Organization Development Intervention: A Case of an Educational Institution

Introduction

Organization development intervention (ODI) is a deliberately and meticulously planned, organization-wide effort to increase an organization’s effectiveness and efficiency. Organization development as a field of study has been fast evolving. Many enterprises over a period lose momentum and do not exist because they lack the strategies for sustainability concerning intervention. To make ODI successful, change agents must be clear about its objectives and the targets of intervention. An intervention may be designed to improve the effectiveness of individuals, dyads/triads, teams/groups, intergroup relations and entire organization (French & Bell, 1994). Models of organization development have been approached from big picture perspective on how the organization grows and develops (Chapman, 2002; Dunphy & Stace, 1988). These models address organizational development concept at organizational or macro-level (life cycles, transformational and strategic change) (Brache, 2001; Cummings & Worley, 1997), team or meso-level (quality circles team initiatives) (Griffin, 1988; LePine, 2005). It also addresses issues at an individual employee or micro-level (need for change among employees of the organization, incremental change) (Dunphy & Stace, 1988; Wilber, 1995). The ODI is an integration of the business and strategic interests that plan the interventions, which plays a significant role in giving an edge to the organization. Some authors while addressing organization-wide change initiative advocated that strategic organizational development interventions if aligned with positive planned change can bring excellent results. It helps in aligning vital interests in the corporate development efforts (Yaeger & Sorensen, 2009). Cummings and Worley (1997) considered ODI a systemic approach to the behavioural understanding of organized advancement and reinforcement of organizational objectives, principles and practices for improving an organization’s effectiveness. Other authors have suggested that organizational effectiveness, conducive organizational health and quality of working life emerge as important outcomes of organization development (Brache, 2001; Saunders & Barker, 2001). Some other approaches define ODI in terms of cultural and values development (Beck & Cowan, 1996; Cowan & Todorovic, 2000; Gibb, 2003) as opposed to behavioural effectiveness. For example, the spiral dynamics approach discussed the cultural and values understanding of organizations and their stakeholders. Team-level interventions are studied by Buljac-Samardzic, Dekker-van Doorn, van Wijngaarden and van Wijk (2010), which focused on changing a small team or department (French & Bell, 2001). Advocating individual-level change initiative, researchers said, ODI exercise ensures the improvement of skill, knowledge and abilities of employees as it is an initiative to shift from one state to another state of learning. The organizations that do not strive to change and become a learning organization are bound to fail in the long run. As Senge (2006) points out, ‘great teams are not characterized by the absence of conflicts’. Conflict is part and parcel of critical thinking and the ongoing dialogue. The researcher further states that mental models are entrenched habits. Usually, it is found that organization faces trust issues while implementing organizational development initiatives (Abrams, Cross, Lesser & Levin, 2003). Employees of organization perceive initiatives that may not be favouring employees, or a small section of employees may get benefitted with the initiative (Baer & Frese, 2003). They undergo fear of acceptance and expertise during the ODI implementation. Building trust among employees and change agents is therefore essential for successful implementation of ODI. Therefore, having trust on ODI is critical for its success.

What if, management looks at ‘trust’ as the factor, where organizational development initiatives are required, that is, if the organization comes across the situation of improving trust level among employees or initiating diagnostic practices to understand the degree of trust among faculty members, followed by initiatives for corrections if any? The article weaves around the need identification of change process (understanding level of trust among faculty members) and then initiating interventions. Faculty of the institute of higher education face the challenges which are the by-product of fast-changing technologies and business environment (Rajkhowa, 2013); they need to gear up regarding motivation, knowledge and mutual trust. These are the deeply felt need of the organization since collaboration along with the individual efforts is the twin pillars of excellence in any academic outfit. The management felt the lack of trust and comradeship among the faculty of the educational institution. The study starts with capturing the trust level of members and initiating interventions at the individual level to improve trust, cohesion and responsiveness to changing external environment. This research is a description of organizational intervention (Fryer & Feather, 1994). It reports a focused organizational development efforts.

The second section has presented the literature review on organizational change and organizational development intervention. Literature review helped us in identifying gaps which is the third section of the article followed by objective statements. The methodology undertaken to collect data and measures used formed the fifth section. The next section is an analysis of data and findings. Discussion section follows analysis section. The last section is regarding conclusion, implications and future scope of the study.

