ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND MEASUREMENT: TOWARD A NEW DIRECTION
Résumé
This paper describes how more effective use of scientific description and measurement in organization development (OD) could improve the practice and assessment of OD interventions. We discuss the nature of scientific description and measurement and the reasons organization development needs to improve description and measurement of organizations and OD interventions, as well as qualimetrics as a new approach to measurement and description of organizational performance that can advance the field. We also explore the methodological and measurement needs of organizational development, and introduce the concepts of 'hidden cost' and 'hidden potential' as important new phenomena for measurement central to the new approach to measurement. We provide an example of a recent OD intervention to illustrate how qualimetrics was used to identify hidden costs and enhance hidden potential during a large scale intervention into an international firm. A comparison of agile organizations, appreciative inquiry and qualimetrics is presented to highlight how qualimetrics uses richer and more detailed information than other OD approaches. We conclude by discussing what OD would look like if qualimetrics and ethnostatistics became more widely used in the field.