I will present an interactive webinar for the International Organization Development Association (IODA) titled “When Good Interventions Meet Adaptive Walls: A Five-Dimensional Metatheoretical Audit of OD Practice Across Global Contexts.”
Organization development interventions are often built on sound principles and implemented with good intentions. Yet even well-designed interventions may encounter what can be described as adaptive walls: patterns of resistance, institutional constraints, cultural assumptions, competing values, and deeper ways of understanding reality that prevent an intervention from producing its intended effects.
The webinar will introduce Dr. Raei’s Five-Dimensional Metatheory (5D) as a diagnostic framework for examining why OD interventions succeed in some settings but struggle in others. Participants will explore interventions through five interconnected dimensions:
- Ontology: What assumptions are being made about organizations, people, and change?
- Epistemology: What forms of knowledge and evidence are considered legitimate?
- Axiology: Whose values and priorities shape the intervention?
- Methodology: How well do the methods fit the problem and context?
- Teleology: What ends is the intervention ultimately intended to serve?
Particular attention will be given to OD practice across different national, cultural, and institutional contexts. Rather than assuming that an intervention can be transferred unchanged from one setting to another, the session will examine how contextual differences can expose hidden assumptions within both OD theory and practice.
The webinar will invite practitioners to use the five dimensions as a practical audit, helping them identify misalignments before, during, and after an intervention. The aim is not to offer another standardized change model, but to strengthen practitioners’ capacity to diagnose complex situations, adapt their approaches, and design interventions that are more contextually coherent and responsive.
The event is hosted by the International Organization Development Association, an international professional network dedicated to advancing organization development practice across cultures and regions.
Date: Saturday 3 October
Time: 12:00 London time
Format: Online webinar
Host: International Organization Development Association