ABSTRACT
Organization development (OD) played a significant part in getting a man on the moon. Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) practised OD over a period of 20 years to improve its effectiveness; so have other complex organizations, commercial and public service. The time is ripe to adopt an OD approach here, too, as many educational institutions in North America and Scandinavia have done. OD is seen as a complex cluster of ideas, philosophy, a way of life, values, skills, approaches, and techniques, underpinned by theory but essentially pragmatic. It is principally concerned with: the people in the organization and how they work together; what the organization and the community expect of people and how they respond; the philosophy of management and how it affects the way people work; the organization as a whole in its wider setting. The Encyclopaedia of Organisational Change Methods lists some 300 OD techniques. Some of those most relevant to educational institutions are described in Effective School Management.
