Organizational development in the third world: values, closeness of fit and culture-boundedness⁽¹⁾

Abstract

This paper seeks to counterbalance some common arguments about the role of organization development (OD) in Third World settings. OD is a value-laden technology and this raises the issues of the closeness of fit of specific OD approaches or designs to different cultures, histories and settings. Most organizational theorists recommend a close fit, based upon an overall characterization of OD and estimates of the features of macro-cultures such as nations or regions. This paper urges a more differentiated perspective, based on evidence that OD works, on balance, in a broad range of contexts. Specifically, OD designs/approaches are not homogeneous, and neither are the nation-states or organizations in which OD is applied. The paper suggests a number of ways in which OD practitioners might become more sensitive to different contexts and thereby improve their judgments about the advisability of making OD interventions.

Since its earliest days, OD has been concerned with the issue of degree of fit. OD is a normative, re-educative strategy,⁽²⁾ and, for that reason, practitioners agree that “there” will be different from “here” in pervasive ways. Thus many ODers speak of “a new social order at work”⁽³⁾ and envision a new tomorrow, either in progressive steps, or via some frame-breaking effort. The key issue underlying how to get from “here” to “there” involves choices of designs for learning or change which are sensitive to beginning “here” and also capable of inducing systemic movement toward “there.”

Four emphases will carry this paper beyond these generalizations about why and how OD is concerned with the closeness of fit between its values and different sites of application. An initial section briefly describes OD as value laden, and hence as potentially at cross-purposes with other value laden aspects of sites of application -- national or organizational cultures, managerial climates, small work groups and so on. The second section describes three models of the relationship between OD and existing cultures, climates or styles. In addition, extended consideration is given to four generalizations about OD in Third World settings, in which closeness of fit and culture-boundedness are of special significance. The generalizations relate to success rates, the primacy of process and interaction in OD, the significance of a systems perspective, and an emphasis on specific OD sites and OD interventions. The final section presents my personal views as practitioner about closeness of fit and how to minimize cross-cultural blind spots.

Neither OD designs nor cultures are homogeneous; and change objectives can differ radically from case to case in their urgency and acceptable probabilities of success, with each case requiring judgments to be made about closeness of fit. The available literature tends to oversimplify in posing such questions as:

Is OD exclusively culturally appropriate to North America?

Does nation A have a culture that constitutes a close fit to OD values/interventions?

Are close fits preferable to distal-fits?