A New Agenda for Organisational Effectiveness?

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Earlier this week, I went to a CIPD Knowledge into Practice Seminar and launch of the CIPD book, People & Organisational Development: a new agenda for organisational effectiveness.

The authors argued that the dominant business paradigm of shareholder value is nolonger fit for purpose – we,the public, expect more from companies as “good” citizens. In other words, a return to the stakeholder approach to business and management. Mirroring such changes in the field of HR, they argued that the business-centric approach of the Business Partner model was similarly nolonger appropriate and should be replaced by a more humanistic approach integrating organisational development in to new perspectives on organisational effectiveness. It would be interesting to hear the debate with the CIPDs work on “business savvy” which seems to me to be very focused on the “non-humanist” and “people as assets” perspective.

They proposed a four pronged approach to the required new approach involving

  • language and action – a narrative turn in analysing management practices
  • authenticity and mutuality – acknowledging a two way relationship between the employee and employer. Which itself is highly fluid – as the point was made at the event, as an employee is the offer of enhanced “employability” competences enough of an offer if there is a longer-term job shortage (although this now seems less likely than was thought a few months ago)
  • leadership and management – although what this entailed other than managing people differently and dispersing leadership throughout the organisation wasn’t really clear
  • paradox and ambiguity – as something managers need to be more comfortable dealing with. We could here to approaches like the Cynefin framework or polarity management.

    • What I’m hoping from the book is that we see how these concepts can be operationalised in to [daily] management practice … we shall see

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