(Abstract de presentación de Eric Gaynor Butterfield durante el Congreso de Cambio y Desarrollo Organizacional, Buenos Aires, Argentina – 2003. Organizado por The Organization Development Institute International, Latinoamérica – www.theodinstitute.org
Desarrollo Organizacional: Sus Orígenes
No todas las personas están familiarizadas con los orígenes de la Profesión de Desarrollo Organizacional; yo tampoco lo estaba cuando comencé mis estudios de Doctorado (Ph. D.) en el año 1973 en los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica.
Ya había participado en diversos proyectos de “Reorganización” – esta era la denominación que se le asignaba en aquél entonces a los servicios de Consultoría empresaria – en más de 50 organizaciones, incluyendo entre otras a empresas de la magnitud de ESSO (hoy en día Exxon), General Motors, Chrysler, Swift – Armour en funciones tanto de línea como de servicios y desarrollado labores en el departamento de Consultoría en Price Waterhouse Peat & Co, tanto en Latinoamérica como en los Estados Unidos de Norteamérica. En algunos casos los servicios de Price Waterhouse Peat & Co. eran realizados en asociación con otras empresas líderes en el mundo en servicios profesionales de asesoría (como es el caso de Arthur D. Little).
La prestación de estos servicios eran realizados bajo la modalidad de “experto” en dos áreas donde contaba con fortalezas competitivas: finanzas y lo que hoy día se conoce como tecnología informática. Esta perspectiva desde la posición de experto en la prestación de servicios de consultoría se ha visto alterada radicalmente en la Universidad al iniciar mi programa de Doctorado donde comencé a familiarizarme con Comportamiento Organizacional en primera instancia y más adelante con Desarrollo Organizacional.
Habiendo penetrado el mundo de Desarrollo Organizacional, la perspectiva que tenía registrada dentro de mí respecto de las organizaciones, resultaba “miope”, por decir lo menos. Y para transformar esa miopía tuve la enorme fortuna de familiarizarme con los monumentales trabajos y perspectivas de autores y consultores del calibre de Edgar Schein, Carl Frost, Karl Weick, Herbert Simon, Arnold Tannenbaum. Nunca más mi visión de las organizaciones volvería a ser como “antes”.
Las “Ciencias del Comportamiento” tanto a nivel individual, grupal y organizacional, como sus respectivas dinámicas que hacen lugar a los procesos de transición, cambio y desarrollo, pasaron a ser de ahí en más el bloque fundacional del ejercicio de mi profesión como consultor.
A través de mi vinculación con The Organization Development Institute, fundada por el Dr. Donald W. Cole en 1968 – Presidente desde entonces y hasta ahora – dedico parte de mis energías para compartir con otros tanto los conocimientos como las prácticas de Desarrollo Organizacional ya que ello redunda en beneficio tanto de las empresas como de sus participantes organizacionales. El Dr. Donald W. Cole ha sido un iluminador constante en mi carrera en este aspecto, exhibiendo la importancia tantas veces notada por el profesor Chris Argyris, respecto de la concordancia entre lo verbalizado y lo actuado dentro del mundo de las organizaciones.
Permanentemente escucho dentro del mundo corporativo y organizacional dentro de los distintos países latinoamericanos “… que Desarrollo Organizacional es algo aplicable dentro de los Estados Unidos pero de poca practicidad dentro de las empresas y organizaciones en Latinoamérica, puesto que el modelo organizacional prevaleciente es el de tipo burocrático”. Me resta solamente responder que “Si realmente es cierto que prevalece el modelo burocrático en Latinoamérica, esto significa que tenemos un enorme potencial para Desarrollo Organizacional”; ésta ES la ventaja competitiva a la cual podemos ahora acceder teniendo en cuenta la globalización vigente.
Hace poco un participante en un Taller de Liderazgo de una empresa líder petrolera manifestó que “En mi empresa consigo buenos resultados con el sistema autoritario” de modo que pienso que puedo seguir aplicándolo. Mi respuesta fue la siguiente: “¿Cómo puede estar Usted seguro que no puede conseguir MEJORES RESULTADOS si aprende a relacionarse bajo otras opciones de liderazgo aplicables a un espectro situacional complejo?”.
Algo parecido acontece con los “Consultores” que son expertos en alguna disciplina… y que no siempre tienen en cuenta que CUALQUIER aplicación de sus especialidades (finanzas, T.I., Marketing, Comunicaciones, etc.) debe ser realizada con (y en) Personas, y más especialmente para producir Cambios y Transformaciones con (y en) dichas Personas. Muchas de las experiencias negativas producto de los servicios de consultoría podrían haberse evitado de haberse tenido en cuenta que a la competencia profesional resultante de un Diploma Universitario que está en manos de un consultor, se debe agregar el conocimiento de las “Ciencias del Comportamiento”.
En un trabajo de campo realizado en el año 1999 hemos encontrado que la mayor parte de los consultores desconocen más del 70 % de los autores que han realizado contribuciones importantes en materia de Comportamiento y Desarrollo Organizacional, y de aquellos autores que manifiestan conocer no siempre saben identificar cuáles son las hipótesis básicas de los mismos. Para lo cual cabe hacerle la siguiente pregunta a los consultores: ¿Qué ES LO QUE MIRAN cuando ingresan a una empresa con el propósito de mejorarla? En estos momentos dentro de la página web de “The Organization Development Institute International, Latinoamérica” (www.theodinstitute.org) estamos difundiendo a unos 50 autores, investigadores y consultores que han realizado contribuciones notables.
