Organizational Diagnostic Models: Congruence Model

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Table of Contents

Congruence Model
McKinsey 7S Framework
Burke Litwin Model
Organizational Intelligence Model
Force Field Analysis
Leavitt’s Model
Issues affecting Palm Company
Recommendations
References

Congruence Model

The congruence model developed by Nadler and Tushman is an organizational diagnostic model that is seen to be similar to the open systems theory which stipulates that organizations are social systems that depend on the environment for their inputs. Nadler and Tushman (1980) described congruence as “the degree to which the goals, objectives, needs and demands of one organizational component are consistent with the goals, needs and demands of another component” (p.16).

Inputs within the congruence model include factors such as the organizational resources, the internal and external environment, history of past organizational behavior and organizational strategies. Nadler and Tushman (1980) describe the resources of an organization to be capital, technology and employees.

Organizational strategies are the inputs that will be used in the model while the organizational environment is made up of the individuals, groups and institutions outside the organization that will be analyzed. History of past behavior involves looking at previous performance and whether it will affect the organizations present activity while inputs are viewed to be the most important strategies an organization incorporates.

The system components in the Congruence model that will be used in the transformation model include factors such as formal and informal arrangements, individual components, tasks which will be performed by the organization and the informal organization.

The outputs include individual behavior and how this behavior affects the organizational tasks, group and inter-group behavior and system functioning. The weakness of this model is that the congruence or fit between the internal variables at times presented a challenge to the organization.

McKinsey 7S Framework

The McKinsey framework was developed by Pascale, Athos, Peters and Waterman in the 1980’s. They worked as consultants for the McKinsey Consulting Company. The 7s model was developed around seven factors that created an awareness on the basis that when the seven factors are used together they are able to assist in the formation of a better organization. The seven factors or components of the 7s model are structure, systems, strategy, shared values, skills, style and staff.

Strategy involves determining the proper course of action that will be used to achieve a desired goal or objective. Structure highlights the relationship between an organizations process and human resources that are used to fulfill objectives and goals. Systems are the infrastructures that are used by the organization such as machinery, or technology while staff is the human resources of a company.

Skills are the unique characteristics that each staff member possess while shared values are concepts that an organization uses to achieve a common purpose through common goals and objectives.

The weakness of this model is that most companies focused mostly on the strategy, structure and system components of an organization neglecting staff, staff skills, shared values and style. Also most organizations saw changing one variable would change all the other variables which was a false misconception (Falleta, 2008).

Burke Litwin Model

This causal model was developed by Litwin, Stringer and Tagiuri in 1968 for the purpose of organizational change and performance and was later refined by Burke in 1980.

The model is made up of twelve organizational variables, distinctions between culture and climate of an organization as well as transformational and transactional dynamics, and specifications on the nature and direction of the organizational variables. The twelve variables include mission, external environment, strategy, culture, work climate, leadership, organizational structure, systems, individual skills, motivation, needs and values, individual and organizational performance (Falletta, 2008).

The external environment is considered to be the input of the model while individual and organizational performance is considered to be the outputs in this organizational diagnosis model. The remaining variables represent throughputs in the open systems theory.

The strengths of this model are that it represents the reality of organizations in a more accurate way; the relationships between the variables represent an accurate picture of what goes on in the organization. The weakness of the model is that the relationships between the variables keep changing with time and the model has to be refined to adapt to the changing organization.

Organizational Intelligence Model

This model is a more recent diagnostic tool developed by Falletta in 2004. The intelligence model includes several elements that are similar to the Burke Litwin model as well as additional elements that define employee performance.

This model is made up of eleven variables which are environmental inputs, leadership, strategy, culture, organizational structure and adaptability, information technology and systems of the organization, the direct manager or supervisors effectiveness, measures and rewards, employee engagement, growth and development and performance outcomes.

