ABSTRACT
This chapter is a case study of the first ever internal Organisation Development (OD) Unit ever created in the National Health Service (NHS). It tracks the evolution of this resource over a seventeen-year period, from being an early adopter with ever-present issues of legitimacy, anxiety, the tension between reactive and proactive modes of working and the growing realisation that OD in healthcare was somewhat unique. The eventual demise of the OD Unit is related to the onset of the third modernity. By 1981, the development of an action research role seemed an even more significant turning point. In retrospect, the continuing lack of a productive relationship with the Regional Health Authority’s education and training function was seen as instrumental in confining the Unit to reactive consultancy in its early years of existence. There was now, however, a growing interest in the Unit as a national, rather than just a regional, training resource and this effectively by-passed the local deadlock.
