Summary of the book 'Organizational development: designing episodic interventions' from Jan Achterbergh and Dirk Vriens. The summary is quite big, but it contains all examples, figures and tables needed for the exam.
The book itself is 350 pages.
Interventions in Organizations
summary book
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Organizational development: designing episodic interventions
This book is about a specific type of organizational development: episodic interventions. In particular,
episodic interventions in the structure of organizations, supported with a 3D model that helps to
understand and design episodic interventions in organizational structures. The authors start with an
explanation of their perspective on organizations, structures and interventions.
Organizations
Organizations are described as social systems delivering a societal contribution. When this
contribution is positive, we’ll refer to it as rich meaningful survival. Organizations can positively
contribute to society in three ways:
1. By means of the societal valuable products and services they provide
2. By means of providing non-product or non-service related positive side effects such as
employment or well-being of employees
3. By making sure that negative side effects like pollution and inequality are avoided
Organizations deliver their contribution as a social system, as a system of interlocking interactions.
The basic idea of this is that organization members interact with each other and thereby realize the
organization’s contribution. All interactions relevant for realizing the organization’s contribution are
part of the organization as a system of interactions. These interactions are influenced by several
factors, like the tasks members are assigned (the type of task one is assigned to defines the topics
about which one interacts, for example someone in the factory is not interacting about long term
organization goals), the organization’s structure (the way tasks are defined and related), the
organizational goals and culture. These factors are called interaction premises. These premises and
the interactions themselves are mutually dependent on each other: they’re circular. For example, the
structure of an organization determines interactions, but the structure is also determined by
members interacting about what an appropriate structure would be. Another important thing is that
this is a continuous relation: goals or tasks can be changed, there is an uncertainty. The best way to
deal with this uncertainty is to experiment with interaction premises, for example choose some goals
per hypothesis and alter them when necessary. Organizations can never be certain about the goals or
structures they select, so interaction premises are subject to continuous experimentation.
Organizational structures and their development
Development is the intended improvement of interaction premises. In particular, the development of
organizational structure is the intended improvement of the way tasks are related and defined.
Structural development can sometimes become so problematic in organizations that episodic
interventions are needed. Before we move to these intervention, we need to understand why it can
be problematic. We focus here on bureaucratic organizations: complex networks of highly dependent
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,small jobs with a large hierarchy of managers. In general, such structures tend to have negative
effects: lower employee well-being, lover effectiveness and efficiency, high error-prone (every
dependency relation is a possible source of errors), lack of regulatory potential, alienation (lose
touch, no picture of the whole process), no development, lack of control and eventually maybe even
loss of professional identity. All these problems are mainly due to the organizational structure.
Episodic interventions
These organizations have often lost their capacity for normal structural development, because of
their structure (the current structure disables its own improvement – self-inhibiting). In such a case,
an episodic intervention may be required to regain the capacity for structural development. Normal
continuous structural development is no part of operational jobs and those who can make a change
are distant and are therefore coming up with solutions too late, irrelevant or making things worse.
Episodic interventions = intentional, deliberate, comprehensive changes to the organization’s
structure that have their own separate temporary intervention
organization (more in Ch4).
These interventions are deliberate and intentional, as they have the explicit goal to change the
structure. They are also comprehensive, as they set out to change the structure of a large part or
even the whole organization, not just a local change. Finally they have their own separate temporary
intervention organization on top of the standing organization, with a clear beginning and end.
Different individuals participate in it, who have tasks and use tools dedicated to the intervention
itself. Once the structure has been changed, the intervention organization ceases to exist. It is not
part of the daily activities of the organization.
