Essays --

It was a cold and blistering Thursday morning. I had just gotten my cup of coffee and was reading the morning paper and there it was on the front page of the Erie Gazette; â€Å"Mogul Industries moving facility to Mexico†. Mogul Industries is the largest automotive support organization in the United States plus it is the major employer in Erie. As a business owner specializing in retail dry good, this concerns me. My first though was about my 100 employees and the future of my store and business. I started hyperventilating and sweating; my wife looked at me and asked me what I was going to do? My first thought was to run, but I knew that would not work for me. Then I had a flashback to my college days at Ashford University in my Organizational Development class. I started to back off the ledge and calm down. I looked at my wife and told her that I have to analyze the challenges facing your company using Organizational Development (OD) principles. Appling the OD princ iple will ensure my business not only stays alive, but possibly transform it into the largest retailer in town. The first question that came from my wife was â€Å"What is Organizational Development?† Richard Beckhard defined Organization Development as an effort to plan, organize, and manage from the top to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organizations "processes," using behavioral-science knowledge. (Beckhard, 1969). A simpler definition is that OD is the logical application for behavior science to bring about deliberate change in an organization. The intended objectives and outcomes are for organizational survival through improved adaptability, productivity, and effectiveness. These objectives will be accompl... ... they ought to modify, continue or discontinue the activities. The need for the practitioner decreases during this stage and will gradually disengage from the process as it stabilizes. The client system needs to mature the ability to maintain innovation without outside support. It is important to remember that each stage should be monitored to ensure the process is staying on track. If all goes well, our organization will be on track to surviving the change in the community. Organizations wanting to survive and be successful are faced with the continually evaluating and introducing changes to better their organization. Looking at the corporate world, there are two types of companies. You have the ones who continue to change with the times and those who are going out of business. Our organization is going to adapt and implement continual change if needed.