Values, Motives, and Interventions of Organization Development Practitioners

Abstract

A mail survey was conducted to empirically measure respondents' perceptions of the values, motives, and interventions of today's organization development (OD) practitioners. The survey sample consisted of 1,500 names randomly selected from three different professional organizations. Overall, 416 practitioners (27.7%) returned the questionnaire. Data from each of the three content areas were analyzed through: (a) factor analyses to determine the underlying structure and to generate subscales, and (b) MANCOVAs to assess the degree of differences among various types of respondents (e.g., professional association membership, gender, internal vs. external status) across the respective summary scores. In terms of the values of OD, results indicated that practitioners perceive the field today to be focused more on business effectiveness and productivity issues than on the humanistic concerns and orientation of the past. Although respondents rated interest in social action and helping people as the most important motivators of OD work in the ideal, exercising personal power and reaping the rewards of the consulting relationship were considered to be the more dominant motivators for people in the field today. Regarding interventions, practitioners reported engaging primarily in activities aimed at long-term organizational change, action research methodologies, and management skills training.