One of the foundational definitions in the field of organizational development (aka OD) is planned change:
According to Beckard defines that “Organization Development is an effort planned, organization-wide, and managed from the top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization's 'processes,' using behavioral-science knowledge.”
-- Beckard, “Organization development: Strategies and Models”, Reading, MA: soweto mbeya, 2013, p. 9.
To understand the practice of OD, some of the key terms, embedded in James's formulation, include:
Performance management (PM) is a set of activities that ensure goals are met in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of an organization, a department, an employee, or the processes in place to manage particular tasks. Performance management standards are generally organized and disseminated by senior leadership at an organization, and by task owners.
Coaching is a form of development in which a person called a coach supports a learner or client in achieving a specific personal or professional goal by providing training and guidance. The learner is sometimes called a coachee. Occasionally, coaching may mean an informal relationship between two people, of whom one has more experience and expertise than the other and offers advice and guidance as the latter learns; but coaching differs from mentoring in focusing on specific tasks or objectives, as opposed to more general goals or overall development.
Organization development (OD) is the study of successful organizational change and performance. OD emerged from human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation. More recently, work on OD has expanded to focus on aligning organizations with their rapidly changing and complex environments through organizational learning, knowledge management and transformation of organizational norms and values. Key concepts of OD theory include: organizational climate, organizational culture and organizational strategies.
Performance improvement is measuring the output of a particular business process or procedure, then modifying the process or procedure to increase the output, increase efficiency, or increase the effectiveness of the process or procedure. Performance improvement can be applied to either individual performance such as an athlete or organizational performance such as a racing team or a commercial business.
Career development is the lifelong process of managing learning, work, leisure, and transitions in order to move toward a personally determined and evolving preferred future.
Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of different courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost–benefit analysis, which assigns a monetary value to the measure of effect. Cost-effectiveness analysis is often used in the field of health services, where it may be inappropriate to monetize health effect. Typically the CEA is expressed in terms of a ratio where the denominator is a gain in health from a measure and the numerator is the cost associated with the health gain. The most commonly used outcome measure is quality-adjusted life years (QALY).
Clinical governance is a systematic approach to maintaining and improving the quality of patient care within the National Health Service, (NHS). Clinical governance became important in health care after the Bristol heart scandal in 1995, during which an anaesthetist, Dr Stephen Bolsin, exposed the high mortality rate for paediatric cardiac surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary. It was originally elaborated within the United Kingdom National Health Service (NHS), and its most widely cited formal definition describes it as:
A framework through which NHS organisations are accountable for continually improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish.
Richard Beckhard (1918–1999) was an American organizational theorist, Adjunct Professor at MIT, and pioneer in the field of organization development.
The transtheoretical model of behavior change is an integrative theory of therapy that assesses an individual's readiness to act on a new healthier behavior, and provides strategies, or processes of change to guide the individual. The model is composed of constructs such as: stages of change, processes of change, levels of change, self-efficacy, and decisional balance.
The Center for Information Technology (CIT) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that compose the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), a cabinet-level department of the Executive Branch of the United States Federal Government. Originating in 1954 as a central processing facility in the NIH Office of the Director, the Division of Computer Research and Technology was established in 1964, merging in 1998 with the NIH Office of the CIO and the NIH Office of Research Services Telecommunications Branch to form a new organization, the CIT.
Capacity building is the process by which individuals and organizations obtain, improve, and retain the skills, knowledge, tools, equipment and other resources needed to do their jobs competently or to a greater capacity. Capacity building and capacity development are often used interchangeably.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to management:
A needs assessment is a systematic process for determining and addressing needs, or "gaps" between current conditions and desired conditions or "wants". The discrepancy between the current condition and wanted condition must be measured to appropriately identify the need. The need can be a desire to improve current performance or to correct a deficiency.
The human resource consulting industry has emerged from management consulting and addresses human resource management tasks and decisions. HR Consultants can fill two typical roles (1) Expert Resource Consultant (2) Process/People consultant. These two roles are defined by Steele F. (1975), Kubr,M. ; Niedereicholz (1996), Curnow-Reuvid (2003) and Kipping, K. and Clarck (2014).
Change management is a collective term for all approaches to prepare, support and help individuals, teams, and organizations in making organizational change. The most common change drivers include: technological evolution, process reviews, crisis, and consumer habit changes; pressure from new business entrants, acquisitions, mergers, and organizational restructuring. It includes methods that redirect or redefine the use of resources, business process, budget allocations, or other modes of operation that significantly change a company or organization. Organizational change management (OCM) considers the full organization and what needs to change, while change management may be used solely to refer to how people and teams are affected by such organizational transition. It deals with many different disciplines, from behavioral and social sciences to information technology and business solutions.
In the field of corporate diagnosis is a process that involves the three steps of publicly entering a human system, collecting valid data about experiences, and feeding back to the system toward promoting corporate performance.
Training and development involves improving the effectiveness of organizations and the individuals and teams within them. Training may be viewed as related to immediate changes in organizational effectiveness via organized instruction, while development is related to the progress of longer-term organizational and employee goals. While training and development technically have differing definitions, the two are oftentimes used interchangeably and/or together. Training and development has historically been a topic within applied psychology but has within the last two decades become closely associated with human resources management, talent management, human resources development, instructional design, human factors, and knowledge management.
The International Health Partnership (IHP+) is a group of partners committed to improving the health of citizens in developing countries. International organizations, bilateral agencies and country governments all sign the IHP+ Global Compact. They commit to putting the principles for aid effectiveness and development cooperation into practice in the health sector. IHP+ achieves results by mobilizing national governments, development agencies, civil society and others to support a single, country-led national health strategy. Partners aim to hold one another to account. This global initiative is administered by the World Health Organization and the World Bank.
The PRECEDE–PROCEED model is a cost–benefit evaluation framework proposed in 1974 by Lawrence W. Green that can help health program planners, policy makers and other evaluators, analyze situations and design health programs efficiently. It provides a comprehensive structure for assessing health and quality of life needs, and for designing, implementing and evaluating health promotion and other public health programs to meet those needs. One purpose and guiding principle of the PRECEDE–PROCEED model is to direct initial attention to outcomes, rather than inputs. It guides planners through a process that starts with desired outcomes and then works backwards in the causal chain to identify a mix of strategies for achieving those objectives. A fundamental assumption of the model is the active participation of its intended audience — that is, that the participants ("consumers") will take an active part in defining their own problems, establishing their goals and developing their solutions.
A behavior change method, or behavior change technique, is a theory-based method for changing one or several psychological determinants of behavior such as a person's attitude or self-efficacy. Such behavior change methods are used in behavior change interventions. Although of course attempts to influence people's attitude and other psychological determinants were much older, especially the definition developed in the late nineties yielded useful insights, in particular four important benefits: