History of Organization Development

Organization development can be traced back to a training laboratory effort that began in 1946 in Bethel, Maine. A German immigrant, Kurt Lewin, was a social psychologist at the University of Iowa. Lewin’s work was an effort to understand and create personal and social change, with the objective of building and growing democracy in society. In 1945, Lewin established a Research Center for Group Dynamics.

The Survey Research Center’s goal was to create a hub for social science research, specifically with survey research expertise. The center aimed to focus on larger projects of significant importance beyond a single organization and to share the results publicly. One such project that met these criteria was a survey feedback project at Detroit Edison. Action research is the underlying philosophy of the majority of OD work, particularly survey feedback.

Sociotechnical systems (STS) was developed in the 1950s, driven by the action research philosophy. The concept of sociotechnical systems is generally traced to a study of social and psychological changes in work groups that occurred during a transition to more mechanized (versus manual) methods of extracting coal. The technological system consists of not just information technology as we might think of it today, but the skills, knowledge, procedures, and tools that employees use to do their jobs.