3.1 Cummings, T., & Worley, C. G. (2015) Chapter 5, Diagnosing. In Organizational Development and Change. San Francisco Click for more options
diagnosis in organization
development (OD).
based on open-systems
Diagnosis is the process of understanding how the organization is currently functioning,
and it provides the information necessary to design change interventions.
To diagnose an organization,OD practitioners and organization members need to have an idea about what informationto collect and analyze.
Potential diagnostic models are everywhere. Any collection of concepts and relationships that attempts to represent a system or explain its effectiveness can potentially qualify as a diagnostic model.
Open-Systems Model
Systems are viewed as unitary wholes composed of parts or subsystems; the system
serves to integrate the parts into a functioning unit.
larger environment that affects how the organization performs,
organizations acquire specific inputs from the environment and transform them using
social and technical processes.
The outputs of the transformation process are returned to the environment and information about the consequences of those outputs serve as feedback to the organization’s functioning.
The following open-systems properties are described below: environments; inputs, transformations, and outputs; boundaries; feedback; and alignment.
Inputs,Inputs consist of human
capital or other resources, such as information, energy, and materials
Transformations are the processes of converting inputs into outputs.
Outputs are the results of what is transformed by the system and sent to the environment.
Boundaries The idea of boundaries helps to distinguish between organizational systems
and their environments.
Feedback the actual performance
or the outputs of the system.
Alignment How well a system’s different parts and elements align with each other
partly determines its overall effectiveness.
Diagnosing Organizational Systems
company’s strategy, structure, and
processes.
The next lowest level is the group or department,
The lowest level is the individual position
or job.
shows (1) the inputs that the system has to work with, (2) the key components for designing the system to create, and (3) the system’s outputs.
Environmental Types Three classes of environments influence how organizations function and achieve results: the general environment, the task environment, and the enacted environment
general environment include a variety of social, technological,
economic, ecological, and political/regulatory forces.
task environment Michael Porter defined an organization’s task environment in terms of industry structure represented by five forces: supplier power, buyer power, threats of substitutes, threats of entry, and rivalry among competitors.
The enacted environment consists of organization members’ perception and representation of the general and task environments.
Design Components