Organisational Development and Quality of Work Life

Overview

Organisations must develop and grow if they want to survive. There are a number of ways in which development can be managed, and a particular aspect of this is organisational change.

Read on, to find out more about organisational development and quality of work life.

Organisational development

Organisational Development, or OD as it is often known, is a process for making planned organisational change. OD seeks to enhance organisational performance (effectiveness) by improving the quality of the work environment, and the attitudes and wellbeing of staff.

OD is characterised by core values. These include:

• shared power and involving staff in participative problem solving
• freedom of choice, where people are empowered to make choices about matters affecting their work
• self-reliance, so that people are recognised as capable of making ongoing developments.

There is no one best OD method. However, the process usually consists of three main steps:

• diagnosis, in which participants gather and analyse data and set change objectives
• intervention, in which participants take collaborative action to implement the desired change
• evaluation, in which participants assess results and take follow-up actions to reinforce and support change.

OD interventions are the core of the process. They can focus on the individual, the group, or the whole organisation. You will be familiar with common interventions in contexts other than OD.

At the individual level, interventions can include:

• management training
• job redesign
• career planning.

Interventions to improve group effectiveness can focus on:

• team building
• interpersonal relationships
• communication
• conflict management
• decision making.

Quality circles (QCs) are an approach you can use at the group level. QCs are small groups that meet regularly to identify and solve problems related to the members' performance and the conditions they work under. To help QCs work effectively, members usually receive training in problem solving and group processes.

At the organisational level, typical interventions include:

• job satisfaction survey feedback
• management by objectives (MBO)
• structural redesign
• Quality of Work Life (QWL) programmes.

QWL includes interventions that pay particular attention to the work environment. To put QWL into context, remember that:

Performance = Ability × Motivation × Environment

OD is concerned with all three factors or variables. You'll remember that these factors interact and affect each other. People may not feel motivated if their work environment is poor. Similarly, people's abilities and capabilities may be limited by their work environment.

QWL programmes

Although QWL is often treated as a component of OD, you don't have to think of it this way. You can take steps to improve QWL without getting involved in a full-blown OD strategy.

In any case, it may be useful to think of QWL in a broader sense, as anything that helps to enhance staff motivation, satisfaction, and commitment.

Work restructuring

One popular approach to QWL is work restructuring. This is the process of changing how work is done so that it is more interesting, satisfying, and rewarding. Possible approaches include:

• job enlargement
• job enrichment
• job characteristics model.

For these approaches to be effective, they must be carried out in ways that are consistent with the core values of OD.

Job enlargement

Job enlargement is the practice of expanding the content of jobs to include more variety and more tasks at the same level. It's a horizontal expansion.

For example, Kimberley is currently responsible for procuring and supplying stationery to colleagues in the city office. She then takes on the additional task of looking after stationery requirements in the North Shore office.

Job enrichment

Job enrichment gives staff more tasks to perform at a higher level of skill and responsibility. It provides an opportunity for staff to take greater control over their work, from planning and organisation through to implementation and evaluating results. It's a vertical expansion of responsibilities.

For example, Kimberley not only takes on stationery supply, she also assumes responsibility for improving the supply process, selecting suppliers, and approving purchases.

The job characteristics model

The job characteristics model identifies five dimensions of job content:

• Task variety is the number of different talents and skills required by the job.
• Task identity is the extent to which a job requires completing an entire task from beginning to end.
• Task significance is the impact of one's work on others.
• Autonomy is the individual's freedom and control in doing the job.
• Feedback is the extent to which a job allows people to have clear and direct information about the effectiveness of their performance.

The core job dimensions affect the work outcome through their influence on three psychological states:

• Task variety, task identity, and task significance jointly contribute to the experienced meaningfulness of the work. This is the extent to which someone experiences work as being important, valuable, and worthwhile.
• Jobs that provide autonomy tend to make people feel personally responsible and accountable for their work.
• Effective feedback gives people knowledge of results, and this improves their effectiveness.

When these states are activated, work motivation, job satisfaction, and work performance should improve, especially for individuals with high growth needs. The model suggests that an employee's perception of positive changes in the five core job dimensions will lead to increased intrinsic motivation, higher job satisfaction, and better performance.

The model is held to be especially relevant for people who have strong needs for personal growth and development. People who are not interested in improving themselves do not seem to experience the predicted reactions to the five core job dimensions. The model therefore recognises that not everyone wants and benefits from enriched jobs.

What the model does suggest is that if you design jobs to provide high levels of skill variety, task identity, and so on, people will experience high levels of the psychological states, and this will lead to high levels of motivation, satisfaction, and performance.

Relationships

Interpersonal factors can be a major cause of dysfunctional conflict and may be a focus for OD interventions. Organisational issues such as competition for scarce resources, ambiguity over responsibility, or ambiguity over jurisdiction or authority may also cause conflict.

Faulty attribution is one interpersonal cause of conflict. This occurs when people incorrectly blame others for some misfortune. They incorrectly assume that another party is the cause of a problem.

Faulty communication is another cause. For example, there might be inadequate communication or destructive criticism. Destructive criticism is especially likely to fuel hostility.

Another cause is the tendency to exaggerate differences in views and opinions. One party may feel they are objective and sensible and that the other party is biased and misinformed. Exaggeration coupled with intolerance can be particularly destructive.

The three-step OD process can help to resolve these sorts of difficulties. Personality conflict is another possible cause of problems, although this may be less amenable to resolution through OD. What do you think?