Literature Review

Organizational change is a transformation process. It is a transformation of an organization from the current state to desired future state (Malhotra & Hinings, 2015). The future state of an organisation will have an improved set of abilities, skills and knowledge (Barnett & Carroll, 1995). Change might be small or large, but the source is both internal and external pressures associated with the expansion or needs to respond to challenges (Abrahamson, 2000; Gleick, 1987). Change process for an organization is confused and agonizing because of moving from a known to an unknown position (Abrahamson, 2000; Gleick, 1987).

A structured ODI provides direction and helps the organization to sail through the transformation. To implement OD, the first step for any leader is to define a clear and simple vision and mission to provide a picture of how the organization will look like (Burton, Obel & Håkonsson, 2015). The vision must show the direction in which the organization needs to move (Kotter, 1995). Second, through the vision, the leader needs to inspire, motivate and encourage people to make this change happen. Third, the leader as change agent needs to create a healthy coalition that has the power, information, expertise and relationships to support the change (Lundy & Morin, 2013). This alliance has to involve senior management, middle managers, supervisors and workers representatives. In particular, the senior person of the organization must be an active and visible supporter of the change initiative (Parker, 2012).

During the change intervention, it is essential to maintain high ethics, values and accountability, to encourage a cooperative and trustworthy mind. The professional behaviour of the change leader is, therefore, of crucial importance (Fullan, 2011). The regular two-way dialogue that is inspiring and motivational and which confirms the stated change is essential. The behavioural change will show signs of the desired state of productivity, effectiveness and efficiency (Lundy & Morin, 2013). The alignment of employees thought processes with the organizational strategy is essential to give a sense of cohesion and meaning (to the various steps taken as a part of the change initiative) (Kotter, 1995). Lewin (1940) introduced two thoughts regarding the change. The first thought states that ‘what is occurring at any point in time is resultant in the field of opposing forces’ (French & Bell, 2001, p. 81). The second thought suggests that change is a ‘three-stage process: unfreezing the old behaviour, moving to a new level of behaviour, and refreezing the behaviour at the new level’ (French & Bell, 2001, p. 81).

A developmental model of OD is an approach which is inclusive. It approaches the change process in such a way that personal and organizational growth takes place simultaneously in an intimately connected manner. The developmental model of OD covers action research method, which is a process of emergence. In action research method, the process changes and develops as understanding increases. It is also an iterative process which evaluates the trajectory of change as it converges towards more awareness of the situation (Dick, 2002). Action research methods thus include planning action, fact-finding of the results of intermediate operation and repeating and collecting data during change process (Wooltorton et al., 2015). The action research is a simultaneous process of making the action more efficient and creating a body of scientific knowledge. It is an uninterrupted chain of events and actions.

A similar viewpoint was proposed by Lewin (1940) ‘studying things through changing them and seeing the effect’. Individuals during change process move through developmental stages towards increasingly more complex and encompassing levels of ‘action inquiry’. The organizational development also moves in a similar direction at different stages paralleling the movement of individuals. Extending the work of Lewin (1946), a refined model on participative and cooperative (Corey, 1953) action research was developed (Brydon-Miller, Greenwood & Maguire, 2003). This model let stakeholders of an organization identify, assess and modify practices in an organization that they want to change. Participative action research model involves people associated with the change process, thus getting more acceptability, commitment and success (Donaldson, 2001). Organizations which initiate OD initiatives with participative action research start involvement at the vision building state (Lundy & Morin, 2013). It ensures fair treatment of everybody who is in anyway affected by change process. Involvement of stakeholders’ increases changes leaders’ responsibility. Therefore, change leader has to demonstrate exceptional intellect, cognitive skills, (soft) people skills, good communication skills along with positive commitment and involvement, flexible attitude, change expertise, empowerment, strategic vision and a high level of emotional intelligence (Clarke, 2010; Goleman, 2004; Kotter, 1995; Lundy & Morin, 2013; Tamta & Rao, 2017).

While explaining change process through psychodynamic approach, Cameron and Green (2009, p. 19) emphasized that by appropriately applying reward and punishment, one individual can change the behaviour of another and achieve the desired results (Steyn & Cilliers, 2016). Cameron and Green (2009) also discussed the cognitive approach whereby employees restrict themselves in old best practices and take initiatives in accepting the new practices. Third, the psychodynamic approach helps employees to understand the feedbacks of their staff during a change process and deal with them.

