Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader (The Jossey-Bass Business and Management Reader Series) [Paperback]

Joan V. Gallos (Editor), Edgar H. Schein (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0787984264 | ISBN-13: 978-0787984267 | Publication Date: August 11, 2006 | Edition: 1

Organization Development is a one-stop guide to the world of planned change. Organization development has a powerful and influential heritage, solid core, evolving applications and approaches, and a vital role to play in today's global, fast-paced world of constant change. This volume immerses readers deeply in organization development's power and possibilities.

Newcomers to the field can read the book cover to cover and explore organization development's foundation, scope, focus, purpose, and methods. Experienced consultants and change agents will find chapters that capture best thinking on key topics--resources for fine-tuning skills, learning about intervention options, envisioning organization development's future, or reflecting on the larger issues in growth and change. Leaders and managers will find the resources they need to understand the route to organizational health and effectiveness, and to develop, launch, and nourish successful change efforts.

This is the third book in the Jossey-Bass Reader series. The collection of chapters will introduce you to the key thinkers and contributors in organization development including Ed Lawler, Peter Senge, Chris Argyris, Richard Hackman, Jay Galbraith, Cooperrider, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Bolman & Deal, Kouzes & Posner, and Ed Schein, among others.  The editor's interludes and organization of the book will help you appreciate the foundations and the growth of OD as a field and as a method of planned change.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Notable Book for 2006" -- Training and Development (ASTD), December 2006

Without reservations I will recommend this volume. This volume is prodigious, well edited. I urge the reader to acquire this book for his or her professional library.
--PsycCritiques (APA), 2007

This volume immerses readers deeply in organization development's power and possibilities.
--Organization Development Journal, August 2007

Without reservations I recommend this volume to students of organizational behavior who want an encyclopedia of OD to gain a perspective on the past, present, and future.

--Jonathan D. Springer, American Psychological Association.

From the Author

This is a book about the power and possibilities of organization development and planned change. It celebrates OD's proud legacy of embracing the social and behavioral sciences in service to individual and organizational growth.  It acknowledges OD's contributions to theory and practice: understanding how organizations work and developing methods for their improvement.  It charts the evolution and impact of a field that set out more than half a century ago to release human potential at work and foster the role of learning and renewal in organizations.
 
The book is intended as a resource for both newcomers and experienced practitioners.  Those new to the field can read cover-to-cover and explore OD's history, foundation, scope, purpose, methods, and possibilities.  Experienced practitioners will find chapters that capture best thinking on a range of topics - resources for fine-tuning skills, learning about intervention options, envisioning OD's future, or reflecting on the larger issues in growth and change. 
            
This book is intentionally inclusive in content: it identifies not-to-be-missed classics in the OD literature (and provides a full listing of original source materials for those who want to read more), as well as pieces that stretch the field's traditional boundaries. It applauds an approach to planned change that has expanded in scope and possibility along with the changing nature of organizations, the environment, and theoretical advances in the organizational and social sciences. 

The chapters in this volume promote an understanding of OD as a diverse set of approaches to organizational health and effectiveness in an increasingly competitive and complex world. Taken together, they remind readers that organization development is more than tools and techniques.  OD's core values - participation, openness to learning, equity and fairness, valid information, informed choice, shared commitment - can foster processes that engage people in useful and significant ways to address a wide range of operational, technical, and strategic concerns.  OD artfully weds process with content in a search for lasting solutions to tough challenges. 

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1088 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (August 11, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787984264
• ISBN-13: 978-0787984267
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 2.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #31,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joan V. Gallos is an award-winning educator, author, and scholar in the field of leadership and management education and a consultant who has engaged in leadership development and organizational start-up and change projects for private and public organizations in the U.S. and abroad. Visit her website at www.joangallos.com

Gallos is currently professor of leadership, University of Missouri Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor, and director of the Executive MBA Program at the Henry W. Bloch School of Management at the University of Missouri- Kansas City, where she has also served as dean and professor of leadership at the School of Education, coordinator of university accreditation, special assistant to the chancellor for strategic planning, and director of the Higher Education Graduate Program.

Gallos holds a bachelor's degree cum laude in English from Princeton and master's and doctoral degrees in organizational behavior and professional education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Her scholarship centers on innovative leadership and management pedagogy for a diverse work world; expanding conceptions of what, how and why professionals learn; and individual and organizational change.

