But an empirical evaluation is not a criterion for the acceptance of such a descriptive approach in the marketplace. Often description (without empirical evaluation) in the social sciences is accepted by consumers as equivalent to explanation. Management fads come and go and neither OD nor OBM can claim the current spotlight in this arena. Although organizational culture received a great deal of attention in the 1980s, the shift is now toward organizational learning and continuous improvement and related efforts. A metacontingency that encompasses all of these trends or fads is the globalization of the marketplace under conditions of diminished worldwide resources and overpopulation. Clearly, these are challenging times and we need to constantly reexamine the extent to which our technology is serving to enhance the human condition. An overriding implication is that marketability of an organizational change technology cannot be considered as a benchmark of success for either OBM or OD.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

The points made here describe important ways in which OBM and OD may reciprocate in developing change technologies that address the challenges of these crucial times for organizations. Behavior analysts are rapidly adopting many of these suggestions and are improving the acceptance by management of behavioral methods (cf. Redmon, 1992). OBM is truly expanding its focus to wide-scale system change. Witness the recent issue of Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (Mawhinney, 1992) devoted to organizational culture and rule-governed behavior. The edited book on behavioral analyses of culture by Lamal (1991) is also an important contribution to this expanded focus by behavior analysts.