Organization and Education Development

Front matter

ORGANIZATION AND EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

RREFLECTING AND TRANSFORMING IN

A SELF-DISCOVERY JOURNEY

Contents

List of figures

List of tables Foreword

Preface Acknowledgments About the author List of abbreviations

Foreword

I have never met Suresh Nanwani in person, but I look forward to it someday. I first encountered him via email when he asked me to be an expert juror and provide comments on his in-process doctoral dissertation. His request was based largely on the topic of his research, organization development (OD), and my relatively long history dating back to the 1960s doing research and writing books and journal articles on this topic. My workload was brimming at the time (and still is), but I reluctantly agreed to help him out (I am a pushover for helping doctoral students). At the time, I expected to give his work a quick read, write a few comments about OD theory and practice, and be done with it.

In reading Suresh’s dissertation, my assumptions quickly met a far more compelling reality. Turns out his learning and research about OD serve as a rich and engaging context for a far more personal journey to better understand and improve himself as a person, scholar, and teacher. This piqued my interest. Suresh describes his journey in a way that is intimate and reflective yet explicit and systematic in what readers like me can learn about taking our own self-improvement journey. Indeed, in reading his dissertation, I inadvertently reflected on my own life and what I could learn about becoming a better person.

Suresh anchors the path of his journey to three core values — integrity, professionalism, and spirituality — that when tied together in thought, emotion, and action, guide his self-assessment and learning to become a more “fully integrated person.” Although these particular values make a lot of sense to me, the lesson here is that self-development needs to start with explicit and serious consideration for what values will guide that journey. The values are highly personal, can vary across people, and serve as touchstones to identify how well our behavior enacts them and to craft ways to become more fully integrative with them.

Suresh’s research provides a clear and thorough account of how he identified his values, drawing on approaches to OD that reflect them. It describes how he systematically collected data from friends, students, and OD advisors on their perceptions of how well he practices the values. Suresh then explains his top discoveries from this feedback. He ends his dissertation with a conceptual model, laying out the path that can be taken to journey successfully toward becoming a fully integrated person.

Foreword xix

I am grateful that Suresh included me in his journey. I am especially thankful that he listened to the advice of many of us to turn his dissertation into a book with broad appeal and relevance to all of us seeking to improve and develop ourselves. He has masterly accomplished this goal. This book is a “good read,” a very good read. It presents a compelling and comprehensive account of what it takes to identify our values, assess our practice of them, and craft a developmental path forward (and keep on doing this as we grow and mature). It draws on Suresh’s personal experience and OD concepts and values. It places them in a broad context that will have a wide appeal and deep personal consequence to anyone interested in learning about self-development.

Thomas G. Cummings Rolling Hills Estates, CA November 2020

Preface

This book is about my life-learning journey of self-discovery. Drawing ideas found in organization development (OD), I created a model to guide individuals, groups, and societies to become more self-aware and self-resilient. The monograph stems from the encouragement I received from the dissertation committee on my PhD degree in OD in 2020 at the Southeast Asia Interdisciplinary Development Institute (SAIDI) Graduate School of OD, Philippines. This committee suggested that I consider translating my research into a book, as the insights would be a useful reference for those who are and will be embarking on a similar journey of self-awareness and self-change. They believed that the experience would help nourish the souls and the minds in creating a culture of reflective practitioners.

In my monograph, I (1) present a clear picture of the process involving self-discovery toward becoming a fully integrated person and a better professor (i.e., a better educator); (2) provide a concrete and practical framework for self-awareness and self-change; and (3) highlight a model I developed (the Matter-Ikigai-Creativity-Appreciative Inquiry [MICAI] intersection model) to demonstrate the richness in interweaving various OD concepts.

Through my journaling and feedback from two independent readers, surveys and interviews with 30 respondents (20 friends and 10 students), and insights on feedback questions from nine leading academics and practitioners as expert jurors, I explore what are my top three discoveries and my OD model. The purpose of my model is to view myself as the primary OD practitioner through OD theories — traditional and modern — to see how I fit now and into the future by transforming myself through self-reflection. Rather than referring to the traditional views of OD that many are familiar with, I show how positive thinking, flow, creativity, appreciative inquiry and living, and other new concepts — including ikigai (describing the pleasures and meaning of life) and presencing — apply to both practice and theory.

