SUMMARY
A chapter revealing the roots of OD would not be complete without a definition of the field that has emerged. As you might imagine, every practitioner has a definition. Here is ours: “OD is the application of behavioral science, action research, and systems theory to organizations and larger human systems, using participative processes that involve all those affected, with the objective of increasing the internal and external effectiveness of the organization, especially in managing change.”
We are standing on the shoulders of giants. It is now up to us, their descendants, to do what they did so many years ago: discover new principles and methods of assisting leaders and their organizations to be as effective as they can be.
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