Team Development Programmes for Top Management Groups in Czechoslovakia

An ambitious programme was launched in the early 1980s for bringing about an organizational change in planned economy companies. Because of the centralized political and economic power, and strictly hierarchical managerial structures the programme was targeted at the top management teams. The programme consisted of a number of different OD techniques combined into a composite package of four parallel sub‐programmes: educational (the theory and practice of management), realization (the process by which change was introduced), social and psychological (personal and cultural awareness), and research (learning from the experience). The top management group was the nucleus of each change programme. The programme was successfully repeated 20 times in different types of organizations over a five‐year period. Describes the history of the programme, its structure, the main principles and the methods used. Sets out the main lessons learned from using OD programmes to bring about organizational change in communist and post‐communist economies.