TOPIC 4:
DIAGNOSING
LEARNING OUTCOMES:
At the end of the lesson, you should be able to:
 Discuss the purpose of diagnosis in the organization development.
 Explain the role of diagnostic models in organization development.
 Describe the organization-level, group-level, and individual-level diagnosis.
TEACHING-LEARNING ACTIVITY (LESSON PROPER):
Diagnosis
- It is the process of understanding a system’s current functioning.
- It involves collecting pertinent information about existing operations as well
as analyzing those data and drawing conclusions about the reasons for
current performance and the potential for change and improvement.
- It is a collaborative process between organizational members and the OD
practitioner to collect information, analyze it, and draw conclusions for
action planning and intervention.
Goals
- It is aimed at either uncovering the causes of specific problems, focused on
understanding effective processes, or directed at assessing the overall
functioning of the organization or department to discover areas for future
development.
- It is done to provide a systematic understanding of organizations so that
appropriate interventions may be developed for solving problems and
enhancing effectiveness.
Diagnostic Models
- These are conceptual frameworks that OD practitioners use to understand
organizations.
- They describe the relationships among different features of the
organization, as well as its environment and its effectiveness.
- These models point out what areas to examine and what questions to ask
in assessing how an organization is functioning.
Sources of Diagnostic Models in OD
Articles and Books
OD practitioners’ experiences in
organizations
Provides information about how and Also called “field knowledge”
why certain organizational systems,
processes, or functions are effective.
Studies often concern a specific facet of These are representations of the
organizational
behavior,
such
as professional judgments of people with
employee stress, leadership, motivation, years of experience in organizational
problem solving, group dynamics, job diagnosis.
design, and career development.
Also involve the larger organization and These generally link diagnosis with
its context, including the environment, specific organizational processes, such
strategy, structure, and culture.
as
problem
solving,
employee
motivation, or communication between
managers and employees.
Open-Systems Model
Systems Theory



Systems theory is a set of concepts and relationships describing the
properties and behaviors of things called systems –organizations, groups,
and jobs.
Systems are viewed as unitary wholes composed of parts or subsystems:
the system serves to integrate the parts into a functioning unit.
The general framework that underlies most of the diagnosing in OD is the
“Open Systems Model”
Organizations as Open Systems

The open-systems model recognizes that organizations exist in the context
of a larger environment that affects how the organization performs, and,
in turn is affected by how the organization interacts with it.


The model suggests that 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.
It also suggests that organizations and their subsystems – groups and
individual jobs – share a number of common features that explain how they
are organized and how they function.
Properties of Open-Systems
1. Environments – these are everything outside of the system that can directly
or indirectly affect its outputs.
2. Inputs, Transformations, and Outputs
Inputs – consist of human capital or other resources, such as information,
energy, and materials, coming into the system from the
environment.
Transformations – processes of converting inputs into outputs. In
organizations, a production or operations function
composed of both social and technological components
generally carries out transformations.
Outputs – the results of what is transformed by the system and sent to
the environment. Hence, inputs that have been
transformed represent outputs that leave the system.
3. Boundaries – the borders or limits of the system - help to protect or buffer
the organization’s transformation process from external
disruptions.
-
They also assure that the right inputs enter the organization
and the relevant outputs leave it.
Organizational boundaries are determined not only by
physical location, but also can be defined for managerial,
technical, or social purposes.
4. Feedback – information regarding the actual performance or the outputs
of the system. However, not all such information is feedback.
-
Feedback can be used to maintain the system in a steady
state or to help the organization adapt to changing
circumstances.
5. Alignment – the alignment or fit concerns the relationships between
organization and the environment, between inputs and
transformations, between transformations and outputs, and
among the subsystems of the transformation process.
-
It represents the extent to which the features and operations
of one component support the effectiveness of another
component.
Diagnosing Organizational Systems
1. Organizational level – involves diagnosing the design the company’s strategy,
structure and processes. Large organization units such as divisions, subsidiaries,
or strategic business units can be diagnosed at this level.
2. Group Level - involves diagnosing a department which includes group design
and methods for structuring interactions among members such as norms and
work schedules.
3. Individual level – involves diagnosing an individual position or job. This includes
ways in which jobs are designed to elicit required work behaviors.
Comprehensive Model for Diagnosing Organizational Systems
A. Organization-Level Diagnosis
Inputs - The external environment is the key input at the organizational level of analysis.
