Organizational development as facilitating the surfacing and modification of social rules

This chapter employs an emerging theoretical perspective—social rules theory—to reframe and redefine organizational change and development in ways potentially overcoming some of their conceptual inadequacies. After elaborating social rules theory, it is first utilized to reframe organizational change, and second, to redefine OD as a special type of project system in organizations which facilitates change by surfacing, assessing, and modifying as needed, the rules and rule systems within or linking organizational components.