If you have just heard the term organization development $($OD$)$ used recently, you may be surprised to learn that the practice of OD is now entering into its eighth decade $($even though the term itself first began to be used in the $1960$s; see Sashkin & Burke, $1987).$ Like the business and organizational environments where it is practiced, OD has grown and changed significantly during this time. This chapter highlights different strands of research and practice to illustrate how each of these traditions of OD can be seen, explicitly and implicitly, in how it is practiced today. Nine major traditions of OD research and practice are described here, though these blend together and intersect one another, and the themes in these nine traditions can be seen throughout later chapters. These trends follow one another more or less historically, though there is significant overlap and influence among each of them.

By becoming aware of the history of OD$,$ you will be more aware of how it has been defined throughout its life, as well as the changes that the field has undergone from its historical roots. In addition, you will better understand how today$$s practice of OD has undergone many years of research and practice to reach its current state.

The nine strands of OD research and practice discussed in this chapter are as follows:

Laboratory training and T$-$groups

Action research, survey feedback, and sociotechnical systems

Management practices

Quality and employee involvement

Organizational culture

Change management, strategic change, and reengineering

Organizational learning

Organizational effectiveness and employee engagement

Agility and collaboration

Laboratory Training and T$-$Groups

By most accounts, what has come to be known as organization development can be traced back to a training laboratory effort that began in $19461947$ in Bethel,

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Maine, at what was then known as the National Training Laboratory $($NTL$)$ in Group Development. The laboratory$$s founders, Kenneth Benne, Leland Bradford, and Ronald Lippitt, were inspired to develop NTL by the dedicated work of a fourth scholar and their predecessor, Kurt Lewin. A German immigrant who had arrived in the United States in the early $1930$s to escape the sociopolitical environment of his home country, Lewin was a social psychologist on the faculty at the University of Iowa. His interest was in studying patterns of group behavior, social problems, and the influence of leadership on a group. At its core, Lewin$$s work was an effort to understand and create personal and social change, with the objective of building and growing democracy in society $($see Benne, $1964$; L$.$ P$.$ Bradford, $1974$; Hirsch, $1987$; Kleiner, $1996).$

In the $1940$s$,$ with his graduate student, Ron Lippitt, Lewin studied boys$$ clubs, specifically boys$$ reactions to different styles adopted by group leaders. Spurred on by the implications of these results, in $1945$ Lewin established a Research Center for Group Dynamics $($a phrase Lewin invented; see L$.$ P$.$ Bradford, $1974)$ at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology $($MIT$).$

In the summer of $1946,$ a significant and unexpected finding occurred that dramatically changed the research and practitioner landscape at the time. It was at this time that the practices that became the T$-$group were discovered by Lewin and his students. The Connecticut Interracial Commission had asked Kurt Lewin to develop a workshop for community leaders in association with the Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress. The objective of the workshop was to assist community leaders in developing solutions to problems that they faced in their communities, specifically addressing problems in the implementation of the Fair Employment Practices Act. Participants included not only community leaders but also businesspeople, social workers, teachers, and other interested citizens. Instead of making attendees passively sit through lengthy lectures, speeches, and presentations by experts, which many of them had been expecting, organizers developed a workshop in which participatory group discussion, role playing, and teamwork would be the primary activities $($Hirsch$,1987).$ Group leaders debated whether subgroups should be homogeneous $($e$.$g$.,$ all teachers, all social workers$)$ or mixed $($Lippitt$,1949).$ These two considerations $($group participation and composition$)$ continue as key questions for the OD practitioner today.

For the researchers at the Research Center for Group Dynamics, it was an unusual opportunity to observe group processes and to understand how participants learned from their experiences in order to develop new skills that they could use when they returned to their communities. In addition, the workshop fit with the values that the researchers had espoused at the time. Kenneth Benne would later say,

I saw it was an effort to help volunteers from various parts of Connecticut to begin to see themselves as agents of change in their responsi