Many practitioners and scholars find it instructive to distinguish between a group and a team. In fact, the changes that organizations are making are more complex than ever. Scholars note that the majority of these large-scale change initiatives fail to achieve their desired results, placing even more pressure on executives to search for the next innovation that will help the organization become more competitive.

Early outsourcing involved relatively simple decisions such as the janitorial services or copy machine maintenance. Now, even some parts of the organization previously thought to be “immune” to are being outsourced. Outsourcing is not isolated just to IT or payroll; human resources and even legal departments are being outsourced. Product engineering, marketing, and public relations are all facing outsourcing to some degree. Outsourcing of this magnitude has enormous implications on organizations, as new processes must be developed and handed over, and staffing changes often accompany the change to justify the financial costs.

In the face of overwhelming and complex change and high expectations for productivity, the role of the human resources and OD practitioner is more relevant than ever. In a world where change is constant, for organizations to be adaptive decisions must be pushed down the hierarchy and members must be aligned around the same strategic goals. OD practitioners know how to do this. They facilitate work redesign sessions and they encourage leaders to follow appropriate communication and change management practices.