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article: Tavistock and OD history

  • 1.  article: Tavistock and OD history

    Posted 08-07-2013 06:00
    Dear fellow ODC list members,

    This article on the contribution of the Tavistock Institute to the foundations of OD is in the journal Business History, which list members may not normally read. It can be found here if you have access to Taylor and Francis online:  http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00076791.2013.790368


    Abstract

    The management field 'Organization Development' (OD), is said to have been invented in the mid-1950s in the USA. Some contribution post-1958 by the UK Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR), and to a minor extent, in its World War II 'group-relations' work is acknowledged. Otherwise, OD depicts the circle of its US 'founding father' Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) as its historic mainspring. A new 1945 primary source, the TIHR's originating funding proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation, proposes all the components of OD, outside mention of Lewin et al. Thus, what was to become OD was invented in the Britain of 1945, not the USA of the 1950s.


    If you haven't got access, there are a limited number of free eprints (50) that can be had from this address. Email me or Bernard Burnes if the free ones run out. 

    http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/TqxYbfpEWPskbuMZx57x/full

    See some of you in Orlando I hope.

    Bill Cooke