Book review of Dr. Donald Anderson's “Organizational development: The process of leading organizatio

Book review of Dr. Donald Anderson's “Organizational development: The process of leading organizational change”

The book ″Organizational development: The process of leading organizational change″ by Donald Anderson explores elements of organization design. Famed around Jay Galbraith who is famed as a Star Model. Donald Anderson gives the five elements as; strategy, structure, process, rewards, and the people. He passes these strategies to learners to make their organizations effective. In providing students with the best strategies for managing change, Anderson writes on managing change and Transition exploring the challenges that one is likely to experience when changing a design that already exists. Students in the modern workplace are prepared through the promotion of the need for strategy and the excellence of organization design. Anderson uses cutting-edge research to merge contemporary and classic theories. The result of this merger is a perspective that is well-rounded to help students appreciate organizational design.

There is a section on global consideration in each chapter. In this section, Anderson highlights the global issues which are worth noting on organization design internationally. The entirety of the examples provided herein is sampled from all across the world. The cases sampled are real studies and real exercises. The global considerations develop practical skills of the learner through the practical opportunities as highlighted. At the back of the book, the reader finds a standalone activity. Anderson calls it ‘Organization Design Stimulation Activity”. The Organization design stimulation activity places the student in the shoes of the design practitioner. The activity is reusable throughout the course. It is produced in a way that the learner can be able to embrace particular concepts and ideas which the learner has covered.

The book can suit students or persons interested in organizational theory, organization design, and development. Organization design is a process that is well calculated with the morale of creating positions, units of work, and systems. The design makes the construction purposeful, functional, and structural. The capacity to respond to hitches and expectations in an organization is determined by how it is configured. The configuration can restrict or empower the functionality, productivity, and efficiency in an organization. There are differences in how practitioners appreciate and use organizational development. There are tendencies of practitioners adopting the latest techniques of intervention and technologies. In so doing, most of them do not fully consider the usefulness or impact of such a technique or technology. The book has not shied away from addressing the concerns of these differences by the broad research and the cases given.

Based on originality, “Organizational Development (OD)” values are strongly criticized by the never-ending business-oriented values of ‘how efficient’, ‘how profitable’, and ‘how productive’. These three factors override historical values of humanism, participation, and democracy. The result is that the OD practitioners suffer in their attempt to bring reconciliation in situations whereby these values are in friction with each other. In evaluating the effectiveness of OD, the results obtained are promising. However, the clients continue to press for the value of OD. According to Meyer (18), “The credibility of OD depends on being able to demonstrate robustly the effectiveness of the various OD method”. These methods explain what works, where does it work, and how does it work. Practitioners who are newer report of weakening of traditional OD values.

Conversely, the practitioners who are tenured for long believe that newer practitioners lack the needed background theory (Church et al., 28). On reliability, OD can keep evolving and adapt better to the demands of contemporary organizational challenges. This can be possible if several changes were initiated. Meyer (27) notes that “There is a distinction between organization development (OD; the field that addresses planned organizational changes) and the field of organization development and change (ODC; the more academic-oriented field that deals with both planned and unplanned changes)”. OD is noted to have made some innovations in recent years. The influence of ODC, however, has led to the opening up of innovative opportunities.

In the future of the role of an OD practitioner, business skills will be very vital. Most OD practitioners do not have deep training in business. The shallow training they have in business denies them adequate knowledge in finance, customer needs, and market demands, competition, opportunities, and threats. Resultantly, the practitioner will be unaware of the context of a business. This gives credibility when one is engaging a client since he/she can engage in the language the client understands thereby giving a link between business needs and business results. When business skills are increased, the OD has a higher value in the circles of business. According to Smendzuik-O'Brien, (17), “Increasing business knowledge and developing interventions that address contemporary business issues will increase the value that the OD practitioner can provide.” A knowledgeable OD will effectively handle organizational readjustments, mergers and acquisitions, and business partnerships.

