History, Culture, & Values

What's included:

The history of organization development using an overview of traditions and themes during its evolution.
The values an organization development practitioner holds and the role they play in their work.
The role "purpose" plays into an organization's culture courtesy of a TedTalk by Simon Sinek (2009).
An application of organization development to the real life case of Allied Universal.

History of OD

Since the 1940s, nine major themes have been incorporated into OD. Keep in mind that these themes have blended into each other and have intersected at various points during the short history of OD (Anderson, 2019, p. 24).

Laboratory training & T-groups (1940s): Observing groups and how they work to understand member learning experiences for the purpose of growth and development to help their communities (p. 25).
Action research, survey feedback, & sociotechnical systems (1950s):
1. Action research - taking action by researching and looking for organization change (p. 25).
2. Survey feedback - members taking surveys about their organizations to generate positive change (p. 28).
3. Sociotechnical systems - combining social and technological aspects of an organization to promote a positive and productive workplace (p. 30).
Management practices (1960s): Management having more positive and people-centered way of managing their employees rather than holding negative assumptions (p. 35).
Quality & employee involvement (1970s): Creating "quality circles" where members actively take part in improving their organization by making suggestions to management (p. 36).
Organizational culture (1980s): Start of the "second generation of OD"; moving away from classically-scientific methods of organization comprehension (p. 41) and shifting toward a more anthropological and cultural viewpoint (p. 40).
Change management, strategic change, & reengineering (1980s-1990s): Shifting focus of change to the center of the organization so a change plan can be adopted on a larger scale throughout the organization (p. 41).
Organizational learning (1990s): Promoting key ideas such as systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building shared vision, and team learning to promote individual growth and development (p. 44).
Organizational effectiveness & employee engagement (2000s): Recording member satisfaction level, participation, and the drive to work (p. 45).
Agility & collaboration (2010s): Adapting to technological advances by being fast, flexible, and focused in working together with peers on a global scale (p. 46).

Values of an OD Practitioner & Their Role

OD has six values that hold up today and play a large role in what a practitioner in OD does.

Participation, involvement, & empowerment: Create and manage change that gives members a chance to be involved in group contributions (p. 53).
Importance of group & teams: Foster and facilitate teamwork because of how vital it is to organizational success.
Growth, development, & learning: Help an individual grow and development when they are struggling (p. 54).
Valuing the whole person: Help organizations respect members' feelings and realize what they've contributed to the group as a whole (p. 55).
Dialogue & collaboration: Discuss problems head-on to try and solve them healthily and productively (pp. 57-58).
Authenticity, openness, & trust: Encourage honesty, truthfulness, and being up-front about decisions, opinions, and plans among organization members (p. 58).

Role of "Purpose" in Organizations

Simon Sinek's Ted Talk in 2009 entitled "How Great Leaders Inspire Action" talks about the purpose of an organization, or its "why", and its relevance to what organizations do. He states in the video that all groups know what they do, some know how they do it, but very little know why they do it. To show this, he talks about "The Golden Circle", where the "why" of a group is at the center. Most groups work from the outside in:

WHAT ---> HOW ---> WHY

However, Sinek suggests that truly great organizations work from the inside out:

WHY ---> HOW ---> WHY

It can be interpreted that people or organizations who are "why-centered", or have a sense of purpose and make that their core will attract other like-minded individuals. They are fascinated by why the person or organization does what they do, rather than just what they do (Sinek, S. 2009).

LaDonna - This American LifeA security guard at the airport notices something going wrong on the tarmac, and takes it upon herself to fix it.

A Real Case: Allied Universal

To give all of this material some weight and context, it's ideal to apply all of it to a real life situation. Provided to the left is a podcast from This American Life about LaDonna Powell, a former employee at Allied Universal, a security systems and services company, and her experiences while working at the company.

**WARNING**: I have provided you the unedited version of the podcast, which contains some rather offensive language. Listener discretion is advised.

The podcast is just shy of one hour. Once you've given it a listen, see below for connections made with the course materials!

Connecting the Dots: Links to OD

Making connections is an important tool to make in order to further understanding. Three connections can be made between historical themes, culture, and values of OD and the case of LaDonna Powell and Allied Universal:

Organizational learning - This can be defined as identifying a problem and fixing it, but only by reflecting on it can one truly learn from it (Anderson, 2019, p. 42). The wrongful behavior of those at Allied Universal were never corrected or learned from, therefore continuing after LaDonna's termination from the company (Joffe-Walt, 2018).
Organizational culture - Practitioners must study organizations closely in a way that pulls the veil on the way things are done or the way people think in the organization (Anderson, 2019, p. 40). Multiple instances throughout the podcast show that it was a generally accepted part of the culture at Allied Universal to just let things happen because 'that's the way things are here'. (Joffe-Walt, 2018).
Purpose - Allied Universal states that their purpose is to provide security to clients across the country and to serve and safeguard their customers and communities in the modern world (Allied Universal, 2021). This is a statement of their "what", not their "why", in reference to Sinek's "Golden Circle" theory and Allied Universal's outside in approach to thinking (Sinek, 2009): they protect an airport (what) by providing a system of security (how) because an airport needs protection from international and domestic threats (why).

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