Organization Development Ideas and Issues

Organization Development provides a forum for the ideas and experiences of a researcher and consultant concerned with change in organizations. It shows how choice and change can be guided in a world now characterized by what the author terms “permanent temporariness.” The book is at heart an approach to increasing the amount of responsible freedom at work. In this respect, the volume responds to an avalanche of social criticism that has been directed at bureaucracy, “organizational America,” and the “organizational ethic.” The field at organization development is informed by such criticisms but transcends it via technology and values that drive change and choice alike.

Golembiewski is in turn provocative and descriptive. He gives the reader a hands-on view of the history and character of this field, aiming at both students and experts, especially those concerned with ongoing self-renewal among organizations and business professions. The volume offers chapters on scope, methods, professionalization, and certification resting on a code of ethics and peer review. The field covered by this volume has become in the last thirty-five years a worldwide phenomenon. Organization development appears in some form in virtually all organized life: business, government and education, health, public and private sector alike.

This work draws special attention to its cross-cultural features. It can be used in practice or apprenticeship, in workshops or in theory constructions. Golembiewski is the premier theorist in the political science of organizational analysis. This core volume will be of interest to scholars and students of the field that has come to be known as organizational development. This book will appeal to a large and growing set of audiences: professionals and students at in-training workshops and conferences, as well as those taking academic courses.

Robert T. Golembiewski is distinguished research professor emeritus at the University of Georgia. He has authored or edited over seventy-five books and numerous articles in scholarly journals.