My monograph focuses on my personal life journey through self-discovery by becoming a fully integrated person and a better professor. The model is not fixed as improvements accrue over time. For example, my dissertation research was completed in March 2020 before Covid-19 brought drastic changes to humankind. Consequently, I added a new chapter to highlight how the model applies to

Preface xxi

Covid-19 circumstances, how the impacts of Covid-19 shape our mental maps, and how we can find the opportunity to refresh, innovate, and flourish in uncertain times. The need to reinvigorate oneself through self-discovery has never been more acute in these surreal times. Despite the current state of affairs, individuals can view this opportunity to revitalize themselves as human beings through the ability to maintain connectivity that transcends barriers to self-improvement. My journey through discovery has taught me how to apply the OD model to better understand purposeful living for both myself and society. If those reading these pages come away with a better knowledge and understanding of human development through ideas found in my OD model and other models I suggest, then my personal journey will have been worthwhile to my fellow readers. This audience includes undergraduate or postgraduate students of OD, individuals wishing to improve themselves upon retirement or when they feel it is time to revisit themselves, interested readers who wish to embark on a similar journey to discover and transform themselves, and OD academics and practitioners.

Acknowledgments

There are many people who have contributed directly to the writing of this book and who have supported me in so many ways. With apologies, I may miss some names, but I know their presence has helped me in the process and I am grateful for this.

I thank the following, without any hierarchical order of importance:

e Dr. Rosalina O. Fuentes, Dr. Dolores M. Torres, and my PhD supervisor, Dr. Marie-Paul B. de Luna.

e My dissertation committee members, for providing valuable support in the defense of my PhD dissertation.

e My friends and students in the survey and my other fellow travelers who joined me and shared their views on the journey.

e My expert jurors — Prof. Jack Whitehead, Prof. Thomas Cummings, Prof. Robert Quinn, Dr. Diana Whitney, Prof. Charlotte Shelton, Prof. Otto C. Scharmer, Prof. Bernard Burnes, Ms. Jacqueline Kelm, and Prof. Ronald Fry — for going through my research and models and providing valuable insights.

e Ms. Kristine Lesaca, Assistant Principal for Academic Affairs (Officer in Charge), Miriam College Lower School, Quezon City, Philippines, and Fr. Dick Rocha, priest incardinated to the Archdiocese of Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea, for being guiding lights as fellow students.

e Dr. William A. Loxley, for sharing with me his comments and insights on my work.

e Ms. Emilie Coin, Editor, and Ms. Swapnil Joshi, Editorial Assistant, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, for their unwavering support.

e Ms. Joshene Bersales, for helping me in preparing this book.

e Mr. Ramachandran Vijayaraghavan, Project Manager, Apex CoVantage, India for his assistance.

e My loved ones and friends, for seeing me through my journey and providing moral support.

e Prof. David Cooperrider, Prof. Ronald Fry, Ms. Jacqueline Kelm, and Prof. Charlotte Shelton, for gratefully allowing me to use their figures or tables cited in this book.

I am grateful to each and every one of you for sharing your interests, thoughts, insights, and views, and for encouraging me and enabling my fulfilling journey.

About the author

Suresh Nanwani has more than 30 years of development work experience in international organizations, including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank (ADB), and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). His work covers governance and accountability, policy formulation, public consultations, human resources, accountability mechanisms, project operations, and law and development. He was formerly an Advisor in ADB and Counsel in EBRD.

Suresh has a PhD degree in Organization Development from SAIDI Graduate School of OD — Philippines, an LLM degree from the University College London, and an LLB degree (Honors) from the National University of Singapore. He is a Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution (CEDR)-accredited mediator. He is a roster subject expert for the environmental and international law in the Green Climate Fund Independent Redress Mechanism.

