A Structural Approach to Organization Development in a University Professional School

Abstract

Accounts of organization development interventions typically deal with business or industrial organizations, stress the significance of an external consultant, and use group-centered educational or attitudinal change methods. This study departs from tradition in all three instances. The client system in this study was a professional school within a major western university. The primary change agent was an interim director of the school; thus, he held line authority over the business of the school as well as the nature of the change process. The intervention technique was almost entirely the manipulation of the school's structural properties. The conceptual framework for the change process stressed two primary elements: (1) the appropriateness of the Lewinian model of social-system change, and (2) the necessity to recognize the "systemness" of the inter vention process. The study reviews literature in the field that is important in understanding the nature of this intervention, presents the background of the client system, discusses the specifics of the intervention methodol ogy as well as the results of the project, and, finally, summarizes the implications of this project for the field of organization development.

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