Organizational Development: Designing Episodic Interventions

Organizational Development gives readers an understanding of organizational structures and presents a new and easy-to-understand framework which describes the three dimensions of organizational interventions.

Interventions in organization often fail. This has been widely acknowledged: many books exist about the topic and many approaches are proposed to guide organizational interventions – but to no avail – so it remains difficult to design and guide them. This is the first book to (1) provide readers with an understanding of organizational structures and why it is both relevant and difficult to change them, and (2) present a model consisting of three underlying dimensions of interventions. The authors describe how this model can be used to design interventions in organizational structures.

Containing practical guidelines to show how interventions can be designed and controlled, this book should be considered essential reading for postgraduate students of organizational development, design, and change, and practitioners carrying out organizational development projects.

Jan Achterbergh (MSc Philosophy; PhD Policy Sciences) is Assistant Professor Organizational Design and Development at the Nijmegen School of Management of the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, since 1999. His research interests include organizational structures and business ethics, interventions in organizations, and the design of organizational networks.

Dirk Vriens (MSc Psychology; PhD Policy Sciences) is Associate Professor Organizational Design and Development at the Nijmegen School of Management of the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. His current research interests include organizational cybernetics, designing organizational structures, and moral behaviour in organizations.