Customer Reviews

Organization Development & Change With Infotrac

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

One would think that a book about change would be innovative in terms of style. This book is as exciting as the operating instructions that come with your vcr. However, the content is first class. This book will remain on my desk as a reference. Almost every chapter has vital information for any type of change agent. It tells you the key steps in managing change, overcoming resistance to change and designing change interventions. It walks you through the change process step by step beginning with entering an organization then to diagnosing a problem. Once you diagnose a problem the book clearly describes a myriad of interventions for organziational, group and individual problems. Then the book takes you through the steps of implementing and evaluating interventions.

Cummings OD book is perfectly designed to approach and delve into the field of OD smoothly and profoundly. Its first three chapters provide an excellent introduction to OD and how it is differentiated from overlapping organizational dynamics, primarily change management and organizational change. I respected this text's strategic analysis of the OD interventions and the pragmatic models of their implementation. Although developing business organizations sounds theoritical in its conceptual or abstract sense, this text gives you reasonable and sensible tools that help convert the OD theory to a tangible reality.

This textbook is dated, as all multi-editions (intentionally?) are. Most of the case studies are from the 1990s; there is little sense of history here. The case studies tend to be short and general in nature, as well. The material on OD presented in the book is good and informative, even if the prose style is rather dry. What the authors spend 676 pages(including glossary)to say could have been said as well in perhaps half the space. Compared to other OD texts that the writer has read, this one comes off quite well, the forgoing nonwithstanding. In terms of constructive criticism, this writer would like to see greater depth in the coverage of each topic, and a greater sense both of history and of the future. The book reads as if the authors expect the trends of the present to continue without change into the forseeable future. Specifically, globalization is seen as a long-term factor, when it may well give way to regional trade blocks, as the world becomes multipolar, and as ethnic and religous issues join national self-interest in setting the agendas of nations not on the winning side of globalism. (However, one cannot expect OD textbook authors to be geostrategic thinkers, either.) Connectivity with other disciplines would also help the text; for example, a digression examining "King Lear" or "Julius Caesar" from an OD perspective might inform and entertain the reader. While this book could be improved, it is worth reading on it's own merits, and compares well to other texts in the field of OD. -Lloyd A. Conway

Having read hundreds of books on organisational development I have to say this is the best. It is true to say that this book has never been far from my side over the last nine years. It covers the wide range of activities required to transform organisations, providing intervention theory, diagnosis, learning and development structure design etc. This single work has informed 70% of my thinking towards change management. I cannot rate this book highly enough, its the most important book in my collection and has informed most of the change management work I have conducted. It does take quite a bit of study and even more practice. I want to thank Cummings and Worley for producing this book, it has changed the course of my career.

As an OD practitioner and faculty who teaches Org Change, I find Cummings and Worley's book superb. The case studies are short enough to use in class. Students find the writing style clear and understandable. And the book grounds its practical advice in theories and models that students can use for years after completing the class. The instructor's guide provides excellent insights into cases, but gives poorly written assessment items for use on tests. All textbooks have tradeoffs. On the academic side, this book lacks references to empirical research that students could follow up on. On the practical side, it lacks comparisons between interventions that practitioners choose from. It doesn't provide a personal wisdom that some readers would want. But it does provide engaging content that's clear enough for students recently out of college and deep enough for mid-career professionals who are reading the book for a class.

Most of the work we've done so far has been class activities and group work so we really don't depend on the book that much. However, I have read some of the book and it has been extremely dry and "academic" in the way it approaches most of the issues. This book makes the whole subject so stiff and formal in many ways that it almost loses its usefulness. I'm very glad for a professor who likes to put it all into a practical light.

Thank you for your prompt and professional service in purchasing this product. Your site listed the condition of the book and it arrived exactly as you said it would.

The book actually came perfectly intack. I didn't see any bent edges or highlights in the book. I was very impressed

I find the book to be a bit dry and tedious to read even though I enjoy the subject matter.

Assigned book for my graduate classes @ Peru State College. Covers fundamentals of Organizational Development, with numerous real-world cases for review and disection.