The Impossibility of Using Random Strategies to Study the Organization Development Process

Abstract

The organization development (OD) process seeks collaborative, diagnosis-based organizational change. This article discusses how the use of random strategies of a traditional experimental design to study the OD process fundamentally changes that process to something other than OD. Following a literature search, the authors conclude that random processes and the OD process are fundamentally incompatible and thus cannot be used simultaneously. Researchers may use random strategies to study OD techniques, but not the OD process itself It is never appropriate to attempt to use random selection or random assignment to study the OD process. The authors call for the development of alternative standards and methods that are both rigorous and relevant to OD research for no true experiment studying the OD process can ever take place.