There are different types of environment that can affect an organization as well as
environmental dimensions that influence organizational responses to external forces.
1. Types of Environment – there are two types of environment: the general
environment and task environment.
a. General Environment – consists of all external forces that can directly or
indirectly influence an organization. This includes amount a variety of
social, technological, economic, ecological, and political/regulatory
forces.
b. Task Environment – refers to industry structure. It is represented by five
forces, namely, (1) supplier power, (2) buyer power, (3) threats of
substitutes, (4) threats of entry and (5) rivalry among competitors.
c. Enacted Environment – consists of organization members’ perception
and representation of the general and task environment. It should
accurately reflect its general and task environments if members’
decisions and actions are to be effective.
2. Environmental Dimensions – there are two dimensions of the environment that
describe the organization’s context and influence its responses.
a. Information uncertainty – degree to which environmental information is
ambiguous. Organizations seek to remove uncertainty from the
environment so that they know best how to transact with it.
Design Components – an organization’s design is composed of four components:
technology, structure, management processes, and human resources systems. It is
surrounded by an intermediate input – strategy, and an intermediate output – culture
that need to be considered along with the organization’s design.
1. Strategy – represents the way an organization uses its resources to achieve its goal
and gain a competitive advantage. It defines how an organization positions itself to
compete in an environment. A complete statement of strategy includes the
organization’s mission, goals and objectives, strategic intent and functional policies.
Mission statement – defines the long-term purpose of the organization, the
range of products or services offered, the markets served, and the societal
needs addressed.
Goals and Objectives – include specific targets for achieving strategic
success. They provide explicit direction, set organization priorities, provide
guidelines for management decisions, and serve as the cornerstone for
organizing activities and setting standards of achievement.
Strategic Intent – a label that describes how the organization intends to
leverage three resource dimensions – breadth, aggressiveness, and
differentiation to achieve its goals and objectives.
Functional policies – are the methods, procedures, rules or administrative
practices that guide decision making and convert strategic plans into
actions.
2. Technology – is concerned with the way an organization converts inputs into
products and services. It represents the core transformation process and includes
production methods, workflow, and equipment.
3. Structure – It is the basic organizing mode for (1) dividing the overall work of an
organization into subunits that can assign tasks to groups or individuals and (2)
coordinating these subunits for completion of the overall work. Structure needs to
closely aligned with the organization’s technology.
4. Management Processes – are methods for processing information, making
decisions, and controlling the operation of the organization. They help the
organization to understand how well it is performing, to detect and control deviations
from the goals, to make relevant decisions, and to communicate results.
5. Human Resource Systems – include mechanisms for selecting, developing,
appraising, and rewarding organization members. These influence the mix of skills,
personal characteristics, and behaviors of organization members.
Organization Culture – represents the basic assumptions, values, and norms shared by
organization members. The organizational culture serves to guide member’s thoughts,
perceptions and actions. Cultural elements serve to guide members’ perceptions,
thoughts, and actions.
Outputs – The outputs of organization design are measures of how well the design
contributes to organization effectiveness:
1. Organization performance – refers to financial outcomes such as sales, profits,
return on investment (ROI), and earnings per share (EPS). For nonprofit and
government agencies, performance often refers to the extent to which costs
were lowered or budgets met.
2. Productivity – concerns internal measurements of efficiency such as sales per
employee, waste, error rates, quality, or units produced per hour.
3. Stakeholder Satisfaction – reflects how well the organization has met the
expectations of different groups having an interest in the organization.
Customer loyalty can be measured in terms of market share or focus-group
data; employee engagement can be measured in terms of an opinion survey;
investor satisfaction can be measured in terms of stock price or analyst
opinions; and environmental sustainability can be measured by the
organization’s carbon footprint.
Alignment – Diagnosing the effectiveness of an organization requires knowledge of
the identified elements to determine the fit among them. There are two basic
questions to determine alignment of the different elements.
a. Does the organization’s strategy fit with the inputs?
b. Do the organization design components fit with each other to
jointly support the strategy?
B. Group-Level Diagnosis
Work groups – generally consist of a relatively small number of people working
together on a shared task either face-to-face or virtually via electronic
communication.
Input - The input for group level diagnosis is the organization design: technology,
structure, management processes, human resource systems – and organization
culture.
Design Components:
1. Goal Clarity – involves how well the group understands its objectives. Goals
should be challenging and there should be a method for measuring, monitoring
and evaluating and feeding back information about goal achievement; and the
goals should be clearly understood by all members.
