Recently I had an assignment in my Organizational Theory and Development class. The essence of the question was what is a more accurate description of Organization Development: has it evolved or is it just adopting every fad that comes along. I keep seeing this binary thinking rear its ugly head in business and leadership thought frequently: leaders are good/managers bad, servant leadership is the only way to lead, appreciative inquiry only because criticism is wrong.
It’s relatively easy to take a position and adhere to it. We do it almost viscerally. But it can stunt our intellectual growth. We live in a world of practicalities, of getting things done, informed by a certain disdain for theory, and academic thinking. Heck we ridicule education. So we are not likely to deeply examine how we understand what we understand. Theory bores us.
