Action research in OD.

A procedure or procedures to solve real life problems in real life settings.

The following drawing shows a model of action research used in OD.

1. Entry: beginning of the process. Identify the problem. Make an observation,

interviews, etc. take notes of any crisis situation in the organization. , raw
material. Sociotechnical problems.
2. Start up: initial proposals and implementations. Proposals are tentative, they
are subject to change.
3. Assessment and feedback: test the porposed solutions, the feedback, lets or
enable the consultant to modify plans.
4. Intervention: here the chosen interventions is implemented.
5. Evaluation: the performance of the organization is evaluated after being
applied.
6. Adaptation: the organization adapts to new change
7. Separation. When everything finally works out: the consultant and
organization part with each.

Activity: think of a problem of an org. and propose an intervention using research.

Model of a large system.

Which is useful in OD.
(Hojita)

1. Environment strategy. Here the resources, competitors, economics, politics,

have to be considered.
2. Structure. Organization chart, hierarchies, salaries, departments, positions, etc.
3. Technology.
4. Culture.
5. Performance management systems.
6. Organizational feedback systems.
7. Organizational effectiveness. Pedir apuntes!!!

Large scale intervention characteristics.

1. They are triggered by environmental and internal disruptions. Environmental

factors include economic changes (crises), technological changes (advances),
political changes, legal changes social (wars, conflicts). Internal disruptions
include: not enough profits/resources, changes of top executives, the company
changes owner, mergers (fusion of 2 or more companies), acquisitions (another
org. buys the present company), change of premises, elimination of a big
part/section of the org. these are very drastic internal changes.
2. They provoke a revolutionary change.
 3. They incorporate new organization paradigms= term used by Kuhn
(philosopher on the teory of knowledge) to refer to the framework upon which
a way of working is based.
4. They are driven by senior executives and line managers when this happens we
have what we call a “cascade effect”. Decisions taken at the top flow easily to
lower hierarchies.
5. They require an org. learning system. This means that a way for the org, to
acquire the change has to be found.

Examples of large scale interventions.

Open systems planning. This implies the following steps:

1. Identify environmental domains that affect the org. strategy: economics,
technological, social, political, legal.
2. Asses how the org. currently responds to the environmental demands. Here,
one focuses on what the org is doing trying to adapt to the environmental
demands.
3. Help org. members identify the org purpose, underlying purpose and its
distinctive competencies. Or. Purpose= explicit purpose
Underlying purpose= implicit purpose.
4. Create a realistic future cenario of the org. environmental demands and org.
responses. Here the org may propose something like:
5. Create an ideal future scenario of environmental demands and org. responses.
Ideal implies perfection
6. Compare the org. present with the ideal future and prepare an action plan to
realize the ideal future

(pedir apunte clase que no vine)

Transorganizational development.

This is the effort of the org. under question and another one or other owes. Exam:

 Joint ventures: here, we have 2 or more organizations getting together to

improve. This implies the “fusion” of assets, expenses.
 Research and development consortia: here, 2 or more companies get together
in order to conduct research and development that will benefit them.
 Public-private partnerships: government enterprise and private org. working
together in association.
 Consumer – supplier networks: here, the efforts of the consumers and its
suppliers are joint in order to facilitate the logistics among them.

Four sequential steps in transorganizational development.

1. Identification. Indetify potential members of a transorganizational system

2. Convention. Assess the feasibility (viabilidad) of forming a transorganizational
system
 3. Organization. Form the transorganizational system and organize the members
for task performance
4. Evaluation. Provide feedback to the member of the transorganizational system
so that they can identify and solve problems.

Sociotechnical systems.

(pedir apuntes)

2 important points to consider in sociotechnical systems.

1. Work should be organized in a way that is compatible with the org. objectives.
This often leads to a participative process that promotes employee involvement
in work design.
2. Only those features needed to implement the work design should be specified.
The remaining features should vary, according to the technical and social needs
of the situation. This heolps employees control technical variances quickly and
close to their sources.

Reward interventions

The main proposals come from Lawler. The main idea is to use rewards to reinforce
desired behaviors (operant conditioning). The rewards can be of different types:
1. Money rewards.
 Salary
 Bonuses.

2. Fringe benefits.
 Gas checks.
 Cellphones
 Company cars
 Private insurance
 Training, scholarships
 Viaticos.

3. Recognition.
 Employee of the month
 Diplomas

Among desired behaviors, one can mention the following:

 Team work / sharing of info.
 Punctuality
 For executives -> keeping employees satisfied and happy
 Create a good environment and good relationships among family members and
org.
 New proposals to solve problems
This type of intervention is used almost everywhere. However, it is to be combined
with other interventions due to the fact that people get used to it.
Another factor to consider is that rewards are different for different people. In some
companies, they use “the cafeteria scheme of rewards”. The worker choose the
rewards among different alternatives.

Conciliatory interviews.

1. Mediation: here, the mediator propuses course of solution. These proposals

can be accepted or rejected bye the 2 parts. The mediator only works as a
facilitator to solve the conflict.
2. Conciliation: here, a conciliator also makes proposals, however, these proposals
are direct than these of a mediator. Yet they do not oblige bthe conflicting
parts to direct than those of a mediator yet they do not oblige the conflicting
parts to them, thus the conciliator is more than a facilitator.
3. Arbitration: here, the arbiter proposes a solution to the problem, but this one
binds the 2 conflicting parties. That means that they have to accept it. This is
much stronger than meditation and stronger than concillation. Arbiters have
the legal power to come to decisions which have to be followed by the parts in
trouble, if they are not followed, the next stop is a sue.
4. Sue: here a judge gives a verdict on what is to be done. This verdict is of course
compulsory. Unfortunately in some countries, meditation, conciliation and
arbitration are not as widely used as in other countries. This happens because
mexico legal system is in most cases handled by judges. Therefore, since they
do not want to relinguish the power they have, they do not promote these
methods.