Donald Anderson achieves to communicate these concerns articulately. Anderson looks at the individual, team, and organizational revolution, casing classic and contemporary organization development procedures. According to Anderson, (43). “Incorporating organization development ethics and values into each chapter…. provides discussion of real-world application of these theoretical ideas to help students face today’s challenging environment of increased globalization, rapidly changing technologies, economic pressures, and changing expectations in the contemporary workforce”. On validity, Anderson provides learners with the opportunity to gather knowledge on how to adapt OD values to contemporary needs. It seems he prefers skills over humanistic values in every situation. The concern here is whether the relevance of the field will remain alongside keeping a core of concepts and values shared by practitioners. Emphasizing humanistic values as seen in Chapter three, may contradict the changes expected to be implemented. This approach sums as strength in this text.

The case studies generated by Anderson are valid. They are applicable and generally can be reproduced in various situations. Content must be embraced with the process towards the outcome action solutions quickly and acted upon with full commitment. Consultants who work in fast response means will “Support their clients to come up with solutions through collective knowledge-generating rapid and consensual decisions” (Church et al., 36). On relevance, the work of Anderson in Organizational development: The process of leading organizational change is a work to create sustainability in organizations. It has focused on the socioeconomic aspects of organizations. Anderson gives it a triple-bottom-line approach; social, economic, and environmental responsibilities. It has a connotation for relevance to people, profit-making, and planet concerns.

All organizations must show commitment towards environmental care, which is care for the planet. Global warming is going on and people have contributed to the phenomenon. As firms work to thrive, it would be appropriate to advocate that they rise as they also lift the planet out of the mess in which it is. this is a matter that Anderson does not seem to prioritize the concern for the planet as he does for the growth and structuring of an organization. It is high time the organizations focus on the sustainability of the planet. Firms are exploiting the planet at the expense of future generations. The sustainability of such a legacy is in question if the planet's needs are overlooked.

Hamdoun, (764) remarks that “an organization is an open system between itself and its external environment up to a series of relationships that influence each other”. Hamdoun further notes that organizations influence the external environment mostly via the various products and services provided by the organization. Any organization has a responsibility, socially, to ensure that they leave a positive indicator on the society, community, nation, and planet where they belong.

In conclusion, the book offers a detailed and comprehensive focus on the change from the individual, team, and organizational levels. It also looks into classic and contemporary development techniques of an organization. The author, Donald L. Anderson provides tools for development to the students. The book gives bearing to the learners on what one needs to do to succeed in the competitive world of business. He names globalization, technological changes, economic pressures, and evolution in the workforce as some of the factors that one needs to navigate to rise. The point of departure from the arguments of Donald Anderson is the absence of environmental concerns as far as planet conservation is concerned. Seeing that many students will benefit from this book and get constructions about OD from it, there was a necessity for an environmental campaign. If the world is to see a change, that change should be seen through the change of mindset. In the same way, we construct mindset through books, such as Organizational Development, the mindsets we have about our planet can only be successful through the change of perception. It is therefore a weakness of this book that it did not see the need for mindset transformation as far as planet preservation is concerned.

Organizational development: “The process of leading organizational change” has changed the mindsets most people have about OD. Perception and reality are seamless. They are intertwined. Contrary to what most people think, perception is not subjective. Therefore, perception of OD determines how a mindset is set, your mindset eventually dictates your experiences. Ethics and values cannot be downplayed in this regard. Donald Anderson succeeds in giving a clean mindset postulation on OD, and therefore this work can be termed effective as discussed in this paper.

Work cited

Anderson, Donald L. Organization development: The process of leading organizational change. Sage Publications, 2019

Church, Allan H., Amanda C. Shull, and W. Warner Burke. "A look in the mirror: Current research findings on the values and practice of OD." Enacting Values-Based Change (2018): 21-42

Hamdoun, Mohamed, Charbel Jose Chiappetta Jabbour, and Hanen Ben Othman. "Knowledge transfer and organizational innovation: Impacts of quality and environmental management." Journal of cleaner production 193 (2018): 759-770.

Meyer, Lisa M. "The Grand Challenge of Preparing OD Scholar Practitioners for Grand Challenges." (2018)

Smendzuik-O'Brien, Juliann Mary. Internal Organization Development (OD) Practitioners and Sustainability. Diss. Fielding Graduate University, 2017.

.