Focuses on the theoretical underpinnings of organization development and emergent practices for designing future organizational structures. Explores the necessary skills and actions required to build social intelligence, develop relationships, consult in systems, and foster a culture of innovation in organizations. Students will apply learning through an experientially-oriented organization design project.
In this course, you will develop understanding of the development and design of Organizational Design (OD) interventions from a ‘positive approach to change’ perspective. The course is designed to help you experience a number of positive approaches to OD, from scaleable strategies such as Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Deviance and Open Space, to process tools such as mindmapping and affinity charting. To support your ability to analyze and create innovative strategies and approaches for further positive change in client organizations, extensive readings and exercises will expand your knowledge and capability. In the course you will learn to explore the complex processes of effective organization change and introduces practices to support positive systemic engagement. The course provides its students with the skills required to design and deliver customized interventions to assist organizations in leading and implementing positive stakeholder-engaged organization change.
In this course you will learn how to develop knowledge and skills necessary for conducting strategic analysis, decision making, and evaluation in complex organizations with particular focus on organizational health and vitality. Students will be introduced to approaches that assist in discerning intentions, roles and foci for Organization Development (OD) and change processes, and in finding a best fit with the practitioner’s style and capabilities.
OD practitioners have focused on supporting the strategic goals of organizations through various interventions that are designed to create alignment between people and strategy, and to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the realization of goals. OD practitioners are often called upon to support changes that arise from marketplace changes, economic conditions and workforce fluctuations. Increasingly, vibrant, healthy organizations prove to be those that have learned to renew themselves while on the way to realizing their strategies and goals. Addressing organizational health and vitality often starts with an understanding of how these elements relate to performance. “Performance” is typically assessed with “hard” measures, such as what an enterprise delivers to stakeholders in financial and operational terms. Other metrics are also employed, such as net operating profit, return on capital employed, total returns to shareholders, net operating costs, and stock values.
This course will help you to expand your repertoire by exploring various frameworks, approaches and practices OD practitioners can use to craft strategic changes related to organizational health and vitality (alignment, execution and renewal). We will build an understanding of the central concept of organizational health and vitality, by exploring a number of concepts that contribute to it.