Laboratory "organizational change in the age of complexity"

Organization Development (OD) is deeply rooted in Kurt Lewin perspective about Action Research and Human System Development. Sticking to its humanistic values, OD has evolved, and it's recently framed as Dialogic OD, an approach to change leveraging on unpredictable and emergent dynamics in human systems. With its fascinating heritage and the latest developments, OD is a fantastic platform to ignite real change process in organizations struggling with complexity, because of its attitude to go beyond "problem solving" and to embrace unexpected and emergent processes. The aim of the Lab is to provide students with an overall understanding of OD, its roots and the latest developments, and some of the practical and powerful dialogic tools. Discussion, cases and hands-on exercises will be the ingredients of the learning journey.

Participants will explore different paradigms and approaches in the field of change management and organization development. In particular, at the end of the lab students will have knowledge and skills to evaluate and apply a framework for change in complex and "post-modern" environments and organizations, where change is more an emergent and viral process than a planned and top-down one.