Con el propósito de tener una visión más completa de Desarrollo Organizacional los interesados pueden beneficiarse con el relato que realiza el Dr. Donald W. Cole. Para ello, a continuación se incluye un desarrollo del propio Dr. Cole que es idéntica a la incluida en la publicación anual de The Organization Development Institute – International Registry, la que seguramente ha de resultar de interés para el lector puesto que además incluye algunas preguntas que uno puede formularse y que mantienen su vigencia en el mundo actual.
The Organization Development Institute – AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
In the late 1970´s we started receiving a number of strange telephone calls. We got one telephone call from a person who introduced himself as being with a major U. S. Corporation. He had just been hired as their O. D. consultant. He had no training in O. D. and no experience in O. D. His boss wanted him to do team building with the corporation´s top team. And, the caller wanted information on a weekend workshop he could attend in order to learn how to do this. About the same time, we got another call from a professor at a major Midwest university. His Dean wanted him to start an O. D. program at their university. He had no training in O. D. and no experience in O. D. He wanted the name of a good book he could read. A local O. D. academic program had used their students to run a “touchy feelie” T-group in a local manufacturing division of a major U. S. Corporation. A member of their personnel department reported to me that almost this entire group had been fired or transferred because they had returned from this program engaging in behaviors that company management felt were inappropriate for their company.
After a number of such experiences it became increasingly obvious that there was a Gresham´s Law of O. D. in which “bad O. D.” would eventually drive out “good O.D.”. I felt we should put some boundaries around this new field that we were calling O.D. Not everyone who attended a weekend workshop on O.D. should be able to lay claim to doing O.D. and being an O.D. person. I felt this new field needed to become a profession and in order to become a profession a number of things were needed. The most important were : 1) an international O. D. code of ethics; 2) a statement on the unique body of knowledge and skill which O.D. people must possess in order to do O. D. and 3) some kind of visible boundary around the field so that the public could tell who was competent and who was not necessarily competent.
I am a charter member of the OD Network and was a member of the OD Network Board of Directors from 1979 to 1981. I tried to get them interested in developing an O.D. Code of Ethics and in building the field of O.D. into a profession. I was told, “We are not that kind of an organization.” So, I decided to do it myself with help from The O. D. Institute.
In 1981 I wrote the first O.D. Code of Ethics. It was published in the O.D. Institute´s monthly newsletter and people were asked for their comments. A revised version was published in the 1982 edition of “The International Registry of O. D. Professionals and The O. D. Handbook”. In the fall of 1981 Dr. William Gellerman, RODC, agreed to take on this task. He has done a tremendous job of writing and revising and rewriting The O. D. Code of Ethics in order to develop a Code that could be used worldwide by O.D. people in all kinds of settings. I has now gone through some 22 revisions and has been translated into five languages: Russian, Polish, Spanish, German and Hungarian. In 1984 Bill was given The Outstanding O. D. Consultant of the Year Award for his work in developing The O. D. Code of Ethics.
NTL had gotten itself sued by “certifying” that certain people would do good work. We did not want to get into that kind of difficulty. So, we decided that instead of certifying people we would register people. We immediately had some heated discussions as to who could be registered and who was competent to decide if they were competent. One very loud and vocal group maintained that only they were competent to decide who was competent. I felt that there should be some kind of objective criteria. The problem seemed unsolvable. So, in good O. D. fashion we found an integrative solution. We did both. We established the initials RODP (Registered O. D. Professional) for those who judged themselves to be competent. And, we established the initials RODC (Registered O.D. Consultant) for those who met more stringent requirements. We are not yet completely happy with either of these requirements and have a committee working to improve them.
In looking at the requirements for qualifying to use the initials RODC, it seemed that there was obviously a need for a knowledge test of some kind. Dr. Warner Burke is a member of The O. D. Institute Advisory Board. We asked him if he would do this for us and he said, “Yes”. In 1983 Warner completed work on “The Assessment Questionnaire for Knowledge and Understanding of O. D.” (In 1990 Warner Burke was given The Outstanding O. D. Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other important contributions to the field). The questionnaire he developed was based on questions proposed by students and then sent to 100 highly qualified, currently practicing U.S. O.D. people.
Questions were not drawn from explicitly O.D. knowledge because that had not as yet been done. There was no question on ethics and no input from the international O. D. community. Don Donald Van Eynde, RODC, has now revised this test. (In 1996, Dr. Donald Van Eynde, RODC, was given the Outstanding O. D. Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other contributions to the field.)
We also became concerned about what students were learning and – more important – what they were not learning. Well over half of the OB / OD academic programs in the USA do not teach The International O. D. Code of Ethics and do not subscribe to current literature being published in the field. It is our opinion, that most students on graduation have never written a published paper.
In developing a test on the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in O. D. and in trying to evaluate the knowledge and skill needed in order to be competent, it became increasingly obvious that the field needed to define the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in O. D. We in The O. D. Institute and those of us who are trying to build a profession of O. D. are very grateful to Roland Sullivan, RODP, Dr. Gary McLean, RODC, Dr. William J. Rothwell, and their team of national and international practitioners & academics for the tremendous amount of time and effort they have invested in developing a statement and now a book on the knowledge and skill necessary for competence in O. D. (In 1997, Roland Sullivan RODP, was given the Outstanding O. D. Consultant of the Year Award for this and his other important contributions to the field.)
Concerned that O. D. students were being graduated without the knowledge and skills to be fully competent, a committee headed by Dr. Terry Armstrong, RODC, has developed criteria for the accreditation of OD / OB academic programs and we are now accrediting OD / OB programs that meet this criteria.
Dr. Donald W. Cole, RODC
Management / Clinical Psychologist
President and Founder of The Organization Development Institute – worldwide