Rationale of the Study

The institute has an interdisciplinary approach, which integrates technical and management subjects, to provide a holistic solution to business organizations. It faces intense competition and needs to maintain and grow strong academic credentials and industry links. In the city of Mumbai (India) itself, it faces stiff competition from a couple of other elite technical as well as management schools. This makes it imperative for the organization to engage and re-energize its existing pool of faculty members through appropriate inputs regarding the challenges of a fast-changing world that cannot accommodate a delayed response and approach. The attitude of a faculty of the institute does not seem to be very positive due to internal disagreements and criticisms which do tend to become vocal as well and, therefore, impact the organizational morale and performance.

In the fast-changing business world, the efficacy of academia-led classroom programmes, and consultancy and training services for the industry has raised the bar of balance between theory and practice. Somewhere the academicians must sync their approaches with the latest developments, innovations and happenings while devising the strategies that remain relevant to the target industries for the defined period. In ensuring this, certain behavioural nuances must be tackled and taken care. It is highly likely that the entire atmosphere warrants a higher level of thinking and devising of strategies that could amicably address the number of issues which crop up in due course and impact the performance levels as well as mutual collaborative efforts among the faculty members. Institute has highly qualified academicians who have been deeply involved in research, teaching and consultancy over a period. As the institution faces the challenges which are the by-product of fast-changing technologies and business environment, faculty members shall work on issues of motivation, knowledge and mutual trust.

Institute’s management expected to achieve a common consensus among the faculty members that build up the mutual trust, knowledge sharing and collaboration. It is looking at infusing a spirit of camaraderie and stronger bonding among faculty members which will help in institutions transformation journey. It is also determined to put an end to conversations in informal set-ups that have hints of sarcasm and bitterness, which add to the atmosphere of unhealthy competitiveness and bottled up feelings. Somewhere it is evident that stagnation has set in which can be attributed to lack of challenges in the environment earlier.

The management felt that to energize the team and to have a more significant bonding among the members, it needs to implement certain interventions that primarily consider the mutual trust issues which have been cropping up again and again during the interactions and at different fora related to organization’s efforts. The internal dissent is manifested many times through verbal and non-verbal expressions of dissatisfaction and disagreements, which is not conducive to the environment that thrives on collaborative academic efforts.

Methodology

The OD is a planned process of improving the effectiveness and capacity of an educational institution through a series of interrelated interventions (Oswick & Grant, 1996). These interventions are derived from learnings of behavioural science areas such as trust, team cohesiveness and conflict management. There are methods such as action research, long interview and appreciative inquiry used to study organizational interventions. We have selected action research method to undertake the study. French and Bell (1994), defined action research as ‘…..the process of collecting research data about an ongoing system; feeding these data back into the system; taking action by altering selected variables within the system based both on the data and hypotheses; and evaluating the results of actions by collecting more data’. Researchers identified four steps to perform action research. The first step was to identify and understand the problem. The second stage was to collect data on diagnosis of the level of trust, which provided input for the third stage. Based on the data from the second step, the third step was to introduce intervention initiatives. The intervention initiative 1 after completion offered some insights, which became input for fourth step and second intervention initiative (Figure 1). The redefinition of problem and plan of next intervention was based on the comments received from participants in the previous steps. Therefore, the study proceeded with the collection of data on issues of mutual trust. This research data collection phase is referred to as organizational diagnosis (Popper, 1997). The information and data collected by diagnosis process provided the essential element to form the direction and reason for the change. The plan of intervention was modified as per the results received during diagnosis. The results helped in understanding the condition better which provided considerable scope in altering the intervention plan which suits diagnostic results rather than imposing earlier plan (Popper, 1997).

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Figure 1.

Source: The authors.

McKay and Marshall (2001, p. 47) explained the action research process as ‘[…] One distinguishing feature of action research is […] the active and deliberate self-involvement of the researcher in the context of his/her investigation’. In the present research, also the researcher was involved in the intervention process and was part of the diagnostics.

