Organization Development Experiences . A Case for Enriching HRD through OD

This article reviews a few definitions of OD and identifies eight characters that are necessary to call an activity or experience as an OD activity or experience. The article then goes on to examine ten case studies (of research, consulting and OD) of what appears like an OD activity in which the author was involved as one of the facilitators for whole system or subsystem and examines each on of them for their appropriateness to be called as OD interventions. The author then goes on to derive some lessons from these experiences. The article outlines also some advantages of using traditional OD approach in various HRD interventions and offers some suggestions for making specific HRD interventions like competency mapping, 360Degree Feedback based leadership Development and Assessment and Development Centers as OD activities. The paper concludes that using an OD approach enriches HRD and yields a good ROI on HRD interventions.

Global Leadership and Managerial Competencies of Indian Managers

A review of the literature on the qualities of effective managers, leaders and world class or global manager indicates a good degree of consistency in the qualities required to be called a global manager. In these days when mergers and acquisition have become common and national boundaries are crossed with ease in acquiring new businesses and setting up new businesses it is necessary to understand and acquire the competencies needed to be globally successful leader. This paper identifies 25 such qualities from a 360 feedback survey of 762 senior and top level managers from manufacturing, services and pharma sectors combined with those from a mix of organizations belonging to two leading business houses of India. An analysis of the open ended assessments given by nearly 7600 managers indicated the most frequently perceived strengths and weaknesses of Indian management. Job knowledge comes out as the most frequently observed strong point of Indian managers and this cuts across various sectors and business houses. Communication, team work, and hard work come out as other strong points of more than 20 per cent of Indian managers. Short temper, open-mindedness, and inability to build juniors are the most frequently mentioned areas needing improvement. Vision, values, strategic thinking, decision making skills, risk taking, innovativeness, ability to learn from mistakes, learning orientation and self renewal efforts, and cross cultural sensitivity are other qualities lacking in Indian managers to be called as global managers. These qualities are either not exhibited dominantly or are not received bye fellow managers. Future management education and management development programmes should focus on these qualities to prepare Indian managers to be world class managers.

Impact of 360 Degree Feedback: A Follow-up study of Four Organizations

A large number of organizations have been using 360 degree feedback in India as leadership development intervention. This paper is based on the feedback of 43 participants from four companies where the 360 Degree Feedback program was initiated. The study was done using a questionnaire method. The results indicated that there has been an overall positive impact reported of 360 Degree intervention on ones professional life after 360DF. More than 60% of the participants report that they visited 360DF data every quarter. 24 participants reported that about 50% of their action plans prepared at the end of the 360 intervention were implemented. At least 30% of the action plans were achieved by 6 of the participants and 2 participants reported achievement of all their action plans. The participants also reported that the RSDQ model based 360DF tool provided detailed insight covering various parameters of one’s role. The participants also recommend that with more periodic follow up and review sessions (every quarter) anchored by internal HR and more focus and seriousness among the participants to work on the action plans will result in using 360 DF for change and growth

Leprosy and tuberculosis concomitant infection: a poorly understood, age-old relationship

Historically, archaeological evidence, post-mortem findings and retro- spective analysis of leprosy institutions’ data demonstrates a high observed incidence of concomitant infection with leprosy and tuberculosis (TB). However, reports of concomitant infection in the modern literature remain scarce, with estimates of annual new case detection rates of concomitant infection at approximately 0·02 cases per 100,000 population. Whilst the mechanism for this apparent decline in concomitant infections remains unclear, further research on this topic has remained relatively neglected. Modelling of the interaction of the two organisms has suggested that the apparent decline in observations of concomitant infection may be due to the protective effects of cross immunity, whilst more recently others have questioned whether it is a more harmful relationship, predisposing towards increased host mortality. We review recent evidence, comparing it to previously held understanding on the epidemiological relationship and our own experience of concomitant infection. From this discussion, we highlight several under-investigated areas, which may lead to improvements in the future delivery of leprosy management and services, as well as enhance understanding in other fields of infection management. These include, a) highlighting the need for greater understanding of host immunogenetics involved in concomitant infection, b) whether prolonged courses of high dose steroids pre-dispose to TB infection? and, c) whether there is a risk of rifampicin resistance developing in leprosy patients treated in the face of undiagnosed TB and other infections? Longitudinal work is still required to characterise these temporal relationships further and add to the current paucity of literature on this subject matter

Is Past Performance a Good Predictor of Future Potential?

Both assessment centres and 360 degree feedback have become very popular new era HR tools. With human resources gaining strategic importance combined with raising costs of talented managers and their scarce availability, organizations are left with no alternatives than identifying and grooming talent from within. This has led to the increased use of assessment centres and 360 degree tools for developing leadership competencies. Some times 360 degree feedback is used as tool for career development and succession planning. Sometimes assessment centres are used as predictors of fast track managers. However research on the predictive ability of ACs or 360 degree feedback is scant. This study is based on data gathered from three organizations that have conducted assessment centres as well as 360 degree feedback. In all three organizations ACs and 360 degree feedback were used as development tools. In all these organizations competency mapping was done and common competencies were identified using behaviour indicators. Competencies were assessed by external assessors and by their seniors, juniors, and colleagues on the same competency model. Results showed no definite patterns and lead to the conclusion that past performance as assessed by 360 degree feedback predictor of future potential as assessed by the assessment centres. The findings seem to be valid irrespective of the nature of competencies assessed and across various categories of employees. Given the lack of correlation, caution is necessary while using the data for promotion and succession planning exercises.

Theoretical studies of tone noise from a fan rotor

An analytical study was made of some possible rotor alone noise sources of dipole, quadrapole and monopole characters which generate discrete tone noise. Particular emphasis is given to the tone noise caused by fan inlet flow distortion and turbulence. Analytical models are developed to allow prediction of absolute levels. Experimental data measured on a small scale fan is presented which indicates inlet turbulence interaction with a fan rotor can be a source of tone noise. Predicted and measured tone noise for the small scale rotor are shown to be in reasonable agreement

A unified data flow model for fault tolerant computers

The Dataflow Simulation System (DFSS) at USL was used as the medium on which a functional simulaton of sIFT was produced. DFSS is written in PL/I and is supported by MULTICS. Within the simulation, all the interprocessor communication, fault simulation, system state data, and monitoring were implemented in dataflow and supported directly by DFSS. The actual processor level computation was carried out by the SIFT code in PASCAL. The interface between DFSS in PL/I and the SIFT code in PASCAL was supported under a mechanism in DFSS called a Node Realization Module (NRM)