TRENDS IN ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

There are basically three trends in organizational development and four trends which drive
changes in organizational context. The three trends constitute of Scholarly, pragmatic and
traditional while the trends which strive to bring change in Organizational development are
evolution of global economy, development of technology, engagement of the employees or
workforce and the last one is organizational structure itself. Each trend is initially explained
separately and then the different features of these trends are explained that influences the future
of organizational development.
1. TRADITIONAL TREND
This trend was introduced by NTL (National training laboratories). They said Organizational
development should be determined through trust between the workforce, equality and
collaboration between them. Furthermore they said organizational development should be based
on long term established values and the potential of workforce. They also argued that objective
of the organizational development must be to provide a work life balance to the employees. The
main focus of this trend is to verify that organization should promote corporate citizenship by
providing spirituality and diversity to the employees/ workforce at workplace. Similarly the
focus on process intervention is also increased which says that main objective of organizational
development is to ensure transparent process in the organization, to serve the stakeholders and
workforce of the organizations with dignity regardless of if it enhances the performance outcome
of the organizations or not.
2. PRAGMATIC TREND
This trend was developed from change management in different organizations and associations.
This trend emphasizes on the organizational professionals. The believers of pragmatic trend
(Pragmatists) say that there are members who are not skilled but still doing jobs as
Organizational professionals. They have introduced this view because of the reason that there is
an increasing trend of people promoting themselves as organizational development professionals.
So they have put forward a solution for this problem that there should be certification of
Organizational development, members. This certificate should be provided on the basis of formal
training and education of Organizational field which will enable the organizations to distinguish

between Organizational professionals and non-professionals, and these professionals ultimately

will decide what is included and excluded from organizational practices. Furthermore the main
objective of Pragmatic trend is to make organizations capable of implementing change and adapt
in the turbulent environment. The contradiction between pragmatic and traditional is that the
pragmatic trend values the performance outcome of the organizational development while the
focus of the traditional view is on transparency of the processes and increased value to the
workforce and stakeholders.
3. SCHOLARY TREND
The third trend of organizational development emphasizes on understanding, forecasting and
controlling the change. Its focus is on how to increase and add those people to the workforce
who can contribute to identify the key factor because of which a change can occur, the time span
in which a change is expected to come, what are the contingency plans to respond to a change
and which plan will work better in what type of change.
OD Will Have More Conflicts in the Short Term but will become integrated in Long
Term

If we look at the three trends they have different paths and there is a contradiction between them.
But this contradiction is of short term like the short term emphasis of each trend is different and
contradictory. Like the traditionalists think that with the change in environment and because of
globalization specially, the stakeholders of the organizations are increasing the power of the
stakeholders who might force the organizations to maximize their wealth at the cost of corporate
social responsibility and can harm the values of workforce (Humanistic Values). While the
pragmatist worry if the organizational development relies too much on humanistic values it will
be much difficult to the organizations to adapt change and compete with the competitors who are
less worried about humanistic values and are open to change. Despite the conflicts likely to
continue in the short run, there is considerable common ground among the diverse trends within
OD, and the emergence of a more integrated view of the field seems likely in the long term. For
example, both the traditional and the pragmatic trends agree that applying behavioral science to
organizations can improve effectiveness and increase member satisfaction. Both trends believe
that knowledge and skill should be transferred to a client system, and all three trends believe that
a body of theory and practice underlie the process of change in organizations. So in long run the

objective of all the trends aligns with each other. For example the first two trends have similarity
of thoughts that the effectiveness of an organization can be increased by satisfying the work
force which can become satisfied by applying the behavioral science to the organizations.
Accordingly all the trends consider a combination of theory and practice as key factors to bring
change in the organizations.
TRENDS IN THE CONTEXT OF ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT
There are different trends that determine a context that how the organizational development will
be applied to the organizations in the near future. These trends are interconnected. Some of these
trends will directly affect the organizations while the others will indirectly. The trends which will
directly affect the OD are briefly explained below.
1. THE ECONOMY
The economy of a country does determine the context of organizational development. Like
because of globalization the whole world has become a single market now it depends upon the
countries that how much they are open to this change of globalization. To become globalized a
country must decide to sacrifice some of its traditions like culture like one of the economist
named Friedman said that cultural preservation may come at the expense of participation in the
global economy while greater economic success may depend on cultural sacrifice. Similarly the
issue of global warming and issues about ecosystem has made the organization to produce such
plans of development that these factors of economy is considered and addressed in it. For
example, traditional business models that assume labor scarcity and natural resource abundance
are being tempered by models that emphasize the abundance of knowledge and the scarcity of
natural resources.
2. THE WORKFORCE
Because of the globalized economy the employees of the organization are becoming more
educated and diverse. As different statistics of different surveys have identified that the literacy
level as well as the enrolment rate in the higher classes is increasing with the passage of time.
And because of the workforce is becoming more educated its wages is increasing accordingly
with the demand to be involved in decision making processes as these decision directly or

indirectly affect them. So different organizations, because of the above mentioned reason have
been involved in organizing different training and development projects.

3. TECHNOLOGY
Technology is another non ignorable factor that is likely to shape future of organizational
development and which is influencing the life styles of the people. Its significance can be
evidenced from the increasing number of internet users. Technology has affected the global
market the mode of transactions in the global market and has given birth to e-commerce which
involves using automated teller machines, buying games on your cell phone, buying and selling
products and services over the Internet, and selling advertising space. The e-commerce has two
types which are relevant to the organizational developments future i.e. Business to Business and
Business to Consumers. If we see at the economy of United States the productivity of the first 4
or 5 years of the 20th century has outperformed the productivity of the last two decades of the
nineteenth century. This productivity lag apparently resulted from the relatively long time it took
for organizations to adopt the new technology and to learn how to apply that technology.
4. ORGANIZATIONS
The last factor that is thought to shape the future of 0rganizational Development is knowledge
based and networked nature of organizations. Because of technology and globalization the
organizations are becoming strongly networked. Network enable an organization to capitalize on
economic opportunities that emerges because of globalization without being affected by social
consequences such as many organizations though attain economies of scales in each are like
marketing manufacturing etc. yet stays rigid because of socio-ecological consequences.

IMPLICATIONS FOR ODS FUTURE

As evidenced from the current situation the organizations are evolving very quickly so one can
conclude from it that in near future only those organizations will survive which are extremely
dynamic as one of the author named Warren Bennie has defined OD as a response to change, a
complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, and structure of
organizations so that they can better adapt to new technologies, markets, and challenges, and the
dizzying rate of change itself.
As the environment is becoming extremely dynamic with the passage of time so in future only
those organizations will be successful which are capable of identifying/predicting changes in the
environment and bring changes or transformations according to that change. The reduction in the
taxes and less deficits in the economy has made the public to demand more for their money than
ever which has forced the organizations to introduce and practice new technologies to bring high
quality innovative products and services. Accordingly organizational development will become
concerned with preserving cultural diversity as because of globalization the organizations will
get exposed to cross culture situations. Furthermore Organizational development will also keep
an eye on sustainability of the eco-system as Limits to the worlds ecosystem, including its
capacity to absorb population growth, function with a depleted ozone layer, and operate with
polluted waters, provide serious challenges to the traditional business model. So these factors
will also affect the context that will determine the future of OD.

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