Bridging the gap of relevance: Strategic management and organisational development

This article suggests that (i) organisation development is uniquely positioned to fulfil commonly accepted criteria of research relevance, and (ii) that closer interaction between organisational development and strategic management is a potent and fruitful way to make strategic management relevant to practitioners. An 'integrated organisational model' is presented and its use in an organisational development intervention is discussed. The process of applying the model and learning from this and other OD interventions, illustrate how closer interaction between the fields of OD and strategic management can help to bridge the gap of relevance between academic and practitioner concerns. The findings also highlight useful lessons which merit careful consideration by top management teams when developing strategy, and planning and leading strategic change. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.