In the given study setting, researchers had to collect data from the system which is working as per old system and seamlessly had to shift to the newly evolved system. The characteristics of the sample were highly knowledgeable and independent. Therefore, researchers adopted participative approach. The ODI started by taking consent of faculty members whether they would like to go through the process of trust-level measurement. However, researchers (Brown, Hesketh & Wiliams, 2003; Dockery, 1996) have voiced the difficulties in supporting and implementing the participatory process in a bureaucratic non-participatory public sector environment. The common elements of such organization are politicizing the issue, creating a closed culture and delivering outcomes which seem impartial (Brown et al., 2003). The methodology adopted in the present case minimized the effect of bureaucratic influence on intervention.

Analysis

The descriptive analysis of the data gives us profound insights into the perceptions of the respondents on the three factors of trust. The analysis section presents the diagnostic stage of the action research process (Table 1).

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Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics of Factors and Items of Trust

Factor	Items	Minimum	Maximum	Mean	Std. Deviation
	Integrity	13.00	42.00	30.81	6.74
	Benevolence	7.00	35.00	25.31	5.59
	Competence	16.00	35.00	29.37	3.89
	Total	36.00	112.00	85.50	14.86
Integrity	I believe that faculty members are completely honest with me	1.00	7.00	5.37	1.456
Benevolence	I believe that faculty members place our organization’s interests above their own	1.00	7.00	4.81	1.36
Integrity	I believe that faculty members will keep the promises that they make	2.00	7.00	5.40	1.36
Competence	I believe that faculty members are competent in performing their jobs	3.00	7.00	6.05	0.787
Integrity	I believe that faculty members express their true feelings about important issues	2.00	7.00	4.85	1.43
Benevolence	I believe that faculty members care about my well-being	1.00	7.00	5.314	1.53
Competence	I believe that faculty members can contribute to our organization’s success	2.00	7.00	6.18	0.912
Integrity	I believe that faculty members take actions that are consistent with their words	1.00	7.00	5.05	1.44
Benevolence	I believe that faculty members share important information with me	1.00	7.00	4.90	1.48
Benevolence	I believe that faculty members care about the future of our organization	2.00	7.00	5.77	1.12
Competence	I believe that faculty members can help solve important problems in our organization	2.00	7.00	5.82	1.12
Competence	I believe that faculty members have consistent expectations of me	2.00	7.00	5.53	1.12
Benevolence	I believe that faculty members would make personal sacrifices for our organization	1.00	7.00	4.61	1.60
Integrity	I believe that faculty members would acknowledge their own mistakes	1.00	7.00	4.72	1.41
Competence	I believe that faculty members can help our organization survive through the competition	3.00	7.00	5.77	1.07
Integrity	I believe that faculty members can be relied on valid N (listwise)	2.00	7.00	5.61	1.35

Source: Prepared by authors.

Competence

The factor of ‘competence’ also has five items with 7-point Likert scale. The maximum score any respondent may get is 35. The mean score calculated is 29, which is higher than benevolence. It indicates faculty member has a relatively better perception of the competence of another faculty. Very few think (3.8%) that others are not competent at performing their jobs. Most of the respondents are positive about each other’s competency at their work. Barring two people, everyone else thinks that faculty members can contribute to organization’s success. More than 70 per cent of the respondents feel that faculty members can help resolve the critical problems that the organization faces. Barring a little more than 15 per cent of the respondents, other respondents think that some have consistent expectations from them. Again except for a little over 15 per cent of the respondents, rest believe that the faculty members could help the organization survive the competition. The respondents are convinced mostly about others’ competence and their ability to contribute (read loyalty) to the organization. So as far as competence is concerned, the members have desisted from pointing fingers at others. It can also be a display of solidarity vis-à-vis the organization.

Data were categorized based on respondents’ response. After categorizing data, it was clear that there are four types of people who form the faculty team. They range from highly positive to negative when it comes trusting others but can broadly be classified as positives, negatives, and high and low fence sitters. The positives are the ones whose responses have been either 7 or 6, fence sitters’ responses have ranged from 4 to 6 and negatives are below 5. There is some overlap for the sake of classification because in behavioural terms trust in others integrity, benevolence and competence can be conditional or one factor out of the three may decide the total score. Figure 2 shows the percentile responses of these groups, respectively.

