Stages of Organization and Development

This paper describes our belief that organization development (OD), to be effective, should link with the progressively mature reasoning processes which characterize managers working within increasingly higher stages in the evolution of an organization. The paper uses the models of Torbert (1973) and Kohlberg (1969) to examine the scope of influence of popular OD approaches and concludes that OD theories have probably appealed principally to individuals and organizations functioning at relatively high levels of development. It also points up the need for theories which guide developmental energies at lower levels of orientation and which provide additional understanding of the transitional events individuals and organizations have to experience in order to pass from one stage of development to the next.

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