Since 2008, Suresh has lectured on international financial institutions, and law and governance in various countries, including Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom. He is a honorary associate professor in the Australian National University, visiting professorial fellow in the University of New South Wales, and honorary research fellow in the Birkbeck University of London.

He has published extensively on international financial institutions, law and development, governance and accountability, Sustainable Development Goals, and Belt and Road Initiative. His latest publications are The Practice of Independent Accountability Mechanisms (LAMS): Towards Good Governance in Development Finance (Brill Nijhoff, 2019), as coeditor with Owen McIntyre, and Covid-19 in the Philippines: Personal Stories (Amazon Kindle, 2021), as coeditor with William A. Loxley.

Suresh is:

e a member of the Advisory Board of the International Community Law Review, a UK peer-reviewed journal;

e a member of the Editorial Board of the Central European Journal of International and Security Studies, a Czech Republic peer-reviewed journal,

e an executive council member and secretary of the Society of International Economic Law (SIEL), a global organization for academics, practitioners, government officials, and students on IEL research, practice, and development;

xxiv About the author e a member of the International Advisory Group of One World Trust, a United Kingdom independent think tank advocating reform in global governance; and

e a member of the Advisory Board of the African International Economic Law Network (AfITELN).

Dr. Suresh Nanwani

Professor in Practice, Durham University, United Kingdom

Member Practitioner Advisory Board, Global Policy at https://www. globalpolicyjournal.com/practitioners-advisory-board /suresh-nanwani

Abbreviations

Al

AIA

AL

CCU

TE University

OD

MICAI

SAIDI Graduate School

POD POS

Appreciative Inquiry Appreciative-Imagining-Acting

Appreciative Living

Chung Cheng University

Instituto de Empresa University

Organization Development Matter-Ikigai-Creativity-Appreciative Inquiry/Living Southeast Asia Interdisciplinary Development Institute Graduate School

Positive Organization Development

Positive Organization Scholarship

Taylor & Francis Taylor & Francis Group http://taylorandfrancis.com l1 Introduction

Why the journey, the itinerary, and the fellow travelers?

It is never too late to embark on a journey to learn about oneself

Self-discovery at the age of 64 struck me as a bit untimely, but I remember the Fool’s comforting words to his master King Lear: “Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst been wise” (Shakespeare, 1606, 1.5.41—42). This line was lovingly encountered in reading the play as a school text in 1973, when I was 17, and nearly 50 years later, it still rings true. Have I really learned from this wisdom 50 years on? Do I really know myself at the age of 64? How do I move ahead in my life?

In the past, I have journeyed with a myriad of experiences at home, school, work, and leisure, with my friends, colleagues, family, and students. I was caught up in my own world — my cocooned sphere working as a development practitioner. When I retired in 2016, I decided to pursue a PhD degree that felt like Greek to me: organization development (OD). In a nutshell, OD is about applying knowledge and finding ways to develop, improve, and transform organizations, companies, individuals, and societies through a process of change. I will explain more about OD later.

During the first year of my PhD degree in Southeast Asia Interdisciplinary Development Institute (SAIDI) Graduate School of Organization Development, I was reassured by the assessment of my two mentors, Drs. Rosalina O. Fuentes and Paul-Marie B. de Luna. They said that while OD may seem daunting to me, I had actually been practicing it throughout my past 30 years, except that I was not thinking, speaking, and articulating OD. Their words did not convince me initially as I was intimidated by the pompous-sounding term (overdose? ). I sought refuge in thinking that it is difficult to summarize OD succinctly, given that while academics and practitioners feel that “they intuitively know what the field is about,” they find it difficult to articulate what OD means to others (Cheung-Judge & Holbeche, 2015).

In simple terms, OD is an evolving subject that is multidisciplinary in nature, drawing on sociology, psychology, learning, and personality to plan and manage an effective change in an organization, team, or an individual. In my early years as a PhD student, I took the time to learn the process of OD systems and analysis and accompanying theories, concepts, and models needed to understand the full extent of the discipline.

