THREE APPROACHES TO ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
?? THREE APPROACHES TO
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING
Anthony J. Reilly
¡°I do OD.¡± ¡°We¡¯re into OD in our organization.¡± The term Organization Development,
or ¡°OD¡± as it is popularly called, has become part of the applied behavioral science
jargon. In some instances it is confused with other terms, such as management training
or management development. Although there is some overlap, both conceptually and
operationally, among the terms, there are real differences as well. The attempt here is to
show how the three terms complement one another on the one hand and how they differ
on the other.
An implicit expectation of any kind of management enrichment program is that of
learning, which generally involves some relatively permanent type of change¡ª
behavioral, attitudinal, or cognitive. Therefore, the different kinds of learning are of
particular interest to us in this paper.
MANAGEMENT TRAINING
When I think of ¡°training,¡± I think of one kind of learning. Training conveys to me the
idea of making people more alike than different in some respect and trying to
deemphasize individual differences in some particular area. For example, a number of
persons are trained to operate a complicated piece of equipment. Once the equipment is
designed and built, hopefully to the specifications that optimize a person¡¯s ability to
operate the machine, training programs are implemented in order that the operator may
¡°fit¡± himself or herself to the machine. Individual differences among people in terms of
how they operate the machine may cut down on the machines¡¯ efficiency. Time-andmotion studies represent another approach where training may be utilized to make
people respond to a set behavioral pattern. What about management training? Many
organizations spend considerable time, energy, and dollars to make their managers more
alike than different. Instilling company values and philosophy and inculcating the
organization¡¯s climate and norms are examples of exposing managers to ideas and ideals
they are expected to emulate and to think similarly about. Training managers in specific
skill areas¡ªdata processing, budget and accounting techniques, salary administration¡ª
are other examples of applications of management training.
Originally published in The 1973 Annual Handbook for Group Facilitators by John E. Jones and J. William Pfeiffer (Eds.), San Diego,
CA: Pfeiffer & Company.
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 16, 2nd Edition. Copyright ? 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer
?? 1
MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
Whereas management training attempts to level out individual differences, management
development provides a different kind of learning opportunity. To me, development
means legitimizing individual differences, providing opportunities for the person to
actualize his or her own potential, and encouraging managers to be more different than
they are alike along certain dimensions. As with training, numerous organizations invest
extensively into management development programs. Examples of management
development include the following: career testing and counseling programs, in which the
person receives feedback based on test results about his or her abilities, interests, and
personality; university programs geared towards a continuing education experience for
the person, such as new ideas about management and advanced technological advances
the manager needs to know about; and personal growth experiences, in which the person
comes to an increased awareness and understanding of himself or herself and how he or
she affects other people. Each of these provides an experience aimed at developing the
individual¡¯s unique potential. The focal point is on self-development. The assumption
made here is that increased self-awareness and understanding can lead to attitudinal or
behavioral changes that will increase an individual¡¯s personal effectiveness and
ultimately the effectiveness of the organization.
ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT
Conceptually, organization development is different from both management training and
management development. The latter two kinds of learning may, however, be part of an
OD effort. Burke (1971) stated that ¡°although persons may be involved in events that are
properly labeled as OD technology (some of the examples mentioned above), such
activities are not considered organizational development if they are not part of a planned
effort at changing the organization¡¯s culture.¡± In short, OD can be defined as a planned
process of cultural change utilizing behavioral science knowledge as a base for
interventions aimed at increasing the organization¡¯s health and effectiveness (Beckhard,
1969). As such, its focus is not solely on the individual person and his or her growth in
the organization. Rather, the focus is on how the individual relates to his or her own
work group and how his or her group interfaces with other groups in the organization.
Again, to use Burke¡¯s words: ¡°The primary reason for using OD is a need to improve
some or all of the system that constitutes the total organization.¡±
Such a planned process demands careful assessment or diagnosis of what is needed
to increase overall effectiveness, along with tailor-made changes or interventions, the
goals of which are to satisfy those felt needs. The key concern of behavioral science
practitioners involved in OD work is, of course, to create the kind of organizational
climate wherein individuals meet their own needs and, at the same time, optimize the
realization of organizational goals. Team-building, learning how to diagnose needs,
working through task and interpersonal issues, creating structural and functional changes
to facilitate effectiveness are some examples that may be part of an OD effort.
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The Pfeiffer Library Volume 16, 2nd Edition. Copyright ? 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer
These three approaches to organization growth are certainly not mutually exclusive.
Rather, each is complementary to the other. Often one phase evolves rather naturally
into another. However, the evaluation has a definite sequence. Generally, the pattern
follows one of management training¡úmanagement development¡úorganization
development. For example, before effective intergroup work (part of an OD sequence) is
done, it is of great importance that team-building within each group be conducted.
The choice of learning approach employed¡ªmanagement training, management
development or organization development¡ªdepends, therefore, on the specific kind of
change desired in the organization. Whether the change be directed at reducing
individual differences, legitimizing individual differences, or enhancing
group/intergroup collaboration, performance is the key issue.
