Organizational Development Interventions: An Artifaction Perspective

Abstract

Given the highly instrumental nature of the literature on organizational interventions, this article explores and defines key elements of an artifaction theory of organizational development (OD) interventions. Four dimensions of artifaction are distinguished: ascription, fabrication, displacement, and reinterpretation. This framework then serves to develop a number of propositions regarding the nature and background of OD interventions, the ability to create alternative purposes and values, the involvement of stakeholders in the intervention process, the deliberate incompleteness of the intervention approach adopted, as well as its standardization and codification. Finally, the article discusses how an artifaction perspective on OD intervention may serve to develop an OD science that is theoretically as well as practically significant.

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