1.2 The 3D model: its outlines and use
The 3D model is a model that can help to understand and flexibly design episodic interventions in
organizational structures, based on three dimensions: the functional, social and infrastructural. These
dimensions relate to three basic challenges faced by the episodic interventions in organizations:
1. Ensuring that a well-designed structure is implemented in the organization (functional)
2. Ensuring that the new structure is integrated in the interaction premises and interactions of
organization members (social)
3. Designing the infrastructure of the intervention organization in such a way that it helps to
meet challenges 1 and 2 (infrastructural)
Functional dimension
The first dimension is functional: on this dimension goals are specified that should be realized in
order to implement a well-designed structure in the organization. This means a structure that can
realize the goal of the intervention, like restoring the organizations capacity for continuous
adaptation, increasing the performance of the organization, or increasing the quality of work. The
goals on the functional dimension that should be realized to increase the probability that a well-
designed structure is implemented, are:
1. Diagnosis: finding problems and their structural causes and formulation a solution space
2. Design: finding a structure that allows to deal with the problems and/or their causes
3. Implementation: making the designed structure into an organizational reality
4. Evaluation: assess whether the problems are solved by means of the implemented structure
Social dimension
As mentioned, organizational structures are social phenomena, so an episodic intervention in the
structure of an organization means intervening in a social system. The intervention should change
interaction premises and interactions themselves. The goals on the social dimension are:
2
, 1. Motivation: motivation to let go of current and move to new interaction premises and
interactions and adopt the episodic intervention as a means to do this
2. Adoption: committing to new helping interaction premises and interaction that can produce
an improved structure that allows for the realization of the goal of the intervention
3. Integration: members have integrated new interactions and interaction premises into their
repertoires that both produce the new structure and allow for the realization of goals.
In order to realize the goal of the intervention, both functional and social goals should be realized,
because when only functional goals are realized, the well-designed structure only remains a plan, it
doesn’t become the new reality. And when only social goals are realized, the structure might be bad
design, undermining the realization of the goal of the intervention. This is where the infrastructural
dimension comes in.
Infrastructural dimension
The intervention infrastructure consist out of three things:
1. Intervention structure: working together in a network of intervention tasks
2. Intervention technology: using the right tools and techniques
3. Human resources: the knowledge, skills and motivation of the involved human resources
So in order to realize the functional and social goals and thereby the goal of the intervention, a well-
designed intervention infrastructure is needed.
3
, How to use the 3D model
In order to design the infrastructure of the intervention organization, you have to start by setting so-
called proximate functional and social goals: goals that are next in line to be realized. For instance, at
the start of the intervention, diagnosis and motivation can be set as proximate goals. The
intervention activities are then activities related to diagnosis and motivation and these are grouped
into intervention tasks that can be performed by human resources that should be involved in the
intervention (intervention structure). The intervention techniques and tools are selected that are
needed in order to perform these intervention tasks (intervention technology). The human resources
are selected or trained in order to perform the tasks using the technology (human resources).
Once these selected proximate goals are realized, or if unexpected problems or opportunities come
up, new proximate goals are set. This procedure goes on until the final proximate functional and
social goals: evaluation and integration, have been realized. By realizing these, a well-designed
organizational structure (functional) is integrated into interaction premises and interactions of
relevant members (social) and thus realizing the goal of the intervention.
1.3 And now for something different
In this paragraph the authors highlight features of their approach to show how they are different
from other approaches. First, this book differs from others because it doesn’t treat change in a
general way, but it takes kind, object and context into account. There should be distinguished
different kinds of organizational change, ranging from the continuous self-production of the
organization as a social system to episodic interventions in particular parts of organizations. Different
kinds of change bring different theoretical and practical issues and need a variety of approaches,
concepts, tools and methods. Second, different objects of change can be identified. For instance, as
an object of change, you can pick culture, but also technology. Third, different context of change
must be distinguished. Changing a hierarchical organization is very different from changing an
organization with a simple structure and semi-autonomous teams. So, this approach deals with
episodic interventions (kind) in organizational structures (object) of organizations that currently have
complex and hierarchical structures (context).
This book is one of the few attempts to pay attention to both social and functional dimension of
episodic interventions. Moreover, they want to relate these dimensions in a way that supports the
flexible design of the infrastructure of intervention organizations. Most of the literature specializes in
the functional dimension (organizational design) or the social dimension (organizational learning or
social transformation). Because one-sided attention to either of the dimensions can be hazardous,
the 3D model pays attention to both and uses flexible design of infrastructures to support this.
Another difference can be seen between the model of Weick and Quinn (1999) who see episodic and
continuous change as opposites. The authors of this book, however, don’t oppose episodic change to
continuous change, but episodic interventions to continuous interventions, which are both regarded
as modes of organizational change. Organizations are always in flux and interventions (episodic,
continuous or one of many other modes) are part of that flux. Episodic and continuous interventions
are modes of organizational change that involve intentions and deliberations, but there are also
modes that aren’t intended or deliberate. Weick and Quinn see an organization as inert or frozen
when talking about episodic change, but according to this book, organizations can’t be frozen,
because they are social systems in flux. Change is a pattern of endless modifications in work
processes and practices and both episodic and continuous interventions are modes within these
patterns. Episodic interventions are seen as experiments that require situational and flexible design
and may involve many parties in different roles.
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