Organizational Development Reflection Paper

When someone spoke about the phrase “Organizational Development” I need to admit I did not know what they were talking about. Even up to the first class, I was still puzzled about what organizational development was, despite having read the first twelve chapters in Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change by Rothwell, Stavros, Sullivan, et.al. I felt as if I was learning another foreign language and was not sure of myself. Now, that we endured four face-to-face classes in Education Organization Development, I can now say that I understand the material in the class. As the halfway point has drawn to a close, there are five topics that were explained in either the Rothwell textbook, supplemental readings or class lectures that have stuck with me and had me thinking over and over again about the core topic of organizational development. The first topic which was extremely engaging to me was brought to my attention in the class lecture from the first night of class on September 11, 2015 on “What is an Organization?” Since this was a question on my mind, I was able to get a true and precise answer to the answer. Dr. Wiggall lectured that Chester Barnard clarified that an organization

To me this chapter probably was the most beneficial to my career now because we are trying to build our team at school. The text explains that the four c’s that must be understood by OD practitioners in order for them to do effective team building are: context, composition, competencies, and change management (Rothwell, Stavros, Sullivan, & Sullivan, 2010). This chapter explains how important team building and cohesiveness is to any job or company. I will be taking some of the information from this chapter and applying it to my career and work on team building at my