The challenge issued by Bradford and
Burke (2005) to reinvent Organization
Development (OD) needs no additional
salience and emphasis a decade later.
Technology and globalization continue to
increase and accelerate the demand for
faster, more complex change. Contracting
markets are forcing business to recapitalize
resources, increase mergers and acquisitions,
and redeploy and re-train talent.
OD practitioners are competing against
a greater number of competitors inside
and outside the OD world for smaller jobs
within a narrower market. The call to reinvent
OD is one of survival and vitality.
Some OD practitioners respond to
these market conditions by doublingdown
on the familiar and canonical
techniques of OD, only to find that these
business opportunities come with diminished
remuneration and prestige associated
with the “crumbs left over from the
major consulting firms” (Bradford &
Burke, 2005: 213). Other OD practitioners
respond by offering more competitive yet
less orthodox OD techniques only to find
themselves swallowed up by the drive
to keep money coming in versus transforming
their OD practice. Both types of
responses leave OD practitioners facing
the age old dilemma between being true to
one’s profession and keeping one’s business
alive.
It is this dilemma that we consider
as we reflect on the regeneration of OD.
Similar to the long view of OD advanced
by Burnes and Cooke (2012), we view the
developments occurring within OD as
more characteristic of a regeneration than