Professional Dilemmas of the Psychologist in an Organizational Emergency ELISHA Y. BABAD GAVRIEL SALOMON School of Education Hebrew University of Jerusalem School of Education Hebrew University of Jerusalem ABSTRACT: The limitations of the common models of organizational development (OD) when applied to organizations undergoing an extreme emergency are discussed in light of the authors' experiences as front- line psychologists in the 1973 Israelis-Arab war. The working assumptions underlying common OD cannot be met in an emergency, hence another approach, emer- gency organizational development (EOD), is proposed. It differs from OD in orientation (direct problem solving rather than facilitation of changeability), work methods, and the conception of the psychologist's role. In addition to laying the first foundations toward the development of an EOD conception, the authors de- scribe and discuss some of the most pressing personal problems and professional dilemmas facing the psy- chologist who is expected to provide psychological services to an organization in an extreme emergency. Organizational psychology literature provides models conceptualizing the work of the organizational de- velopment (OD) psychologist (e.g., Bennis, Benne, Chin, & Corey, 1976; Schein, 1970). The various models share basic conceptual assumptions re- garding the nature of "healthy" and "unhealthy" organizations, the major goals and objectives of OD, and the ways of evaluating outcomes of OD interventions (Argyris, 1970; Beckhard, 1969; Bennis, 1966, 1969). Having been called to serve as front-line psychologists with the Israeli armed forces during the 1973 October war, in the capacity of organizational (and not clinical) psychologists, we discovered the shortcomings, often even irrele- vancies, of common OD when applied to emergency situations. Faced with organizational crisis, ex- treme stress, rapid locomotion, and other mani- festations of the emergency setting, we had to ex- periment with new modes of organizational work that differed radically from those prescribed by 840 • SEPTEMBER 1978 • AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST 0003-066X/78/3309-0840$00.75 Copyright 1978 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. common OD models. These new ways of coping with organizational emergency we came to label emergency organizational development (EOD). This article has two major purposes: The first is to delineate and discuss the personal problems and professional dilemmas facing the psychologist who is called to help an organization undergoing ex- treme crisis. These problems are caused by the stress situation itself (of which the psychologist is part) and by the absence of adequate prescrip- tive models of EOD. Neither the OD literature (e.g., Fink, Beak, & Taddeo, 1971) nor the crisis intervention literature (e.g., Church, 1974; Parad, 1974) deals satisfactorily with the psychology and dynamics of the psychologist in such situations. The second purpose of the article is to distinguish between OD and EOD and to lay the first founda- tions of an EOD model to complement common OD models. We do not wish to criticize the common OD models in and of themselves, nor do we present in this article a complete model of EOD (see Green- baum, Rogovsky, & Shalit, 1977, for one attempt of this sort). Rather, this article is a reflective attempt to draw from our personal experiences as front-line psychologists some generalized principles that might guide the construction of an effective EOD model. We may add that while some of our The authors' names appear in alphabetical order, re- flecting equal contributions to the article. The authors wish to thank Martin Lakin, Stephen J. Morse, and Michelle Fine for their helpful comments, and Amnon Caspi for his indispensable cooperation in making this paper possible. Requests for reprints should be sent to Gavriel Salomon, who is now at the School of Education, Stanford Uni- versity, Stanford, California 9430S.