I became obsessed with finding out how to be more self-aware. I needed to change my life and become a fully integrated person and a better professor. My dissertation was designed to help me accomplish this by first identifying a topic, then applying lessons from OD, and finally embarking on an adventure by using OD theories and applications.

I explain this reasoning to my readers to give them a glimpse of my thoughts. Consequently, the impetus for writing this book draws from the encouragement offered by my Dissertation Committee (2020), suggesting that I consider translating this research into a book. They believed that the insights would be “useful as reference for those who are and will be embarking on a similar journey of self-awareness and self-change” as the experience would “help nourish the souls and the minds in creating a culture of reflective practitioners.” This recommendation stemmed from a need to suit the book to the Philippine context, as well as other countries where fellow readers would hopefully benefit.

The focal context of the OD model is me/myself — the OD benefactor seen through the lenses of self-awareness and self-change as an OD practitioner and as a teacher. As a postgraduate student, I embarked on my journey in my PhD degree at the SAIDI Graduate School of OD, where my mentors opened my eyes to the world of OD and a life journey of discovery.

Two salient events in my life and their effects on me

In 2016, two salient junctures affected my life: The first was the diagnosis and subsequent surgery for my prostate cancer in May 2016. I was diagnosed five months before my retirement, and the cancer and the surgery changed my life, my way of thinking, and myself. The second was my retirement in October 2016, from nearly 30 years of international development work experience in international financial institutions with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where I worked in the Philippines, the United Kingdom, and many other countries world-wide. The realization of what I was going through with these two milestone events affected my perspectives in life when I took the PhD degree, as I found myself reflecting consciously and making myself think and act positive.

The PhD degree became the springboard to release the positive core in me, which hitherto was caged and untapped. I learned a subject, which at first bewildered me and then fascinated me with its new abounding theories — all of which suddenly made sense to me as I had been somewhat unaware before. I was thinking but not articulating and speaking OD. Having splendid mentors helped me navigate and gain confidence. I avoided getting stuck in the doldrums and asked myself questions, such as “What is life?”, “What do I do?”, “Who am I?”, and so on, and engaged in behaviors to activate, develop, and recreate myself. My journey and discovery still goes on since life is a continuous learning process.

In 2008, eight years before my retirement, I commenced a new chapter of teaching international development at various universities in Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom. I found out that I needed to assess myself on how I could improve as a professor. (I am currently a professor in practice at the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University, the United Kingdom, and an honorary associate professor at Australian National University, College of Law.) I also ventured into teaching English to students whose English was essentially a second or foreign language at universities in China and Korea. I thought this was an area where I could challenge myself to teach these students along with other students whose primary language was English. I taught international financial institutions and development at postgraduate level at the Chung Cheng University (CCU) in Chiayi. I taught in English at CCU, but most of the courses offered there were in Mandarin, so the students would not be necessarily familiar with English as a teaching language. I also taught at the Instituto de Empresa University (IEU) in Madrid. The CCU students had English as their second language, while most of the IEU students had English as their first language.

OD is a rich subject offering insights to self-improvement and spreading rapidly in its multidisciplinary nature. Still, I had to go through the ropes to find out where I wanted to start with myself as an OD practitioner. I considered several theories of organization through three specific lenses: schools of thought (Charles Handy, Understanding Organizations); theories of organization (classical, neoclassical, and modern organization held by Frederick Taylor, Chris Argyris, Rensis Likert, and Robert Whyte); and organizations as images (Gareth Morgan, Images of Organizations).

I was struck by Morgan’s unique approach of viewing the images of organizations, as this provided a new window in attributing an image of organization to help make the transition needed to see present-day challenges. I realized OD had made great strides over the decades since its inception in the 1930s in the United States (e.g., Kurt Lewin was traditionally viewed as the founding father of OD and its laboratory education). Alongside, there were similar developments across the Atlantic in the United Kingdom (e.g., socio-technical system thinking by Lewin’s peer, Eric Trist, the founding father of the British Tavistock Institute for Social Research).