2. Task Structure – is concerned with how the group work is designed. It can vary
along two key dimensions namely, coordination of members’ efforts and
regulation of their task behaviors.
a. Coordination – involves the degree to which group tasks are structured to
promote effective interaction among group members.
b. Regulation – involves the degree to which members can control their own task
behaviors and be relatively free from external controls such as supervision, plans,
and programs.
3. Group Composition – concerns the memberships of groups. Members can differ
on a number of dimensions having relevance to group behavior. Demographic
variables, such as age, education, experience, and skills and abilities can affect
how people behave and relate to each other in groups.
4. Team functioning – is the underlying basis of group life. It involves group processes
having to do with how members relate to each other, which is important in work
groups because the quality of relationships can affect task performance.
5. Performance Norms – member beliefs about how the group should perform its
tasks and what levels of performance are acceptable. Norms are derived from
interactions among members and serve as guides to group behavior.
Output – team effectiveness, which has two dimensions:
1. Performance – measured in terms of the group’s ability to control or
reduce costs, increase productivity or improve quality.
2. Quality of Work Life – concerned with work satisfaction, team cohesion
and organizational commitment.
Alignment – Diagnosing the effectiveness of a team requires knowledge of the
identified elements to determine the fit among them. There are two basic questions
to determine alignment of the different elements.
a. Does the group design fit with the inputs?
b. Do the group design components fit with each other?
C. Individual-Level Diagnosis
Inputs – four major inputs affect job design: organizational design, culture, group
design, and the personal characteristics of jobholders.
1. Organization Design – concerned with the larger organization within which the
individual’s job is the smallest unit. Organization design is a key part of the larger
context surrounding jobs. An organization’s technology, structure,
management processes, and human resources systems can have a powerful
impact on the way jobs are designed and on people’s experiences in them.
2. Culture – represents the values and norms shared by organization members. It
can influence the kinds of work designs that organizations consider and that
members perceive as legitimate.
3. Group Design – concerns the work group or department containing the
individual job. Task structure, goal clarity, group composition, performance
norms, and team functioning serve as inputs to job design. They typically have
a more immediate impact on jobs than do the larger, organization design
components.
4. Personal Characteristics – characteristics of individuals occupying jobs such as
age, education, experience, skills, and abilities. Individual needs and
expectations also can affect employee’s responses to the job.
Design Components – individual jobs have five key dimensions namely, skill variety,
task identity, task significance, autonomy, and feedback.
1. Skill variety – identifies the degree to which a job requires a range of activities
and abilities to perform and work.
2. Task identity – measures the degree to which a job requires the completion of a
relatively whole, identifiable piece of work.
3. Task significance – identifies the degree to which the job has a significant impact
on other people’s lives.
4. Autonomy – indicates the degree to which a job provides freedom and discretion
in scheduling the work and determining work methods.
5. Feedback – involves the degree to which a job provides employees with direct
and clear information about the effectiveness of task performance.
 These five job dimensions can be combined into an overall measure of job
enrichment. Enriched jobs have high levels of skill variety, task identity, task
significance, autonomy, and feedback about results.
Outputs – individual-job effectiveness includes two kinds of outputs namely,
performance, and individual’s experience of the job.
1. Performance – measured in terms of the quantity, quality, time, and cost of
producing a particular job outcome such as product or service.
2. Individual’s experience of the job – measured in terms of job satisfaction,
absenteeism and personal development.
Alignment – Diagnosing the effectiveness of an individual-job requires knowledge of
the identified elements to determine the fit among them. There are two basic
questions to determine alignment of the different elements.
a. Does the job design fit with the inputs?
b. Do the job design components fit with each other?
REFERENCES:
Aamodt, M. G. (2013). Industrial and organizational psychology. Singapore:
Cengage Learning.
Anderson, D. L. (2015). Organizational development: the process of leading
organizational change. Singapore: Sage Publications Inc.
Bell, C. H., French, W. L., & Zawacki, R. A. (2005). Organization development
and transformation: managing effective change. New York: McGraw
Hill.
Brown, D. R., & Harvey, D. (2006). Organizational development (7th ed.). New
York, NY: Pearson Education, Inc.
Cummings, T. G. & Worley, C. G. (2016). Organization development and
change. Taguig City, Philippines: Cengage.
George, C. (2009). The psychological contract: managing and developing
professional groups. Berkshire England: Open University Press; McGraw.