ABSTRACT
Organization development (OD) has dealt unevenly with its underlying values, which may not be news but still has an overarching significance. Three models for dealing with values get brief attention —they include needs, instrumentalities, and right-on models. Needs models propose that "healthy" or "self-actualizing" individuals have internal gyroscopes which guide them, when-ever the environment permits, and often even when that environment is overtly hostile. So the needs models have a fatal defect as a guide for OD; and instrumentalities models do not have even the real but flawed saving graces of the needs models. The normative thrust of OD involves four variables—openness, owning, risk, and trust. The chapter considers these four variables as defining a significant-continuum—from regenerative to degenerative systems of interaction. OD's challenge is evident in terms of these systems. One goal is to create regenerative interaction, wherever possible. The second major goal is to inhibit or reverse degenerative interaction, wherever and whenever it exists.
