OD and OD - oh dear - critical acronyms for human resource development
Occupation(ally) directed education and training will be familiar to many training practitioners. Organisational development will be familiar to many human resource practitioners. Recently I attended a meeting of the SAODN (South African Organisation Development Network). The SAODN network sessions provide a usefull way of keeping up to date with developments in the organisational development field. They are also a forum for human resource practitioners and management generally to meet consultants working in the field, who provide the technology to improve the performance of their businesses through facilitating constructive change management.
I'm interested in how many human resource and training people have a knowledge of organisational development and also whether you have had any experiences - good or bad - of the SAODN. Please respond even if your response is that you have never heard of organisational development.
Tags: ETD, OD, ODETD, development, directed, education, occupation, occupationally, organisational, training
Replies to This Discussion
-
ContributorPermalink Reply by Des Squire on -
Hi Sylvia
Personally i have never heard of - South African Organisation Development Network. Organisational development has been around as long as I have but with many and varied names - Organisational Development - Employee behaviour and change - Change management and so on. It is defined as
- A planned process of change in an organisation’s culture through the utilisation of behavioural science technology, research and theory. (Warner Burke)
Organisational Development concentrates more on the process of change by focussing on culture and processes. It encourages and assists in the development of collaboration between leaders in an organisation and the employees in devloping processes related to specific cultural scenarios. OD encourages decisionmaking on an all inclusive basis and focuses on the input of all employees. Nothing new really.
-
ContributorPermalink Reply by Ian Webster on -
Hello Dear, I like the Oh Dear!
I haven't done much formal OD, but much of what we do is OD in some form or another.
Haven't heard of the SAODN.
Ian
-
Permalink Reply by Mpho Xolile Ntuli on -
I heard about the SAODN via the Skill-Universe.iam the whose looking for in-service trainind in Human Resource Manangement
-
Permalink Reply by Pauls Gibbons on -
Hi Sylvia - I don't know SAODN but we will definitely follow up. OD is one of our service lines as we offer full service HR consulting, training, coaching and mentoring and it will be useful to network on the OD side as we do with the other serive lines.
By the way, we find the information from Skills Universe invaluable in keeping up with the many and complex developments in the training space - so keep up the excellent work.
-
Permalink Reply by sylvia hammond on
-
Thanks to all for the information. Pauls, one of the questions raised was where does OD fit within the SABPP? What are your thoughts on that please.
-
-
For contacting SAODN - Fortune Sibanda on email fortune@saodn.net
-
Permalink Reply by Mzukisi Moyikwa on -
Hi Sylvia
I have not heard about SAODN until now. With regart to OD, it's a concept I'm very familiar with. It would be very interesting to interact with experts in the field, because we also render or envisage rendering that service. Personnel Practice and OD are very closely linked. OD requires that you have a broader view of human resources management so that you are able to analyse and link all human capital processes and systems of the organisation, so that you derive maximum value in your OD intervention. It is very useless to create a dynamic in the organisation that is not supported by proper policies, systems and structure. It's a very interesting field, and requires some technical expertise with regard to research, critical analysis, technological advancement, so that one does not depend solely on feelings and opinions that are not based on tested reality.
That's my view.
-
Permalink Reply by Myles Hopkins on -
Just add to the acronym complexity you can add another OD = organisation design. This is an area that is getting a great deal of airtime right now with executives as they try and align their organisational design to their business design and their business design to their strategies.
I have been an Organisation Design specialist for a number of years now and it is only in the last 2 years that I have seen a significant growth in executive interest in my services.
-
Permalink Reply by Pauls Gibbons on
-
Hi Sylvia
SABPP does have a category of membership of 'Specialist' - category 6 Organisational Development so the function is catered for in respect of membership. Also, there are a number of alliances which SABPP has with various organisations, for example Human Capital Institute, International Society for Performance Improvement just to name two. However, I am not mandated to speak on behalf of SABPP and, of course, the recently announced merger between SABPP and IPM is an exciting development which will help to consolidate the HR practitioner industry. I will drop a note to Marius to see if he has anything further to add.
Insofar as organisational design is concerned, my view is that it is increasingly aligned with organisational development as the two support the achievement of strategy. I believe that the more strategic HR practitioners who probably have seats at the executive table will be advising their counterparts on effective organisational design and development.
sylvia hammond said:Thanks to all for the information. Pauls, one of the questions raised was where does OD fit within the SABPP? What are your thoughts on that please.
-
Permalink Reply by MARIUS MEYER on
-
OD is one of the 8 SABPP areas of HR specialisation, and we register OD professionals accordingly. To provide more direction to OD practitioners (and HR people doing OD work as part of their work), we are currently developing an OD best practices paper for South Africa. In addition, we have formed alliances with several bodies operating in the OD field such as ASTD, and ISPI. We are also open for discussions with any other OD organisations, in fact, had some recent talks with the Academy for Organisational Change, they have some nice programmes to build OD capacity.
-
-
Thank you for that clarification Marius - I'm sure that there will be a lot of interest in the best practices paper.
-
Permalink Reply by Joe van Wyk on -
I have a relatively good knowledge of Organisational Development (empirically obtained). Please tell us more about the SAODN (website, contact details, etc.); it seems an interesting organisation, especially since there is an ever-increasing demand for info in this field of human capital management.
Badge
Top Discussions
© 2013 Created by Alan Hammond.
