ABSTRACT
Since the rapid growth period of the 1980s and 1990s, in which HRD was firmly assembled as a defined area of practice and scholarship, organization development (OD) has been integrated into the definition of HRD. Compared with OD, HRD is a relatively youthful field of practice and scholarship; yet OD and HRD share many of the same roots and dispositions. OD was born out of the formation of the human relations related exploration and scholarship that began in the 1930s. This early work led to important observations and assumptions that are now well integrated into everyday modern life – that organizational processes and structures shape employee motivation, behavior and work-related mindsets. The work of Lewin and Trist and Bamforth in the 1940s and 1950s demonstrated the value of feedback in clarifying and addressing organizational social processes. “More recently, work on OD has expanded to focus on aligning organizations with their rapidly changing and complex environments through organizational learning, knowledge management and transformation of organizational norms and values” (Shull et al. 2013: 1).
