Api 20e biomerieux

The second set of people to whom the term OD practitioner applies are those specializing in fields related to OD, such as human resource management, organization design, quality control, information technology, and business strategy. These content-oriented fields increasingly are becoming integrated with OD's process orientation, particularly as OD projects have become more comprehensive, involving multiple features and varying parts of organizations. For example, the integrated strategic change intervention described in Chapter 18 and the dynamic strategy-making intervention presented in Chapter 21 are the result of marrying OD with business strategy. 2 A growing number of professionals in these related fields are gaining experience and competence in OD, mainly through working with OD professionals on large-scale projects and through attending OD training sessions. Most of the large accounting firms, for example, diversified into management consulting and change management. 3 In most cases, professionals in these related fields do not subscribe fully to traditional OD values, nor do they have extensive OD training and experience. Rather, they have formal training and experience in their respective specialties, such as industrial engineering, information systems, or corporate strategy. They are OD practitioners in the sense that they apply their special competence within an OD-like process, typically by engaging OD professionals and managers to design and implement change programs. They also practice OD when they apply their OD competence to their own specialties, thus spreading an OD perspective into such areas as compensation practices, work design, labor relations, and strategic planning.

The third set of people to whom the term OD practitioner applies are the increasing number of managers and administrators who have gained competence in OD and who apply it to their own work areas. Studies and recent articles argue that OD increasingly is applied by managers rather than by OD professionals. 4 Such studies suggest that the faster pace of change affecting organizations today is highlighting the centrality of the manager in managing change. Consequently, OD must become a general management skill. Along those lines, Kanter studied a growing number of firms, such as General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, and 3M, where managers and employees have become “change masters.” 5 They have gained the expertise to introduce change and innovation into the organization.

Managers tend to gain competence in OD through interacting with OD professionals in actual change programs. This on-the-job training frequently is supplemented with more formal OD training, such as the various workshops offered by the National Training Laboratories (NTL), USC's Center for Effective Organizations, the Center for Creative Leadership, the Gestalt Institute, UCLA's Extension Service, the Tavistock Institute, the Institute for Socio-Economic Enterprises (ISEOR), and others. Line managers increasingly are attending such external programs. Moreover, a growing number of organizations, including Capital One, Disney, and General Electric, have instituted in-house training programs for managers to learn how to develop and change their work units. As managers gain OD competence, they become its most basic practitioners.

In practice, the distinctions among the three sets of OD practitioners are blurring. A growing number of managers have transferred, either temporarily or permanently, into the OD profession. For example, companies such as Procter & Gamble have trained and rotated managers into full-time OD roles so that they can gain skills and experience needed for higher-level management positions. Also, it is increasingly common to find managers and staff specialists using their experience in OD to become external consultants. More OD practitioners are gaining professional competence in related specialties, such as business process reengineering, reward systems, and strategic planning. Conversely, many specialists in those related areas are achieving professional competence in OD. Cross-training and integration are producing a more comprehensive and complex kind of OD practitioner—one with a greater diversity of values, skills, and experience than a traditional practitioner.