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Abstract
Three cohorts of Chinese executives, attending an Executive MBA program in the United States, were surveyed regarding their opinions of 16 common organization development interventions. The survey, translated to Mandarin, queried on how willing Chinese business executives are to adopt each intervention as well as the efficacy of each intervention. Of the 16, only one intervention (Management By Objectives) was clearly regarded as acceptable while four were generally considered unacceptable (Role Negotiation, Confrontation Meeting, Third Party Consultation, and Organization Mirror). With regard to perceived effectiveness, four interventions (Management By Objectives, Quality of Work Life, Team Building, Career Development) received favorable scores. A strong relationship between the perceived effectiveness and the willingness to adopt an intervention was found. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of the findings in practicing and "marketing" organization development in China, a country that has demonstrated keen interest in importing skilled consultants.
There is no question that organization development has proven to be an effective management tool world-wide. This is not to say there are no difficulties, particularly regarding national cultural differences, when implementing OD projects in various nations. Jaeger (1986) discovered almost 20 years ago that culture presents a set of parameters that simply require process adjustments, not barriers, to organization development. Jaeger did not have any "wool over his eyes" however. In his landmark study on OD intervention utilization in five different nations Jaeger, (1989) found wide variations on how well known, frequently used, and particularly how successful, various OD interventions were regarded worldwide. For example, job design was considered one of the most successful interventions in Germany but among the least effective in India. Confrontation meetings were very effective in the United States, but not successful in Germany. A similar study (Head & Sorensen, 1993) involving at seven countries and 19 specific interventions, found a strong relationship existed between national culture and the use of organization development interventions. For example, Denmark (the country whose values most closely match those of OD) was found to be the only nation where all 19 interventions were used. Taiwan, with values very dissimilar to OD's, was found to use only two of the 19 interventions. Head and Sorensen also reported significant differences between nations on the effectiveness of...