Course Overview

This course familiarizes students with concepts, models, theories, and techniques for planning, facilitating, and evaluating Organization Development interventions. Students will develop skills and competencies necessary to carry out a variety of industrial trainer support roles and strategies for internally and externally implementing Organization Development (OD) activities.

Course Objectives

Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:

1. Define Organization Development (OD), intervention, change agent, Action Research, Appreciative Inquiry, change, client, culture, and other terms associated with OD
2. Describe how OD relates to training and development and other performance improvement interventions
3. Summarize the history of OD
4. Explain important theories of organizations and describe how small group and large group change interventions differ from training interventions
5. Describe each step in the action research & appreciative inquiry models and explain how each is applied in organizational settings
6. Review ethical issues affecting OD professionals
7. Summarize future organizational trends affecting OD

Course Text

The text for the course is:

Rothwell, W. and Sullivan, R. (Eds.). (2010). Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change 3nd ed. San Diego: Pfeiffer & Co.

The text should be available in bookstores. Bring the text to class with you.