An Evaluation of Organizational Effectiveness: An Appraisal of How Army Internal Consultants Use Survey Feedback in a Military Setting

Abstract

The authors report problems they experienced during a rigorous evalua tion of an organization development intervention in a military setting. Army internal consultants introduced survey feedback as an intervention to improve work efficiency, general and specific job satisfaction, and working relationships in engineering companies of the U.S. Army. The authors evaluated the success of the consultants' interventions against the goals they set out to achieve. Four recommendations are made to enhance positive outcomes: (1) units should be insulated from externally imposed requirements that tend to disrupt the ongoing process of the survey-feedback program; (2) a standardized instrument needs to be developed to diagnose problems within units accurately; (3) interven tions should be conducted with a team concept in which one person serves as internal consultant to the client system, while a second serves both as an evaluator of the effectiveness of the intervention and as a shadow consultant; and (4) methods need to be developed to ensure the vital commitment of first-line supervisors to the intervention program and to reduce the threat they experience in participatory modes with subordinates.