Investing In Planned Change In The Energy Industry: Features And Consequences Of On Approaches
Authors: Golembiewski R.T. 
Published: March 2010

Investing in planned change usually has been viewed as a desirable but — iffy — matter. Organization Development (OD) is perceived as the vehicle for behavioral science-based interventions in organizations. But there are two basic questions: will the interventions improve an organization's culture as well as the networks of interpersonal and intergroup relations, in creating the kind of worksite almost all prefer? Secondly, will these improvements in the quality of working life be bought at the expense of significant reductions in bottom-line yardsticks-that is, objective measures of productivity and various outcomes usually measured in terms of dollars?

This paper reviews data that provide encouraging, if not yet complete, answers to these two key questions. Those data imply the prudence of investing in OD approaches to planned change, as measured in terms of how people feel about their work and how they perform at their worksites.

Introduction

Can planned change in the energy industry be motivated by investments in Organization Development (conveniently referred to here as OD despite the dangers of label thinking)? The argument is direct. Growing evidence establishes that —when disciplined by appropriate values and when relying on a growing family of designs for planned change —OD has a substantial track record for making desired and useful things happen. These success rates mean OD has something to offer the energy industry which —for its own good and that of all civilization —can use all the help that can be mustered in these unsheltered times.

The energy industry must be able to continue to extract value simultaneously and wisely from nature as well as from its human resources, lest both physical and human capital be exploited and squandered. And extraction of resources (more difficult than ever) cannot occur without human intervention.

OD's contribution should not come as news to many in the energy industry, but this piece has its redeeming virtues even for those who long accepted the basic proposition of this argument, OD can be fairly said to have gotten its start in the oil patch some three decades ago(6). However, comprehensive comparative data about OD success rates have only recently become available. These success rates should provide useful impetus for those for whom OD is still conceptually novel. They also may energize anew those who liked OD values and ethics but had only limited or anecdotal evidence about the practical effects of its several approaches.

Circumscribing OD

As a popular new technology only recently available to the world's students in texts and learning resources,(2,3,4,5) has to be saved from its friends and foes alike. Friends have zestfully gone about comprehensively defining " it "often with the consequence of creating doubt as to whether there is any such " thing," or at least encouraging the conclusion that individual commentators were grasping very different parts of a very large elephant! And some " friends" of OD need to have their exuberance check reined, especially those interested in "getting on the bandwagon ".