The ones who are high on trust factor exhibit high trust level for integrity, benevolence and competence of their colleagues. This group can be defined as the positive group. These are the ones who would be comfortable in any situation and would like to contribute, share and learn to lead to the growth of the organization. Those who have scored high must be the high achievers, therefore comfortable in their skin or existence. They might also be the one who is relatively new to the organization, or they might have had a few good experiences. It might even be possible that they are highly loyal towards the organization and do not want it to appear in a poor light in an external intervention. Management would like to influence them to institutionalize the culture of trust among faculty members (McKay & Marshall, 2001). High scores should form the member of the core team to be part of action research transformation process.

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Figure 2.

Source: The authors.

The second group, the low fence sitters, is of those who play it safe by rating others just average on all the three factors.

The third group, the high fence sitters, is of another set of the respondent who answered responses just above the average score.

Therefore, it can be inferred that they are a little suspicious about others and try to behave in a manner that does not impact their reputation and credibility. These will be cautious in their approach towards others in terms of knowledge sharing and other collaborative activities. Those who have given responses ranging from neutral to agree (4–6) in the questionnaire are unsure so in the behavioural context, it shows varying degree of trust levels. There can be different reasons for doing so. It might be that they want to play safely while answering the questionnaire or they might be a bit detached and uninterested kinds who want to just live in peace and work. It is also possible that they are wary of getting too involved in organizational matters so they exhibit detachedness. It is also possible that they get involved selectively. They may be pretending to support but would act at the last minute based on the majority or based on their last-minute decision (Steyn & Cilliers, 2016)

The fourth group comprises the ones who are completely deficient as far as trust is concerned. They doubt others on either of the three factors. This is the smallest group of faculty members that need to be assured that they are a part of the organization and they can trust others. Interestingly, this group has a low opinion of others as far as integrity is concerned as compared to other two groups. Other groups doubt their colleagues’ benevolence more than integrity. Those who have been low on trust may have faced such situations personally that could have made them feel this way. It is also possible that they are usually negative towards achievers and are cynics. They also might be the low achievers of the organization and prone to blaming others for their failures. The intervention for these groups will be based on the findings of a trust exercise. The customized intervention may yield better understanding and results (Popper, 1997).

Sample responses for low trust, high trust, and low and high fence sitters score have been discussed. All respondents were provided with the explanation of their score on the trust factor.

Given the total possible score of 112, the respondent has scored 36. The respondent seems to have scored quite low on all the three factors. Most of the responses of respondent 1 (Figure 3) are less than neutral or extremely negative. This respondent appears to have been facing a lot of difficulties since s/he strongly feels that others are extremely low on benevolence, integrity as well as competence and they cannot be trusted. It seems that s/he has faced situations which have compelled him/her to form such opinion about others. It is a possibility that this person is not able to adapt to the organization. It is also possible that s/he has self-esteem issues so is unable to trust others.

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Figure 3.

Source: The authors.

Sample response of high trust members with a score of 108 displays a high trust score. This score indicates high perception of respondent on integrity, competence and benevolence of other colleagues of the institute. The respondent’s score of 42 (Figure 4) in integrity factor shows that s/he thinks that other faculty members are honest in their transaction with the respondent. To improve the institute’s environment, respondent shall be asked what makes him/her believe positive about others when a large number of faculty members feel otherwise.

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Figure 4.

Source: The authors.

With a score of 84, respondents 3 seems to be a real fence sitter with responses ranging from neutral to somewhat agree mostly (Figure 5). The respondent appears to restrict by not giving definite answers. S/he is not entirely sure about others benevolence. S/he has an almost same perception of integrity and competence. The wait and watch approach of respondent restricts surety of response. Such respondent would feel positive about certain transactions and would also feel negative about certain transactions. In such situation, leader must be very explicit in communication to eliminate any doubt in the mind of fence sitters.

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Figure 5.

Source: The authors.

Respondent 4 is again a fence sitter with a relatively high score of 102 on trust parameters (Figure 6). Respondent is not sure about the loyalty (q2), reliability (q16) and competence (q9, 15) items of the questionnaire. S/he thinks that others are not reliable enough when it comes to efforts. Also, s/he doubts their loyalty towards the organization. However, the respondent is positive compared to other respondents. These kinds of respondents can easily be changed into high trust group faculty members by creating more and more opportunities for group tasks. Interaction among faculty members beyond their functional areas would imbibe a sense of security and understanding among them.