The environmental inputs affect the organization from the outside while the strategic factors such as strategy, culture and leadership, structure and adaptability, direct manager effectiveness, rewards, growth and development affect the inside.

While this model is viewed to be similar to the Burke Litwin model, there are several notable differences which are that the intelligence model emphasizes the concept of employee engagement, and it depicts and emphasizes on growth and development as a key feature of recruiting and retaining employees (Falletta, 2008).

Force Field Analysis

This model was developed by Kurt Lewin in 1951 as an analytical model for managing organizational problems. The model is simplistic in that it represents few factors within the organization which are the driving and restraining factors. The driving forces are the environmental factors that push for change in the organization while the restraining factors which act as barriers to change are found within the organization.

The model relies on organizational change with the main goal being to shift the organization to a more desirable state by adding driving forces and eliminating restraining forces. These changes are thought to occur simultaneously within the organization. The major strength of this model is that it offers a simplistic view of diagnosing an organizational situation. A major weakness is that a case of disequilibrium might occur during the transformational process (Falletta, 2008).

Leavitt’s Model

Fourteen years after Lewin developed the force field analysis model, Leavitt designed another simple model in 1965 with similar concepts. The model specified particular forces or factors within an organization which were task variables, human variables, technological variables and structural variables.

The major weakness of this model was that even though Lewin described the four variables to be interdependent and dynamic, the model was too simplistic to make any causal statements regarding the variables. The model suggested that making changes to one variable would result in a retaliatory change in the other three variables. This was seen to oppose the driving and restraining forces in Lewin’s model. The Leavitt model did not address the role of the external environment in bringing about change.

Issues affecting Palm Company

Palm has been facing various issues mostly related with its finances and products; it was facing financial difficulties which saw it being bought by Hewlett Packard for $1.2 billion dollars (Patel, 2010). Some of its products such as the Palm Pre and handheld devices have features that are similar to Nokia’s smart phone products and Microsoft’s pocket PC’s. Nokia and Microsoft are viewed to be the major competitors of Palm because of the similarity of products. This has created a challenge for Palm to differentiate itself from its rivals.

Another issue affecting Palm Company is the ever changing technology industry which sees new innovations coming out everyday. Companies such as Nokia have introduced the PDA feature into some of their phones which has given them a competitive advantage over Palm. Customers will most likely go for the Nokia phone that has PDA function rather than opt to buy separate Palm devices that have smart phone and PDA devices (Palm Inc. 2010).

Recommendations

To deal with the issues faced by Palm, the management executives should use the organizational intelligence model for the organizational diagnosis of Palm. This is because this model portrays an accurate representation of the modern day organization which is one of its major strengths.

The close similarity of the variables found in this model with the Burke-Litwin model gives it a stronger basis to be used in solving Palm’s problems. This model considers variables such as the structure and adaptability of the organization, information and technology, growth and development as part of its components which are not evident in the other organizational diagnostic models. Such variables are important to deal with Palm’s current problems.

The technology issue experienced by Palm especially with its products being similar to those of Microsoft and Nokia will be solved by carrying out diagnostics on the throughputs of information and technology and also the structure of the organization to enable it to adapt to the changing technological climate.

The intelligence model will allow for diagnostic operations to be done on the IT infrastructure of the Company as well as the business systems that are in place. The structure and adaptability variables will allow for the diagnosticians to see whether the current organizational structure is working for Palm or not.

After the acquisition, the organizational structure should change to reflect new levels and responsibilities that will see the development of new and unique product lines. Growth and development will see employee skills in technology being developed and improved to meet the changing market.

References

Falletta, S.V. (2008). Organizational diagnostic models: a review and synthesis. HR Intelligence Report. Web.

Nadler, D. A. & Tushman, M. L. (1980). A model for diagnosing organizational behavior. Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp 35-51.

Palm Inc. (2010). About Palm: mobile products for extraordinary lives. Web.

Patel, N. (2010). HP bought Palm after a five-company bidding war. Web.

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