ABSTRACT
Custody disputes in natural families can be sad, even tragic; but the "custody" of disciplines or areas of work can be even more perplexing. This chapter outlines reasons why quality of working life (QWL) becoming organization development (OD) charge presents no great conceptual difficulties, practical problems aside for the moment. The experiences of OD intervenors were rooted in process analysis and specifically in T-Groups, which goes a long way toward explaining their dominant emphasis on interaction and human relationships. The top-down bias of OD contrasts sharply with the bottom-up developmental pattern of QWL. For diverse reasons, QWL has focused on operating levels in industrial or manufacturing settings, and thus has often dealt with unionized contexts. Despite some basic differences in orientation, OD and QWL are not entirely ships on separate seas. So the OD-QWL linkage should not prove a wrenching experience for proponents of either historic approach, at least conceptually. Some ODers and QWLers have made the linkage all along.
