Editing Organization development (section)

===History===
[[Kurt Lewin]] (1898–1947) is the founding father of OD, although he died before the concept became mainstream in the mid-1950s.<ref>Child, John: 'Organization Contemporary Principles and Practice',292. Blackwell Publishing,2005></ref> From Lewin came the ideas of [[group dynamics]] and [[action research]] which underpin the basic OD process as well as providing its collaborative consultant/client ethos. Institutionally, Lewin founded the "Research Center for Group Dynamics" (RCGD) at [[MIT]], which moved to Michigan after his death. RCGD colleagues were among those who founded the [[National Training Laboratories]] (NTL), from which the [[T-groups]] and group-based OD emerged.

[[Kurt Lewin]] played a key role in the evolution of organization development as it is known today. As early as [[World War II]] (1939-1945), Lewin experimented with a collaborative change-process (involving himself as a consultant and a client group) based on a three-step process of planning, taking action, and measuring results. This was the forerunner of action research, an important element of OD, which will be discussed later. Lewin also initiated a learning method known as laboratory training, or T-groups. After Lewin's death in 1947, his close associates helped to develop survey-research methods at the [[University of Michigan]]. These procedures became important parts of OD as developments in this field continued at the [[National Training Laboratories]] and in growing numbers of universities and private consulting-firms across the US. Leading universities offering doctoral-level<ref>exampl_OD</ref> degrees in OD include [[Benedictine University]] and the [[Fielding Graduate University]].

Douglas and Richard Beckhard, while "consulting together at General Mills in the 1950s [...] coined the term ''organization development'' (OD) to describe an innovative bottom-up change effort that fit no traditional consulting categories" (Weisbord, 1987, p.&nbsp;112).<ref>Weisbord, Marvin. (1987). Productive Workplace: Organizing and managing for dignity, meaning and community.  Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.</ref>

The failure of off-site laboratory training to live up to its early promise was one of the important forces stimulating the development of OD. Laboratory training is learning from a person's "here and now" experience as a member of an ongoing training group. Such groups usually meet without a specific agenda. Their purpose is for the members to learn about themselves from their spontaneous "here and now" responses to an ambiguous situation. Problems of [[leadership]], structure, status, [[communication]], and self-serving behavior typically arise in such a group. The members have an opportunity to learn something about themselves and to practice such skills as listening, observing others, and functioning as effective group members.<ref name="Johnson">{{cite book|author= Richard Arvid Johnson|title= Management, systems, and society : an introduction|publisher= Goodyear Pub. Co.|location= Pacific Palisades, Calif.|year= 1976|pages= [https://archive.org/details/managementsystem00john/page/223 223–229]|isbn= 0-87620-540-6|oclc= 2299496|url= https://archive.org/details/managementsystem00john/page/223}}</ref> [[Herbert A. Shepard]] conducted the first large-scale experiments in Organization Development in the late fifties.<ref>Herbert Shepard Foundation. ''About the Author Herbert Allen Shepard, Essence of a Proactive Life'' [http://www.executive.org/shepard/shepard.pdf shepard.pdf] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303181245/http://www.executive.org/Shepard/Shepard.pdf |date=2016-03-03 }}</ref> He also founded the first doctoral program in organizational behavior at Case Western State University, and his colleague, Robert Blake, was also influential in making the term "organizational development" a more widely recognized field of psychological research. <ref>{{cite book|last1=Cameron|first1=Kim S|first2=Gretchen M|last2=Spreitzer|title=The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship|publisher=Oxford University Press|date=2011-08-22|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=xPIVDAAAQBAJ&q=shepard+blake+organizational+development&pg=PA738|page=738|isbn=9780199989959}}</ref>

As formerly practiced (and occasionally still practiced for special purposes), laboratory training was conducted in "stranger groups"—groups composed of individuals from different organizations, situations, and backgrounds. A major difficulty developed, however, in transferring knowledge gained from these "stranger labs" to the actual situation "back home". This required a transfer between two different cultures, the relatively safe and protected environment of the T-group (or training group), and the give-and-take of the organizational environment with its traditional values. This led the early pioneers in this type of learning to begin to apply it to "family groups"—that is, groups located within an organization. From this shift in the locale of the training site and the realization that culture was an important factor in influencing group members (along with some other{{which?|date=April 2017}} developments in the behavioral sciences) emerged the concept of organization development.<ref name="Johnson"/>