii) catalytic (the consultant helps client in generating data to reframe client’s perceptions);
(iii) confrontation (the consultant surfaces discrepancies in client’s beliefs and actions);
(iv) prescription (the consultant tells client the ways to solve problem); (v) theories and principles
(the consultant teaches behavioural science theory to the client to help him learning how to
diagnose and solve problems). The second dimension of the cube is focal issues creating client’s
 problems. According to Blake and Mouton, there are four major issues causing client’s problems.
These are power/authority, goals/objectives, standard/norms of conduct and morale/cohesion. The
third dimension is the unit of change i.e. the target group of consultation. Five units have been
proposed viz. individual, group, intergroup, organisation and social systems.

These interventions, focal issues and units of change determine the range of consultation
possibilities. Blake and Mouton did pioneering work and proposed a theory and typology which is
useful in consultation field.

6. Guidelines for OD practitioners while structuring activities

The following points should be kept in mind while structuring interventions to increase their
effectiveness:
 The expectations or goals of practitioners/ clients set through interventions should be
realistic. These should be attainable with little bit more hard work. The accomplishment
of such goals gives feeling of success and boosts the morale of people involved. If
participants fail to achieve such realistic goals, the reasons should be examined
thoroughly to avoid failures in future.
 Clarity of goal and the way to reach it is must while designing any activity to improve
organizational effectiveness.
 People directly affected by problem or opportunity should be involved while designing
various activities/actions. For example, if the focus is to improve customer service,
customers should be involved. There is a need to engage team members in activities if the
purpose is to improve team effectiveness.
 The activity will be more rewarding and successful if it is oriented to the problems or
opportunities defined by the clients themselves. The clients provide full support in such
situations.
 Conceptual as well as experience based learning should be focused in every activity.
Learning becomes more integrated and effective for the individual when experience is
related to the conceptual material and other experiences.
 Efforts should be made to develop such climate for the activity in which people become
more supportive and show willingness to accept change and learn together.
 Activity should be designed in a way that it will enable people learn how to solve a
problem and also learn ‘how to learn.
 There is a need to design the activity to develop team spirit among people. Individuals
should be engaged as part of team and not as segmented persons.
 Activity should be structured in a way to help individuals learn about processes i.e.
communication, individual interacting styles and task i.e. issue which is to be addressed
or agenda items.
 Activity /intervention should be relevant to and instrumental for achieving goals.

7. Guidelines for effective integration and implementation of intervention activities

The interventions produce desired results when these are implemented in an organized way. The
following considerations will help in effective implementation of intervention activities:
 Interventions should be integrated in a way to make rational use of organizational
resources such as time, money and energy. There should be no overlapping of
interventions as it will lead to wastage of scarce resources of organisation.
 Interventions having impact on organisation’s performance should be introduced prior to
the interventions having bearing on individuals or organizational culture.
  Interventions that will provide necessary data required to make further intervention
decisions should be implemented first. This will particularly help change agents in
choosing appropriate interventions when they do not know much about situation.
 Interventions should be integrated in a manner that will ensure desired progress for
attaining objective of organizational improvement. Slow progress during implementation
stage will lead to undesirable delay coupled with unpleasant outcomes. Thus, timely
results must be ensured by properly choosing and sequencing the intervention activities.
 Interventions should be sequenced to minimize psychological and organizational strain.
In other words, the dysfunctional effects on individuals such as insecurity, distrust or
anxiety and undesirable effects on organizational performance should be minimized to the
extent possible. Carelessness in this regard will lower people’s confidence and
commitment to organisational improvement.
 A sequence of interventions should be chosen that will enhance the effectiveness of
subsequent interventions after the implementation of early interventions. For example,
interventions aimed at developing skills or knowledge required by other interventions
should be introduced first. Similarly, interventions that develop readiness among people
working in the organisation to accept change should come prior to the introduction of any
activity aimed at bringing organizational change through structural changes.
Available literature on OD interventions conclude that interventions should be used in
combination rather than using a single intervention. Nicholas found that significant changes occur
when several interventions are combined. One such combination includes three interventions
including all levels of organisation. These three interventions/methods are (i) encouraging
participation of all employees in decision-making and goal setting, (ii) developing employee
collaboration through team building exercises and (iii) reorganizing organisation structure to
accommodate participation and collaboration.