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Figure 6.

Source: The authors.

Discussion

Based on data analysis, certain inferences were drawn about the behaviour and preferences of the faculty members and then the necessary intervention was designed. The three parameters of trust refer not only to the traditional sense of telling the truth, but it also includes a feeling of harmony. Faculty members who trust one another believe that all faculty members will have the sense of fairness. They do not harbour concerns that a faculty might put self-concern before organizational concern. The perception of trust also means that members must be authentic in their behaviour (Bird et al., 2009). Authenticity is defined as a desire to be oneself—to sincerely represent one’s thoughts and feelings, as well as agreeing with one’s shortcomings. Additionally, perception about others’ capability forms another factor which indicates the level of trust members develops about others. Faculty members trust on the ability of others on doing difficult, intellectual task for the benefit of self and organization. Trust may be understood by the behaviour of an individual who is willing to open up and share feelings to someone with the belief that conversation will not be misused (Tschannen-Moran, 2014a). Handford and Leithwood (2013) have advocated that globally educators rely on their colleagues and clients thinking they are benevolent, honest, open, reliable and competent (Dayal, 2011). When individuals do not trust one another, they try to avoid the situation of helplessness and anguish by adopting a stance of silence or avoidance. The result can be disengagement from the organizational process that comes at the expense of student/faculty learning (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Tschannen-Moran, 2014b).

The data collected and analysed at diagnostic stage provided inputs for ODI. Contributions suggested that there need to be an openness and consensus (Guskin, 1996) among faculty members that there is plenty to work on and accomplished by each one of them. This required an intervention that could be the first step towards increased openness and appreciation of efforts both individually and collectively (Meyerson & Martin, 1987). The members of the organization shall believe that the environment in which they work is free of any malice, impartial and conducive to work (Skelton, 2002). They need to feel that they are in a thriving atmosphere that supports their talent and their needs to grow. The feeling of doubt about others’ behaviour and mutual suspicions may be taken care of by certain intervention.

The varied levels of knowledge shall be tackled carefully, and a feeling of support and encouragement needs to be inculcated (Schein, 1993). For this, the individual shall be acknowledged. To achieve this, an intervention about self-awareness and awareness of others was suggested (Jha & Bhattacharyya, 2013; Ridley, Schutz, Glanz & Weinstein, 1992). Some goal setting regarding performance improvement outside the routine reports and drills may be done to energize the group (Locke, Shaw, Saari & Latham, 1981). It can be brought about by developing an intervention that is long term and effective enough to make the faculty feel that they can thrive individually as well as together. The faculty members needed a stimulus that could connect them to each other at levels which require team efforts since the very nature of their work is individual achievement oriented. This implies that unique team-building efforts should be carried out that could be the revelation of a new horizon regarding increased mutual understanding and cooperation.

The first intervention was termed as faculty effectiveness. The preliminary findings suggested many interventions were possible, and one of them was to help faculty members open up and share their feeling with each other. There was a need for experiential learning in the group. It was proposed by Popper (1997) that experiential participative learning has a long-term impact on transformation process (Wooltorton et al., 2015).

Taking the above clue, we requested a facilitator, an expert in the area to conduct faculty effectiveness training programme, which was experience sharing in nature with defined objectives: understanding the role of a faculty member, understanding self-values, beliefs and attitudes, understanding impact of self on others and vice versa, and linking competing value framework with institute’s culture.

The researcher as coordinator received mixed feedback. Concerning takeaway, faculty members realized that they need to experience and go through such training programmes which are required for them as an individual, not only in the professional space but also in the personal space. Faculty members liked the participant-centred approach (Lines, 2004). This methodology helped faculty in realizing that no individual is without any problems and concerns (David, 2015). They must accept others’ area of improvements, work on their area of developments and understand the necessity of positive outlook.

