Organisational Development

One waits for time to change; the other grabs hold of it and acts.
Dante

The human being goes through several phases of development in his life – partly consciously, partly unconsciously: from child to adolescent, from adolescent to adult etc. In the course of time, he develops skills and knowledge as well as strategies to transform them into purposeful action. Even if the individual does not want this, it happens anyway.

Organisations are also living systems and, like people, are subject to constant change. The impulses for change come from within the organisation itself (e.g. through a change in leadership) or from outside (e.g. through market and technology changes, mergers or even social changes).

These impulses develop their own dynamics – they cannot be suppressed in the long run, even if the persistence tendencies in an organisation are very pronounced, they will lead to change in some form. The constructive overcoming of the inertia tendencies and the structured and targeted use of the change tendencies for the benefit of the customers, the employees and the entire organisation is the goal of organisational development.

Furthermore, it cannot be emphasised enough that technologies are not simply “there” but are incorporated into the organisation as a result of complex human decision-making processes, and that such decisions in turn reflect experiences, but also ideologies and prejudices of the relevant organisational designers.

Organisational development is an organisational theory concept for implementing planned social change in organisations. Time and experience are necessary to be able to make the important and right decisions precisely, at the right time. The support of specialised experts significantly increases the chances of success.

The prerequisite for a successful organisational development process is to ensure a high degree of flexibility, willingness to change and innovative capacity, to promote human capital and to adjust the power structures in the teams in a target-oriented way.

Possible starting points can be:

  • future conferences for strategy development
  • development of the corporate culture (development of a mission statement)
  • analysis of the potentials of the organisation
  • individual concepts for change