Organization Development (OD) Consulting Mindsets to Co-Create High-Value Organizations

There is need to deepen calls for the integration of humanistic values and bottom-line results. This is done through integral whole systems thinking and approaches among OD practitioners. The OD field needs to be guarded against losing its identity due to excess focus on external organizational competencies when blending traditional OD values with emerging business trends. The tendency to be driven, influenced and rewarded by excessive focus on productivity and quarterly profits leads to repression of creative imagination, spontaneity, and innovation in OD practice, and thus within organizations. In the 1980s the development of OD began to be more influenced by entrepreneurial and pragmatic practitioners who saw the need to transform it into a more hard-headed, results-focused, commercial activity that catered to what companies wanted (Burnes, 2009a, Dent, 2002). This article targets OD practitioners by synthesizing the findings of foundational and current research, insight, and expertise to determine mindsets that evolve the OD field into the future while upholding fundamental OD values and principles. Given the complexities and rapid change that modern organizations face, we advocate for the hybridization of OD mindsets and philosophical orientations as a strategy for novel OD approaches. We reinforce that justice, community, human development, and ecological balance should be blended with bottom-line focus, and be embedded in OD mindsets and practices going forward. The profit-centered approach in OD research on productivity, methodology, and practices make the field merely interesting but less transformational