OD Seasonings
Volume 1, Number 2 • Summer 2005
From The Editor
In Defense Of An Old Style
By Nicolas Mann
Depending on which event one points to, the field of organization development
(OD) is anywhere from thirty-five to over fifty-five years old. Though
a number of significant events certainly contributed to its emergence,
it’s probably safe to say that none deserve all the credit as the seminal
event. The field didn’t emerge in academe, but rather in the marketplace
of organizations undergoing change.
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the Mann article >>
A Seasoned Perspective on Appreciative Inquiry: What We Know, What We
Need To Know
By Therese F. Yaeger and Peter F. Sorensen
Frequently OD and management are characterized by fads and unsupported
claims of success. This is not the case with Appreciative Inquiry which
has had a major impact on the field of OD. In this paper we will share
a summary of our observations on AI’s current state. We include a review
of what we know, and what we need to know about this continuously emerging
approach to Organization Development.
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the Yaeger-Sorensen article >>
The Future of Organization Development as an Academic Discipline
By John
D. Adams
What follows is an adaptation of a group scenario building process that
I have been developing with a small group in the San Francisco area that
is so far called “Voices of the Future.” In this process, we place ourselves
15 years in the future in an ideal or best case outcome, and then share
our “backcasting” ideas to develop a sense of plausible “marker events”
and “tipping points” that could have led to this outcome.
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the Adams article >>
Lessons from the Journey
By Bev Scott and Robin Reid
Two senior consultants, good friends and long-time colleagues, share
a bird’s eye view of their OD history.
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the Scott-Reid article >>
Book Review
Reviewer: Don Bushnell
The Ugly Duckling Goes to Work by Mette Norgaard
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the Bushnell review >>