Comment on the below

The title for this week's study is "The Future of Organizational Development and Diagnostic Interventions." In a somewhat dated article, Halal (1974) suggested that "Predictions of the future are insightful, entertaining, and often hopelessly wrong" (p. 35). Who could have predicted the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on organizational working environments? Even the terminology of nearly 50 years ago has changed particularly in the area of information technology although some concepts such as centralization and decentralization have persisted.

The name Warner Burke is, in so many ways, synonymous with Organizational Development (OD) and we have learned from him during this and other classes (Burke, 2024). More recently, he has adopted the term organizational change without letting go of his attachment to organizational development. After listening to Burke (2020) on a YouTube video where he said, "Change management is a misnomer" (47:25), I added a comment on there being more similarities than differences between organizational development and change management, noting my preference, which I may have already expressed during this course, for the termchange execution. A library search revealed fewer recent references to organizational development and, although the Organization Development Network (ODN) endures, more contemporary terminology such as the agile organization is becoming more evident (Holbeche, 2018).