The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science current issue

"Bridging the Scholar-Practitioner Divide" Special Issue

Hay, G., Heracleous, L. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:40 PDT

Revisioning Organization Development: Diagnostic and Dialogic Premises and Patterns of Practice

Bushe, G. R., Marshak, R. J. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:41 PDT

This article identifies a bifurcation in the practice of organization development (OD) that is not fully acknowledged or discussed in OD textbooks or journal articles. Forms of OD practice exist that do not adhere to key assumptions and prescriptions of the founders of OD. Some of these dialogical forms of organization development practice are described and contrasts and similarities with the original, diagnostic, form of OD are analyzed. Practices that define dialogical forms of OD are identified with a call for increased acknowledgment of this bifurcation in OD research, practice, and teaching.

Revisioning or Re-Versioning?: A Commentary on Diagnostic and Dialogic Forms of Organization Development

Oswick, C. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:41 PDT

Safe Talk: Revisioning, Repositioning, or Representing Organization Development?

Wolfram Cox, J. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:41 PDT

Further Reflections on Diagnostic and Dialogic Forms of Organization Development

Marshak, R. J., Bushe, G. R. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:41 PDT

Civility, Respect, Engagement in the Workforce (CREW): Nationwide Organization Development Intervention at Veterans Health Administration

Osatuke, K., Moore, S. C., Ward, C., Dyrenforth, S. R., Belton, L. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:41 PDT

This article presents a description and preliminary evaluation of a nationwide initiative by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) called Civility, Respect, and Engagement in the Workforce (CREW). The goal of CREW is to increase workplace civility as assessed by employee ratings of interpersonal climate in workgroups. Once endorsed by the VHA leadership and adopted by the leaders of particular VHA hospitals, CREW was conducted by local facility coordinators who were trained and supported by the VHA National Center for Organization Development. This article explains the conceptual and operational background of CREW and the approach used to implement the initiative, presents results from two CREW administrations with a total of 23 sites, and reports significant preintervention to postintervention changes in civility at intervention sites as compared to no significant changes at comparison sites within each administration. It discusses these findings in the conceptual (theoretical) and operational (intervention evaluation) context of interventions targeting civility.

Narratives and Organizational Dynamics: Exploring Blind Spots and Organizational Inertia

Geiger, D., Antonacopoulou, E. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:41 PDT

This article aims to demonstrate how narratives have the potential to bring about organizational inertia by creating self-reinforcing mechanisms and blind spots. Drawing on extensive interview data from a U.K. bio-manufacturing company, the empirical analysis shows how such narratives emerge by constructing a web of related, self-reinforcing narratives reflecting a consistent theme. The analysis demonstrates how the dominant (success) narrative remains vivid despite the existence of deviating narratives and severe crisis. In particular, the empirical findings illustrate how narratives construct a self-sustaining frame of reference, preventing the organization from questioning the principles underlying its past success. The discussion explains how narratives create self-reinforcing mechanisms and blind spots. It contributes to our understanding of the role of narratives in organizational change efforts and illustrates the way such self-reinforcing blind spots become a potential source of organizational inertia and path-dependence.

Why Are Perceptions of Change in the "Eye of the Beholder"?: The Role of Age, Sex, and Tenure in Procedural Justice Judgments

Caldwell, S., Liu, Y., Fedor, D. B., Herold, D. M. — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:01:41 PDT

This study investigates main effects of differences in workers (age, sex, and tenure) in conjunction with relevant contextual factors that moderate these main effects on individuals’ procedural justice judgments. Studying 820 employees who underwent change in their respective organizations, the authors found that the positive relationship between unit-level justice context and individual-level judgment of justice is stronger when workers’ personal jobs have low impact and when individuals are similar in age to others in the work unit. Men are more likely than women to view change-related management actions as just, but this relationship is not significant if the organization has undergone shifts in power structures concurrent with the focal change. Tenure relates positively with personal procedural justice judgment but only when the organization has recently changed the types of people it hires. The results have implications for organizations by informing managers that their change-related actions will not necessarily be translated similarly by all individuals participating in the change.