Organizational Development. As defined by Richard Beckhard, Organizational development (OD) is a planned, top-down, organization-wide effort to increase the organization's effectiveness and health.OD is achieved through interventions in the organization's processes, using behavioural science knowledge.rganization development is a contractual relationship between a change agent and a sponsoring organization entered into for the purpose of using applied behavioral science in a systems context to improve organizational performance and the capacity of the organization to improve itself.