Historically, the United States was the powerhouse for OD research largely due to Lewins’s contributions with his change model of unfreezing, moving, and refreezing. This provided a general framework for understanding organizational change (Lewin, 1951). There were also ripples of OD surfacing in the United Kingdom and in Scandinavian countries, such as Sweden’s Volvo experience with its emphasis on the quality of work life and the reflection of local circumstances and norms. This first stage of OD was the age of socio-technical studies (from the 1930s), which flowed into the second stage from 1940s to 1980s — practitioner OD stage of development — where there was a change from group norms and values to organizational culture norms.

The third stage of OD, from late 1980s to 2000s, is the “renaissance of OD” (Burnes & Cooke, 2012), which resulted in a soul-searching debate and dispute about the nature and future of OD and its Lewinian heritage. OD spreads its wings and OD practices were increasingly incorporated into Human Resource Management (HRM), Human Resource Development (HRD), and the establishment of long-standing OD bodies, such as OD Network, the OD Institute, and the International Organization Development Association. The most prominent approach to OD during this period was Appreciative Inquiry (AI) by social constructionists/postmodernists D. Cooperrider and S. Srivastva. In 2009, the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science had a special edition on OD and showed that OD-type activities were increasing worldwide, especially in economies such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China.

The fourth and present stage of OD is at a crossroads in its evolution (Worley & Feyerherm, 2003). From their interview of 21 thought leaders and pioneers, they gathered that “OD practitioners in the future will need to be globally competent, understand a broad range of issues in the workforce and the world, and develop new models of change and organization” (p. 114, emphasis added). In my view, this comment on OD is nothing new or startling - OD must evolve to assure relevancy and resilience. While it was an “aha! moment” for AI to change the landscape in 1987, so, too, OD is (and will be) ready for new developments, such as positive organizational scholarship (POS) and positive organization development (POD) by Kim Cameron, J. Dutton, and R. Quinn; quantum OD (Charlotte Shelton); flow and creativity (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi); and other developments as they occur (Yuval Harari on algorithms and “know yourself”). The current Covid-19 pandemic has also witnessed revisits of OD thinking, which I will explain in my last chapter.

Given all these trends and directions, I found out that I needed to self-assess, take stock, and ask myself a series of questions I probably should have asked ages ago but never got around to seriously consider. And if I had asked these questions early in life, I would have dismissed them as ephemeral and unanswerable. I seemed to be chugging along on a train of thought that did not ask deeper core questions. Probably my retirement was a catalyst that transformed my life from a work routine of over three decades. I now had free time to dwell on and focus on myself in relation to the world, especially with my cancer — serving as a wake-up call — in remission, after my surgery a few months earlier. These junctures collectively provided the opportunity for a reality check to ask myself questions I should have asked and answered long ago.

Once the PhD degree got underway, the opportunity arose to take a couple of deep breaths and reflect on questions of life in order to situate myself in the world I live in. By reflecting on these basic questions of life, I did not wish to go down the road of definitions, including “morality” and “destiny,” such as “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going?” Ravi Zacharias, the author of more than 30 books on Christianity, including the award-winning book titled Can Man Live Without God?, represented this road to self-improvement. Rather, through the world of OD, I chose to examine my interconnection with the everyday world I live in as a way to find wisdom and enlightenment.

Introduction 5 Options in mapping out my journey

I had several options in mind when mapping out my journey. First, I could have done a brutal self-analysis of a purely reflective nature and solicited views from others through surveys and interviews about myself. Second, I could have focused on any aspect of OD, such as appreciative living, which might provide me with insights on how often I wear rose-colored glasses and think that everything in life is optimistic to avoid negativity bias. Just how often should I pull back the curtain in front of me to see a more complete view of life (negative and positive) and then train myself to see the positive side of things through an appreciative mindset’? A third route might be to view self-awareness, self-change, self-improvement, and so on, by whatever nomenclature available to epitomize the importance of OD.