REFERENCES
Beckhard, R. (1969). Organization development: Its nature, origin, and prospects. Reading, MA: AddisonWesley.
Burke, W.W. (1971). A comparison of management development and organization development. Journal of
Applied Behavioral Science, 5.
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 16, 2nd Edition. Copyright ? 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer
?? 3
?? DIMENSIONS OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL
UNIVERSE: A MODEL FOR ASSESSMENT
AND DIRECTION
David J. Marion
Many approaches and technologies have been devised for assessing, managing, and
developing organizations. Now available is a more sophisticated and varied set of
alternatives for understanding and directing organizational behavior than ever before.
The very complexity of this arsenal, however, renders it more a maze than a repertoire
of choices. Lacking an adequate frame of reference, such a situation tends to produce
confusion and poor choices. This essay presents a paradigm to order this array in terms
of basic dimensions of organizational life. This model is keyed to the view that human
systems are preeminently knowledge-producing and knowledge-utilizing systems.
STATE OF THE ART
The proliferation of theories, approaches, schemes, and models for understanding and
affecting organizations is a natural and laudable consequence of success in basic
research and in applied development efforts. Not unlike what has occurred in medicine
and other highly technical fields, however, this has resulted in an information overload.
A second cause of this proliferation of models and methods is that, unlike medicine¡¯s
development of new ways to deal with problems that have always existed, the
organizational, interpersonal, and intrapersonal arts and sciences must produce new
approaches to new problems.
Individuals, their relationships, and their organizations exist in, contribute to, and
partake of a new world. In the broadest terms, this new world may be characterized by
unprecedented rates of change, magnitudes of size, degrees of complexity, explosions of
information, implosions of space and time, and interpenetration and pervasiveness of
systems. In such a world, traditional and unexamined forms of organizational
functioning have become progressively less satisfactory. Thus new innovations have
arisen, some of them directly out of scientific exploration of the organizational universe.
If traditional ways are marked by their stable and unexamined nature, the contrasting
hallmarks of science are change and explicit inquiry. Deliberate, thoughtful
experimentation has led to such techniques and approaches as PPBS (Planning
Programming Budgeting System), participatory management, PERT (Program
Originally published in The 1975 Annual Handbook for Group Facilitators by John E. Jones and J. William Pfeiffer (Eds.), San Diego,
CA: Pfeiffer & Company. This paper has benefitted from discussion of earlier versions with Francis J. Pilecki, Kenneth Benne, and Joe Krzys,
and from collaborative practice with John Ingalls.
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The Pfeiffer Library Volume 16, 2nd Edition. Copyright ? 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer
Evaluation and Review Techniques), performance contracting, grid analysis, MBO
(Management By Objectives), sensitivity training, etc.
However, these techniques and approaches are more the administrator¡¯s puzzle than
repertoire. In many ways the choices resemble those to be made in a modern
supermarket: tremendous variety, competing products within each category,
distinctively different and attractive packaging of similar commodities, and seemingly
sincere testimonials by experts and users as to the goodness of particular products and
producers. The modern manager/administrator has reason to feel that he or she is in a
situation similar to that of the supermarket shopper. Varieties of approaches to
organizational life are abundant, but there is little in the way of basic concepts that can
guide our actions.
Intelligent selection, sequencing, and combining of techniques and methods of
organizational assessment and direction are not possible unless there is an adequate
frame of reference. This essay attempts to provide the manager with such a frame of
reference. It presents a model of the organizational realm that can serve as a guide to
organizational diagnosis and as a matrix for evaluating and selecting the techniques and
approaches best suited to the solution of identified problems and concerns. This double
purpose dictates the nature of the model to be developed.
In order to provide a general orientation for assessing organizational situations, the
various ways of characterizing and describing such situations must be synthesized along
basic dimensions. Reciprocally, in order to provide guidance in managing organizational
situations, these basic dimensions must be analyzed and exposed.
THE ORGANIZATIONAL UNIVERSE
It often seems that organizational ¡°solutions¡± (i.e., methods of assessment, management,
development, etc.) are less than effective because of the complex and often confusing
nature of organizational problems. Organizational life does not present itself to us in the
shape of clearly delimited and defined problems. Indeed, the nature of problems in this
domain is itself often problematic.
Organizations are some of the most complex sets of phenomena in the universe.
Organizations not only have a multitude of parts and pieces and relationships, but a
multitude of kinds of parts and pieces and relationships. Human organizations are made
up of people, finances, places, understandings, inputs, groups, rewards, inventories,
leaders, budgets, expectations, followers, regulations, outputs, salaries, incidents, tables
of organization, histories, costs, communication, space, materials, authority,
information, processes, tasks, choices, personnel, routine, morale, decisions, forms,
motives, and many more components.
Every person has an implicit sense of how things work in his or her organization.
But when it comes to conceptualizing organizations in ways that help to understand, to
predict, and to affect them (diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment), we are still at a very
primitive stage.
The Pfeiffer Library Volume 16, 2nd Edition. Copyright ? 1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer
?? 5
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