Barriers, boundaries and leaks in an organization development intervention

Reflects on an organizational development (OD) intervention which addressed strategic culture change with the senior management team of a UK‐based international manufacturing organization. In line with emergent theory and practice OD consultants, authors intervened at the three levels: strategy, culture and top team dynamics. Whilst the client seemed happy with the outcomes, the authors believed that the intervention had failed to effect transformational change and were thus motivated to re‐examine practice in the light of recent contributions to the OD and organizational learning literature. This analysis suggests that future OD practice should be grounded in processes of dialogue permeating all phases of the intervention. At the diagnostic phase, there is a need to identify more clearly the enablers and barriers to productive learning. Subsequently, during implementation, the boundaries of the intervention with particular reference to politics, authority and task should be managed more carefully and explicitly.