Organisation Development: A Case of the Emperor's New Clothes?

Personnel specialists often bear the brunt of organisational change. Whether through the painful experiences of managing a redundancy, or as company representatives negotiating the introduction of new technology with trade unions, the shock waves of organisational change permeate most aspects of the personnel function sooner or later. Over recent years, much effort has been directed towards understanding the processes and problems of organisational change and of developing ways of more satisfactorily dealing with it. Much of these efforts have been drawn together into a body of techniques, ideas, case studies and more general wisdom which has acquired a distinctive identity.