Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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!

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.

This is a great book if you wish to gain an indepth understanding of Organization Development (OD). It incorporates the history of the field in a very functional way and is well ordered and organized into 8 parts. I am reading it front to back, but it could serve as a resource as well. I am sure that this is a volume I will frequently consult for direction in figuring out OD issues as I work with organizations. The intorduction to each section which Dr Gallos provdes are themselves very good essays on the field as well as a nice advance organizer. One other thing, each chapter's full citation and date of original publication is included in the back of the book; one reviewer incorrectly identified this as a lack. I highly recommend this volume.

Una excelente compilación de los autores mas destacados del Desarrollo Organizacional.
Articulos muy diversos que dan cuenta de todo el amplio expectro de esta disciplina y escrito por los representantes mas destacados del DO.
Excelente libro.

This is excellent sum of often cited articles in the field of OD. I find it very usefull and strongly recommend it.

I wish I had kept this book for reference purposes, but the truth is I liked the topics so much I was inspired to get the original works by all the authors themselves. This book is a great annotative resource for people thinking about OD practices or a career in OD.

This is a very comprehensive volume of original writings on OD. My only complaint, and it is a serious one, is there is no indication of where and when the selections were originally published. A lot of OD ideas need to be understood in the temporal context in which they were developed and it is not possible to determine that from the information in the book.