Organisation Development: A Bold Explorer's Guide

Organisation Development: A Bold Explorer's Guide

There are many books on Organisational Development, but to the reflective practitioner who is curious about their practice there can be a disconnect between the simplicity of theory and the often messy reality of practice. Organisation Development: A Bold Explorer’s Guide explores the realities that they encounter in a way that gives practitioners hope that this is a shared experience (in fact it is normal), and that out of all of this progress can be made.

In exploring everyday interactions, with their fascinating textures and details, important clues for practice and theory can be found. This book offers the opportunity to appreciate how events, in which we are all involved, are connected. It is in the detail, for example the corridor conversation with a senior director, that things can be said that affect the lives of many. Therefore, organisation development never stops or starts. It is a continuing series of interactions in which we have choices. These choices are creative and artful as well as practical and ethical, and the authors show how any of us might weigh these complex balances and move forward. 

Organisation Development: A Bold Explorer’s Guide challenges the received building blocks of organisation development, putting the curious, reflexive individual at the heart of their own development. It is written for those who are keen to develop their practice from the ground up and who are looking for inspiration to take their own experience seriously.

James Traeger co-founded the organisation development consultancy Mayvin.co.uk to help their clients in Government, commerce and the third sector navigate the increasing complexity of their environment. For ten years James led a project that helped men investigate their relationship with their work, supporting and responding to the changing role of women. This culminated in his doctoral research and since 2010 he has supervised doctoral students at Ashridge-Hult Business School. Rob Warwick is a Reader in Management and Organisational Learning at the University of Chichester, who arrived in academia having been at the sharp end of organisational change within the UK’s National Health Service – supporting both large- and small-scale projects. He became curious about the rhetoric of organisational change and it was this curiosity and a doctorate in change management that led him to academia and this book.