Yet a fourth route might be to concentrate on self-awareness. For example, Jack Whitehead’s living theory approach talks about a dynamic educational theory of professional practice constructed from a practitioner’s questions of self-inquiry, such as “How do I improve my practice?” (Whitehead, 1988). The living theory approach focuses attention on the experiences and implications of living values that carry hope for the flourishing of humanity. These values are the life-affirming and life-enhancing values that give meaning and purpose to the researcher’s life. They are clarified as they emerge in the course of research questions, such as “How am I improving” or “What am I doing?” The living theory uses methods and draws insights from a range of other methodologies and theories, such as action research, narrative enquiry, self-study, and participatory research.

Still a fifth avenue, I might have focused on a particular OD theory such as Theory U, which is a method of relinking the parts to the whole by making it possible for the system to sense and reveal itself (Scharmer, 2009). Scharmer’s Theory U focuses on cultivating social fields, where the social field is defined as the quality of relationships that gives rise to patterns of thinking, conversing, and organizing. This, in turn, produces practical results. Theory U uses three persons — first person, second person, and third person — for the individual to take on a journey. First person uses reflection and introspection as an access point to understand experience and have a deeper investigation of oneself. Second person is where the holding space and deep listening come in — the spaces created together to surface deeper levels of meaning, understanding, and resonance. Third person is what we see from observation — basically what we can capture from a video camera. I see myself through the eyes of others through deep listening in dialogue and I will know what is emerging.

Although each avenue provided unique insights, I felt I wanted my own journey, adapting from what I had learned in OD. I wanted to sail my own journey. And so I chose the third route of self-awareness.

What is the “best travel agenda”?

The answer to the question of what is the best travel agenda is simple. It turns out that there is no best travel agenda because the traveler simply cannot know initially what route to travel and which direction to head. This agenda requires a plan and other people’s help and guidance, just as one would meet fellow travelers on a journey and come across different perspectives that one does not normally think about. For me, I felt the best travel agenda was using a do-it-yourself approach armed with OD theories and making a selection that suited the journey. My central theme was self-change and self-awareness: becoming a fully integrated person and a better professor. I focused on three core values: (1) integrity, (2) professionalism, and (3) spirituality, with no hierarchical order of importance. Though it was a challenge to choose these three core values, I felt that they were the best for me to pursue my journey. I had to have clear-as-can-be definitions. The meaning of these core values may vary from one person or perspective — there are many OD charts available on different websites that illustrate a list of core values — individual and corporate ones.* OD academics also list their own core values, which may or may not match with websites, but give a feel of what leading academics think.

If one looks for the core values of a religious person — say, a Catholic priest — one might find that there are eight core Christian values for him and his society to follow. These values can then be applied to both himself and his society at large. They are not just personal virtues as “they express Christian attitudes that are relevant for a wide range of communal relationships” (Edgar, n.d.). Interestingly, one of the eight virtues is peace, which implies not just the absence of fighting but positive well-being. Looking for core values, I was very taken in by the note on the Tomi Llama (n.d.) website: “Knowing your personal core values is essential to living your most authentic and purposeful life. Only 1 in 10,000 people can name their top values” (emphasis added). For me, the lesson learned in determining and selecting my three core values (it could have been more) was that there is no prescribed list of set core values: We all know that a core value is about being good, not being bad; being honest, not otherwise; exercising professionalism in whatever we do; and not being slipshod and unaccountable.

Core values for my research journey of discovery

I defined the following terms in my journey based on my research and their relevance to my work:

e Fully integrated person (FIP) — A person characterized by unity in thought, emotion, and action that amounts to “being someone” or having “an integrated self” (Kuhl, Quirin, & Koole, 2015).

e Integrity — The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, such as “To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1603, 1.3.78-80).

e Professionalism — The methods, characteristics, and attitude of a person through qualities, such as specialized knowledge, competency, honesty, accountability, and self-regulation (Mind Tools Content Team, n.d.).

e Spirituality — The state of believing that there is more to the world than the material world; attending to mental and emotional states to gain self-knowledge and have a healthy work-life balance; and valuing and practicing virtues, such as being compassionate, empathetic, and openhearted (Watts, 2017).

e Values — The essential characteristics for a person to believe in to be a community member positively contributing to society, such as belief in God or in a spiritual institution, professionalism, and integrity (Examples of core values, n.d.).