Performance of Administrative Reforms: Can the Organizational Development Approach Reconcile Utopia and Dystopia?

Abstract

Performance in implementing administrative reforms calls for change management systems that aim to help beneficiaries and all other stakeholders take ownership of the results obtained. This performance depends on many factors, including the approach adopted to introduce these reforms and manage the resulting transformations, including their perverse effects, which threaten the well-being of beneficiaries. However, the eminently technicist or managerialist logic of the rational utopian thinking that underpins modernizing reform projects creates a rupture with the real workflow of implementing these reforms. This rupture hypothecates the chances of achieving the organizational performance objectives of these public services. At the same time, these utopias carry with them risks of dystopia that will undermine the confidence of the actors concerned and their belief in the legitimacy of these reforms. We adopt an organizational and public policy analysis perspective, which we apply to the process of organizational change through a realist lite rature review. The aim is to examine the contribution of the organizational development (OD) approach, as a method for managing organizational change, to improving the performance of administrative reforms by taking into account these undesirable unexpected effects. The article contributes to the actualization of the OD approach as an action-research method. It offers an analysis of the practical and managerial implications of this approach, to meet the challenge of learning and unlearning within organizations, and enable them to evolve from a change management approach to one of managing organizations’ capacity to change.