Author
George Seifert
Bio: George Seifert is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Organizational effectiveness & Change management. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 3 citations.
Papers
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TL;DR: Action research was undertaken by a large midwestern utility company to learn what would happen to an organization that was undergoing severe reorganizational stresses while attempting to use organization development techniques to reduce those stresses as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Action research was undertaken by a large midwestern utility company. Although 3,000 individuals were in the affected areas, particular atten tion was paid to 300 engineers and technicians. The study was undertaken to learn what would happen to an organization that was undergoing severe reorganizational stresses while attempting to use organization development techniques to reduce those stresses. The OD work included inside and outside consultation with the top executive, team-building activities, attitude surveys and survey feedback, and vertical communi cations meetings. The dependent variables of organizational per formance and process improved during the ten-month test period. The research identified structural changes that may have had some effects, but these could not be isolated because of the multidimensionality of the situation. Additional research is needed to determine what impact the different OD interventions actually have on an organization and to de termine the half-life of those interventions.
3 citations
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TL;DR: The authors assesses the impact of three classes of organization development interventions based on 65 empirical studies and show that certain classes of interventions appear to be more effective than others, while a typology of outcome variables is used to show how OD has affected organizational behavior.
Abstract: Little systematic research has concentrated on the effects of organization development (OD) in terms of hard-criteria measures of performance and behavior. This paper assesses the impact of three classes of OD interventions based on 65 empirical studies. A typology of outcome variables is used to show how OD has affected organizational behavior. Certain classes of interventions appear to be more effective than others.
88 citations
TL;DR: Team building appears to be an intervention with great potential for improving employee attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors as well as organi zational effectiveness, but a lack of rigor in the research methods used to evaluate it precludes any firm conclusions about which improvements were functions of team building and which were due to uncontrolled variables.
Abstract: Thirty-six published studies of an organization development strategy, team building, were reviewed with a focus on (1) research designs, (2) sample sizes, (3) dependent variables, and (4) the lengt...
66 citations
TL;DR: The development of organisation development (OD) can trace back to the social psychological writings of Kurt Lewin (1947) and the beginnings of the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in the immediate post-war period.
Abstract: One can trace the development of organisation development (OD) back to the social psychological writings of Kurt Lewin (1947) and the beginnings of the National Training Laboratory (NTL) in the immediate post-war period. From the early experimentation with group dynamics, through the emergence of T-groups, McGregor’s work with Union Carbide in 1957 (McGregor, 1960), and the ESSO experiment in the late 1950s, OD began to develop a distinctive character, with an attendant technology and philosophy. Since that time OD has continued to mature, with the establishment in 1964 of the OD network of the NTL, and in 1968 of an OD Division of the American Society of Training and Development. This was followed in 1971 by an OD Division of the Academy of Management. It was estimated by French et al. (1978) that by the early 1970s these groups had a collective
7 citations