Achieving Excellence in Indian Organisations: New Opportunities for Psychologists

Abstract

This article presents a meta-analysis of organisational development (OD) efforts in India, by examining OD outcomes at the organisation/system level as well as at the societal/national level. Intervention reports have shown that OD has been used in India in a variety of contexts and with a variety of organisations in the public, private, rural and voluntary sectors. The extent ofsuccess of such interventions has been measured in terms of organisation-level and individual-level outcomes, and the extent of institutionalisation, which is a result of the first two. Using clinical assessment metbodology anchored to qualitative criteria it was found that the organisational outcomes were positively assessed in 60% of the cases and the national-level outcomes were positively assessed in 31 % of the cases. Qualitative observations indicated that interventions which utilised the socio-technical mode were based in urban industrial settings. Further, interventions lacked built-in evaluations, there was a decrease in OD efforts after the 1970s, thechangeachieved was not sustainable in the long-term and the cultural context was often ignored. The implications of these findings are also discussed.