After the success of the first initiative, management felt that the intervention and involvement of faculty members should continue. The second initiative as discussed in action research was based on the findings and results of the first intervention (Whitley & Glaser, 2014). Therefore, newly changed methodology (faculty retreat) of faculty interaction and goal setting was proposed which was based on the philosophy of participation. Lines (2004) advocated that the level of participation among members decreases the resistance to change initiatives taken by the organization. Therefore, management decided to involve faculty members at different stages of initiatives to have better buy-in. On the one hand, when employees are not engaged in the change process, it creates an environment of un-cooperation, resentment and lack of engagement with the organization. This environment breeds in the situation of reduced productivity (Coch & French, 1948). On the other hand, participation and involvement of employees minimize the feeling of resentment and improve the comradeship behaviour which encourages extra effort (Coch & French, 1948). Researchers have also advocated that involvement of employee shall start at the beginning of intervention and shall also involve external stakeholders (Dunphy & Stace, 1988; Kotter & Schlesinger, 1979). Therefore, second intervention, faculty retreat, was highly interactive and participative.

This retreat was proposed to create a platform for faculty members to open up and present how they see the organization in 2020 and come up with ideas for a future course of action.

Faculty members spent a day during fun-based goal setting or visualizing a dream that they see for the organization. Faculty members first deliberated and then enacted their visualization (McCarron, 2016). They realized the importance of being involved in strategy from planning to realization process (McCarron, 2016). Being part of the visualizing dream made them feel for it. This intervention slowly made everyone realize the need for change. To realize the dream members identified some dream elements, those dream elements were as follows: globally recognized, technology-enabled, industry-inspired, thought leader and manufacturing renaissance.

Increased interaction among faculty members helped in sharing of information. The shared information changed the perception of faculty about each other. It has been proposed to initiate similar meet and greet programmes among faculty members to develop a trustworthy environment (Baker-Shelley, van Zeijl-Rozema & Martens, 2017). Table 2 presents the efforts to develop an environment where members have trust on each other on areas, which are their key performance indicators. Faculty members started interacting with each other more in areas of research consultancy, project works and training programmes. This helped in a substantial increase in research, research projects and courses shared.

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Table 2.

List of Increase in Collaborative Activities

S. No.	Areas	2014	2015	2016
1	Collaborative projects	3
2	Collaborative research	15	19	159
3	Collaborative training programmes UBP	28	26	21*
4	Individual training programme	29	18	28*
5	Collaborative consultancy programme	16	18	6*
6	Collaborative courses	1	2	6

Source: Prepared by authors from institute database.

Notes: *Reduction in these areas over time may be because of change in focus area and induction of new clients. UBP: Unit Based Programme.

Trust is, therefore, a most important attribute for any organizational employees with each other for long-term sustainable development and transformation (Baker-Shelley et al., 2017; Mason & Lefrere, 2003).

Conclusion, Practical Implications and Future Scope

The purpose of the article was to understand intra-organizational trust among faculty members. The article was a description of a case of ODI. This was a unique case since the respondents were highly qualified academicians who are expert in their field. The study was based on the action research methods. The researchers first diagnosed the problem and understood the level of trust among faculty members. The next step was corrective measures based on the feedback received from respondents. The first step of intervention was to understand the level of trust prevailing among faculty members (need analysis). Based on the findings of problem diagnosis process, the other two interventions were initiated. Test scores revealed that some faculty members had high trust level, some were fence sitters and some had low trust level. The test scores and the explanation were shared with faculty members to discuss the further course of action. Based on the discussion, experience sharing-based training programme was conducted for participants (faculty) to get the realization. After the training programme, another discussion was conducted to note the effectiveness of the training programme and areas of improvement. As change initiative is a continuous process, another participative intervention of faculty retreat based on the feedback received was introduced. Here, faculty members dreamt about the institute in the year 2020 and proposed a rough picture of ‘how the institute will look in the year 2020’. Institute has conducted two more retreats after this. The journey of ODI and change initiatives is not yet over.

Education institution must realize that change is a continuous process. Structured flexible approach to change process would facilitate behavioural change. Managers can also plan the intervention in two stages, diagnostic and planned intervention. A similar educational institution may initiate transformation process to increase faculty interaction. Faculty shall respect different discipline and take forward institute. Increase in collaborative research, teaching and administration indicates improvement in the trust level of faculty members. Researchers may do a comparative analysis of the success of transformation process and process which did not yield a fruitful result. A comparative analysis of the trust level among faculty members of different institutions globally would help us in reaching to the root cause of the problem. It is possible to highlight the dominant factor of intra-organizational trust, integrity, competence and benevolence. The organization then may focus only on the specific factor for intervention to improve trust level.