History of OD in India

History of OD in India

(Source:  Organization Development: Interventions and Strategies by S. Ramnaryan, T. V. Rao and Kuldeep Singh; New Delhi: Sage India)

OD is a process for planned change. It aims at building internal competencies in individuals and teams in the organizational context, and at taking organizations to higher levels of performance by building individual-, group-, system- and process related compe­tencies. It focuses on behaviour and uses various behavioural tools. It has a specialized body of knowledge and therefore needs special­ists to handle it Its focus on people, processes, systems, structure, etc., can extend from individual-based interventions to structural changes and system revamps.

In India, OD and planned change started in the early 1960s. A group of Indian professionals trained at the National Training Laboratories (NTL) at Bethel, Maine, USA, brought a good deal of OD technology to India. Grid programmes were initiated in the early 1960s in Larsen & Toubro. The T-group was initiated and widely used at the Small Industries Extension Training (SIET) Institute, Hyderabad, State Bank of India and in the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) programmes in the mid-1960s. Unfortunately, these remained isolated efforts and did not take OD to its logical conclusions.

In the mid-1970s, OD was first introduced in India in Larsen & Toubro as a formal and structured part of the HRD department. It was expected that the change process would get institutionalized and more OD specialists would be developed. Unfortunately, this did not happen as the corporate sector in the country had a very protected and secure environment and there were few compulsions to change. Hence OD remained mostly in academic institutions— the forte of a few specialists and largely limited to T-group training and other training-based interventions. That it has had a slow growth is indicated by the fact that even after 40 years of existence, the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Science (ISABS), an associate of NTL, produced less than a 200 process specialists in this vast country.

There have been several efforts to apply the OD approach and associated techniques in India but it has not created the desired impact. According to Srinivas (1994), one plausible explanation for this is that OD as it has emerged to date is culture specific, that it simply cannot be applied to locations outside the US. The issue of non-transferability of OD technology to cultures such as India has arisen because of the 'fear' or 'distrust' of its techniques of confrontation. The general (American)-practitioner or changeagent style of informality and an attitude of openness is also not suited to the Indian context. However, a deeper examination of values embed­ded in Indian religion and psycho-philosophy suggests that the cultural values are indeed largely supportive of organizational re­newal and change. The rich cultural heritage also contains a para­digm of change, based on which new approaches and designs of OD interventions may be possible. And such designs are likely to be accepted more readily in the country.

The scenario has changed thanks to an increasing number of applied behavioural scientists and T-group trainers, the HRD movement and establishment of HRD departments, contributions of multinationals in India, and the influence of Western education. Professional bodies such as the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Sciences (ISABS), Indian Society for Individual and Social Development (ISISD) and its off-shoot Sumedhas, Indian Society for Training and Develop­ment (ISTD) and the National HRD Network, and academic institutions such as the IIMs have further facilitated this. In the post-liberalization period, every one has been forced to seek change. As a result, the application of OD technology has increased.

LESSONS LEARNT

OD has been practised in India for the last 45 years, with mixed results. However, a few lessons drawn can be useful to the practitioners, consultants and academicians. Similar lessons have also been learnt in other countries.

♦   OD is basically a strategy for planned change. A change pro­cess is always messy and is never as clear as is made out in books and papers. However, the delineation of phases of creating readiness for change, implementing and stabilizing change, and of what needs to be done in each of these phases can prove useful. This requires clarity about the ultimate change goal and identification with where the organization is going. The 'pull' effect of future aspirations works much bet­ter than 'pushing' people through changes. Also, it is impor­tant to sustain the enthusiasm of those involved even after the excitement associated with initiation and the accomplishment of some early wins. This can be done by continuing to keep people informed, celebrating achievements and linking rewards to the achievement of change goals (Burke 1995).

♦   OD is based on the human-processes approach, focusing on interpersonal relationships during the course of interventions. Such an approach may not be feasible in the Indian context. A directive approach soliciting participation may be more effective and suitable.

♦   OD interventions should take into consideration the extraneous factors, such as caste, religion and relationships, that in­fluence the people working in the organization. Therefore, any change effort needs to be realistic.

♦   In India, the role of the government in regulating the activities of an organization is considerable, particularly in the pub­lic sector and to some extent in the private sector as well. While initiating any OD effort, the influencing role of the gov­ernment cannot be ignored.^l

♦   As Indian culture is strongly hierarchy based, an OD facilitator must first explain the need for change, what is to be changed and how it is going to benefit the target group. Such persuasion on the part of the change agent is bound to yield positive results.

♦   Another important theme concerns the role of leadership, particularly the visioning process and sharing vision; establishing and articulating purpose; developing change initiatives and programmes to guide implementation; communicating with and listening to people, dealing with questions and frustrations; and generating feelings of empowerment in organizational members during times of significant change (Burke 1995).

♦   Another issue of concern is the structure and processes, particularly making the functioning flexible and less bureau­cratic; decentralizing, but at the same time strengthening accountability; building bridges among different groups, functions and divisions; reorienting people and roles to make them more adaptive; and creating a small-group atmosphere within a large organization (Burke 1995).

♦   Also, since training is a widely used intervention, it is important to link it in terms of learning how to work together better, solve problems more effectively and improve the learning processes in organizations, much more strongly to solving of actual problems in real time in organizations (Burke 1995).

♦   In any OD-based change effort in the Indian context, it is sine qua non to take into consideration the prevailing cultural values, norms, attitudes, beliefs, etc., and leverage the functionalnes for making the change effort a success.

Keeping in view the current volatile and competitive Indian environment, managers cannot preoccupy themselves with basic business issues of organizations and ignore other such vital dimensions of strategy, change and social process. The manager who believes that for managing an organization 'all you have to do is make a good product and sell it hard' is becoming a virtual dinosaur. To meet the demands of business in the future, managers must be­come better informed, think more broadly and comprehensively, and undertake problem-solving processes in all the dimensions of their organizations and not only in their familiar 'production' or 'marketing' aspects.

There is a critical need at this point for a practical and straight forward approach to develop organizations. What is needed is a workable perspective that can help managers to look at their organizations in a comprehensive and systematic manner, as also a process for making organizations adapt to change—internal as well as external. OD offers one such perspective and process for developing the adaptive and coping capabilities of an organization.

The scope of OD is growing rapidly and the approaches to it are becoming more and more diversified. The practitioners of OD often disagree substantially on how to do it and hence there is a need for a general understanding of the concepts and ideas of OD, to be able to judge the relative merits of its various methods and techniques. There is no one 'best' approach, no one 'right' technique and no one 'correct' method. The subsequent chapters of this volume discuss a range of approaches and interventions.

References:

Burke, Warner W. (1995), 'Organizational Charige: What We Know, What We Need to Know", Journal of Management Inquiry, 4 (2): 158-71.

Lindsay, William M. and Joseph A. Petrick (1997), Total Quality and Organization Development, Florida: St Lucie Press.

Srinivas, Kalburgi M. (1994), 'Organization Development: Maya or Moksha', in Rabindra N. Kanungo and Manuel Mendonca (eds). Work Motivation: Models for Developing Countries, New Delhi: Sage.