8. Outcomes of OD Interventions
Different interventions produce different results. One intervention may increase interaction
between group members while other intervention may increase accountability. Various results of
different OD interventions have been summarized as below:
 Education:- Educational activities upgrade knowledge, skills, beliefs and attitudes which
help in understanding organizational processes, better management of social relationships
and change and achievement of targets. OD interventions such as life and career planning,
self-directed teams, behaviour modelling serve this purpose.
 Greater Accountability:- Role analysis technique, MBO, quality circles, self- managed
teams, responsibility charting increase people’s accountability. These activities focus on
clarifying role and responsibilities of individuals, monitoring their performance in relation
to defined responsibilities and finding causes of deviations to take corrective action. Thus,
ultimate thrust is on accountability which improves individual and group performance.
 Feedback:- It means getting information about oneself, other organisation members, group,
processes or organisation which may lead to change. This new information may change
perception and behaviour of individuals by presenting an objective picture of real world.
Coaching and counselling, process consultation, survey feedback, sensitivity training are
some of the OD interventions which focus on providing feedback.
 More Involvement of Employees:- Involving more persons in goal-setting, problem
solving, decision-making or new idea generation develop a sense of belongingness among
them. Participation promotes employees and organisation’s well-being. It also increases the
quality and degree of acceptance of decisions. Quality circles, survey feedback, team
building, MBO, quality of work life projects promote employee involvement.
  Motivation and Increased Optimism:- Visioning, self-managed teams, appreciative
inquiry, search conferences and quality of work life programmes are some of the OD
interventions that result in higher motivation and increased optimism. These activities
remove mental bottlenecks and develop positive outlook towards change initiatives. People
get motivated through vision of new possibilities for organisation’s survival and growth.
They participate wholeheartedly in all organization change efforts for attaining a desired
future.
 Increased People’s Readiness For Change:- People become aware of changing socio-
cultural norms and modify their behaviour, values and attitude to keep them in line with
new norms. They realize that only change is permanent in this world and desired outcomes
at individual as well as organizational level can be generated through new set of goals,
modified/ new structures, change in perception and behaviour, learning new skills, new
work practices and so on. This awareness encourages people to accept change or initiate
change for their own betterment. Counselling, culture analysis, sociotechnical system
programs, life and career planning and intergroup team building activities help in creating
awareness and motivating people to participate in OD activities wholeheartedly.
 Confrontation and Conflict Resolution:- There can be differences in attitudes, beliefs,
feelings or values of people working in the organisation which may act as obstacles to
effective interaction or growth and learning. They need to be actively examined.
Confrontation is a process of surfacing and examining the real differences/ issues to work
on them in a constructive way. Confrontation determines conflict resolution interventions.
Role negotiation, intergroup team building and third-party peacemaking interventions help
in conflict resolution.
 Better Communication:- More interaction and effective communication between
individuals and groups make them more receptive to others’ viewpoint. This causes
desirable changes in their attitudes and behaviour. Environment of openness, sharing of
information and seeking each other’s help/ viewpoint without hesitation reflect improved
communication and interaction. Encouraging people to talk and interact in innovative and
constructive ways bring desired change in people and system. Almost all OD interventions
result in better communication when they are effectively designed and implemented.
9. Summary
Interventions are planned set of actions or activities initiated with the goals of organizational
improvement and individual development. The field of OD uses a wide variety of approaches,
processes, techniques or methods (often termed as interventions) to address organizational issues
and problems in order to increase performance. Team building, survey feedback , role analysis,
life and career planning activities, cultural analysis, parallel learning structures, quality of work
life, quality circles, MBO, total quality management (TQM) are few examples of OD
interventions. The range and scope of OD interventions have increased the power of OD as a
complete strategy for change.

Blake and Mouton proposed a typology, called the Consulcube, which is considered a major
contribution in the field of consultation and intervention. It is a 100-cell cube built on three
dimensions. The first dimension is what the consultant does. The second dimension of the cube is
focal issues creating client’s problems. The third dimension is the unit of change i.e. the target
group of consultation. Five units have been proposed viz. individual, group, intergroup,
organisation and social systems. These interventions, focal issues and units of change determine
the range of consultation possibilities.

Certain points should be considered while structuring and implementing the intervention
activities. Education, greater accountability, feedback, more involvement of employees,
motivation and increased optimism, increased people’s readiness for change, better
 communication are some of the results experienced through successful implementation of OD
interventions.

References

1. John B. Nicholas, ‘The Comparative Impact of Organisational Development Interventions on Hard Criteria
Measures,’ Academy of Management Review, October 1982

2. James L. Gibson, John M. Ivancevich, James H. Donnelly, Jr., Organisations – Behavior, Structure, Processes,
Richard D. Irwin Publisher, Eighth Edition.

3. Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton, The Managerial Grid, Houston: Gulf (1964)

4. Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton, Consultation, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, (1976, 1983)

5. Wendell L. French, Cecil H. Bell, Jr., Veena Vohra, Organisation Development , Pearson Education, Sixth Edition