Gallos, the former editor of the Journal of Management Education, has published four books with two others in development; more than fifty articles and chapters; and multiple sets of curricular and management training materials (including all the instructional materials for the Jossey-Bass Reader series in management). She has co-written and produced a play on teen health and wellness, drafted a children's reader, and is at work on her first novel.

Gallos has received numerous awards for her teaching, scholarship, leadership, and service. She has been named an Icon of Education by Ingram's Magazine, and a Sage of the Society by a vote of her international colleagues for lifetime contributions to management education. In 2008, she was named University of Missouri Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor, the highest faculty rank awarded by the University system.

Gallos is also proud to have received the Fritz Roethlisberger Memorial Award for the best article on management education in 1990(and to have been finalist for the same prize in subsequent years). In 1993, she accepted the Radcliffe College/Harvard University Excellence in Teaching award.

In 2002-03, Joan Gallos served as founding director of the Truman Center for the Healing Arts at Truman Medical Center, Kansas City's public safety-net, teaching hospital. As a result of her leadership, the Center received the 2004 Kansas City Business Committee for the Arts Partnership Award for the best partnership between a large organization and the arts.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read!, January 9, 2007

By 

Shizzys (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader (The Jossey-Bass Business and Management Reader Series) (Paperback)

This was one of the texts used in my Organizational Development course in my MBA program. It packed a punch since it was a large reader, but had Readers Digest versions of very important OD related readings almost in a Reader-style (for those of you familiar with purchasing readers for class). All of the readings were beneficial, and by authors who are the fathers of the field. I highly recommend this for reference reading (look at the number of pages, its not a quick read) and for teaching organizational behavior type courses.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Process "is as important as content, and sometimes more important." Edgar H. Schein, July 11, 2007

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader (The Jossey-Bass Business and Management Reader Series) (Paperback)

The scope and depth of coverage of an especially important business subject in this volume are unsurpassed by any other single source of which I am familiar. (There are 952 pages of material provided within 47 entries, followed by References, Name Index, and Subject Index.) I acknowledge that I have not read all of the entries selected and edited by Joan V. Gallos, who also provides an excellent Introduction and contributed an article, "Reframing Complexity: A Four Dimensional Approach to Organizational Diagnosis, Development, and Change" (Pages 344-362). Rather, I carefully reviewed the table of contents and selected those of greatest interest to me, some of which I had read previously. I suspect that many others will take the same approach.

Gallos organizes the organization development (OD) material within eight Parts.

The OD Field: Setting the Context, Understanding the Legacy
The OD Core: Understanding and Managing Planned Change
The OD Process: Diagnosis, Intervention, and Levels of Engagement
OD Consulting: leading Change from the Outside
OD Leadership: Fostering Change from the Inside
OD Focus: Organizational Intervention Targets
OD Purpose and Possibilities: Seeing the Forest for the Trees
OD And the Future: Embracing Change and New Directions

Here are several of the articles I had read previously:

"Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" John P. Kotter
"Enlist Others" James Kouzes and Barry Posner
"Business Strategy: Creating the Winning Formula" Edward E. Lawler
"The Leader's New Work: Building learning organizations" Peter M. Senge
"Knowledge-Worker Productivity: The Biggest Challenge" Peter F. Drucker

Here are other articles I read for the first time:

"What Is Organizational Development?" Richard Beckhard
"Teaching Smart People How to Learn" Chris Argyris
"Team Development" Glenn M. Parker
"Emerging Directions: Is There a New IOD?" Robert J. Marshak

I share these merely to indicate my own interests but also to suggest the variety of perspectives among the business thinkers. Of course, it remains for each reader to select those entries that are of greatest relevance to her or his own needs and interests.

Credit Joan V. Gallos for making excellent selections and then for organizing the material so well. To repeat, the scope and depth of coverage of an especially important business subject in this volume are unsurpassed by any other single source of which I am familiar. Bravo!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding academic and practical reading, September 25, 2009

By 

mas - See all my reviews

This review is from: Organization Development: A Jossey-Bass Reader (The Jossey-Bass Business and Management Reader Series) (Paperback)

This text was assigned as part of a Master's program. Interestingly, I mentioned it to someone who is earning a Doctorate in OD and she said this book is the one that was assigned. It demonstrates that it is of academic quality. On the practical, business side, it has helped me look at situations in the organization from different perspectives. For example, there's an essay by well-known author John Kotter on how to manage change effectively, based on one of his books. It's rare to find an organization today that is not undergoing some change initiative and there is plenty of material here to reference on the topic. A must read for managers and leaders at all levels.