Organizational development (OD) is a process in order to enable change in organizations, planfully and systematically – with the aim of increasing the organization’s performance.
The OD approach differs from others mainly in two ways:
(1) The process is designed with the greatest possible participation of the organization members.
So said, organizational development is a participatory approach.
(2) OD takes interactions into account – between individuals, groups, the organization and their environment (competition, technologies, …). And:
A well-designed OD process always leads to proper mix of interventions.
That means, organizational development is also holistic, because the interventions include both the organizational structures and processes, the corporate culture (communication patterns, value structures, power constellations, …), as well as the individual behavior of the organization’s members.
And an essential part of this mix of interventions is: