Diagnosing Organizations

Methods, Models, and Processes

Michael I. Harrison

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780761925729, 9780761925712
• eBook ISBN: 9781483389530
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Wissenschaftliche Forschung & Methodik

Click ?Additional Materials? for downloadable sample chapter

Many managers and organizational leaders face shrinking budgets, growing competition, and changing organizational alliances and missions   A bewildering array of new technologies and management techniques offer help in handling these challenges. To respond effectively and avoid wasting resources, decision makers need to diagnose organizational conditions, plan changes carefully, and apply appropriate technologies and management techniques.

The Third Edition of the bestselling Diagnosing Organizations shows how consultants and applied researchers can help decision makers quickly and flexibly diagnose problems and challenges and decide how to deal with them.

Key Features

• Models for framing diagnostic problems, identifying underlying conditions, and providing feedback
• Methods for gathering and analyzing diagnostic data
• Processes for working on a diagnosis with clients and other members of an organization

This thoroughly revised edition can help practitioners of diagnosis directly address concerns that are critical to clients, rather than just provide feedback on current conditions and operations. In an authoritative, yet readable fashion author Michael I. Harrison presents updated treatments of the uses of diagnosis, evaluating organizational effectiveness, improving team performance, planning organization redesign projects, and assessing organization-environment relations and competitive strategy. Also treated are the politics of change management, professional dilemmas, and ethical issues confronting practitioners.

Professors of research methods across the social sciences will find Diagnosing Organizations, Third Edition an invaluable text for their courses. The second edition was widely adopted in departments of Management, Public Health, Nursing, Education, Public Administration, Psychology, Criminal Justice, and many others.

1 Diagnosis: Approaches and Methods

This chapter examines the main features of diagnosis and its uses in consultations for organizational improvement and change. Three critical facets of diagnosis are introduced: (a) process—working with members of an organization to plan a diagnostic study, administer it, and provide feedback on the findings; (b) modeling—using models to frame issues, guide data gathering, identify organizational conditions underlying problems, and organize feedback; and (c) methods—techniques for collecting, analyzing, and summarizing diagnostic data.

In organizational diagnosis, consultants, researchers, or managers use conceptual models and applied research methods to assess an organization's current state and discover ways to solve problems, meet challenges, or enhance performance.¹ Diagnostic practice applies ideas and techniques from a diverse range of disciplines within behavioral science and related fields, including psychology, sociology, management, and organization studies. Diagnosis helps decision makers and their advisers develop workable proposals for organizational change and improvement. Without careful diagnosis, decision makers may waste effort by failing to attack the root causes of problems (Senge, 1994). Hence, diagnosis can contribute to managerial decision making, just as it can provide a solid foundation for recommendations by organizational and management consultants.

The following are two examples of the use of diagnosis in consulting projects in which I took part:²

Case 1

In cooperation with the chief personnel officer in a branch of the armed forces, a human resources unit prepared a survey of organizational climate and leadership in field units. Repeat applications of the survey tracked developments within units over time and provided comparisons between functionally similar units at the same point in time. Members of the human resources unit provided commanding officers with periodic feedback containing both types of data. The feedback helped officers recognize problematic leadership and administrative practices and motivated them to take steps to improve these practices.

Case 2

The head of training in a national health maintenance organization (HMO) received a request from the director of one of its member organizations—here called Contemporary Health Facility (CHF)—for an ambitious program that would train CHF employees to undertake a major organizational transformation. The transformation proposed by the director would radically redefine the goals and mission of CHF. Moreover, it would alter CHF's patient characteristics, personnel, size, structure, and its relations with other health-care organizations. The director of CHF was worried that his nursing staff and administrative employees would oppose the far-reaching changes he envisioned. Unconvinced that the training program was justified, the head of training in the HMO reached an agreement with the CHF director to ask an independent consultant to assess the situation. After discussions between the consultant, the head of training, and the top managers at CHF, all parties agreed to broaden the study goals to include assessment of the feasibility of the proposed transformation and the staff's readiness for the change. Training was to be considered as only one possible step that might facilitate the transformation.

Over a period of 3 weeks, the consultant conducted in-depth interviews with CHF's 3 top managers and 7 staff members who held positions of authority. In addition, he conducted focus group interviews with 12 lower-level staff members; made site visits; and examined data on CHF's personnel, patient characteristics, and administration. The consultant analyzed and presented these data within the context of a guiding model of preconditions for strategic organizational change. This model drew concepts from research on open systems, organizational politics, and leadership for organizational transformation. The major diagnostic finding was that the transformation was both desirable and feasible, but accomplishing it would be risky and difficult. In his report and oral feedback to the CHF management and the HMO's director of training, the consultant conveyed these conclusions and some of the findings on which they were based. Moreover, the consultant recommended steps that the director of CHF could take to overcome opposition and build support for the proposed transformation of CHF and suggested ways of implementing the transformation. The report also recommended ways to improve organizational climate, enhance staffing procedures, and improve other aspects of organizational effectiveness with or without implementing the program to transform CHF.

Diagnostic consultations such as the ones just described often begin when clients ask for advice from consultants. The main clients for a diagnosis are the people who bear most of the responsibility for receiving feedback, deciding what to do about it, and launching actions in response to it. These people are usually the ones who originally solicited and sponsored the study, but responsibility for sponsorship of a diagnosis and use of its findings may be divided: In both Case 1 and Case 2, a national-level manager initiated the diagnosis, but heads of operating units (i.e., the commanders of the military field units and the director of CHF) were expected to act on the feedback.

Clients for diagnosis are often top administrators, as in the two cases presented previously. However, union management teams (Shirom, 1983), midlevel managers, entire working groups, owners, and supervisory agencies can also act as clients. In some change projects, special steering committees are set up that are parallel to, but outside of, the operating hierarchy of the organization (Rubenstein & Woodman, 1984). These steering groups define project goals, plan interventions, and supervise project implementation.

Clients play a critical role in defining the consultation's goals (see Chapter 6) and shaping relations between consultants and the focal organization. In the cases described previously, the clients turned to consultants trained in the behavioral sciences because the clients assumed that their organization's problems and challenges related to people, groups, and organizational arrangements rather than involving mainly business or technical issues. Clients seeking help managing and changing organizations often refer initially to problems such as the following:

• Poor quality, delays, crises, and other signs of ineffectiveness
• Declining demand or revenues, client/customer dissatisfaction, and criticism by external stakeholders
• Human resource problems, such as rapid employee turnover, stress and health problems, and low morale after downsizing; difficulties managing a multicultural workforce
• Challenges posed by radical changes in markets and government regulation
• Difficulties making major transitions—from family to professionally managed firms, mergers, reorganizations
• Trouble starting or completing complex projects (e.g., implementing new technologies and establishing product development teams)

In other instances, clients want an assessment of how well the organization functions in a specific area, such as staff development (e.g., Case 6, which is presented in Chapter 3). Also, they may seek advice on improving processes such as quality assurance or customer service. Such concerns have led to consultations and change projects in public-sector organizations, such as schools, hospitals, city governments, and the military; private firms in areas such as manufacturing, banking, and retailing; voluntary groups, including charities and religious groups; and cooperative businesses and communities.

The consultants (or practitioners) who specialize in planned change and applied research often develop skills in giving feedback and working with teams as well as in investigating and analyzing operating problems and challenges. These consultants can be located in external consulting agencies or universities, or they can act as internal consultants, who come from organizational units specializing in areas such as human resource management, quality, planning, or evaluation (McMahan & Woodman, 1992). In many instances, internal specialists in change come from fields such as information systems, industrial engineering, strategy, and marketing rather than behavioral science. Moreover, a growing body of business consultants now act as specialists in change management (Worren, Ruddle, & Moore, 1999), whereas other external consultants contribute expertise in particular industries or functional areas, such as information technology. Top executives and even middle managers and other line managers often drive changes in strategy, structures, staffing, technology, and culture. These managers may draw on specialists to facilitate change, but line managers retain responsibility for the overall direction and execution of the project (Kanter, Stein, & Jick, 1992; Sherman, 1995).

In many diagnoses, as in Case 2, the consultant conducts a diagnosis to understand the nature and causes of the problems or challenges initially presented by clients, identifies additional organizational problems and opportunities, and seeks ways to solve these problems and improve organizational effectiveness.³

Both of the previous cases involved the common diagnostic practice of comparing the current state of the client system with some preferred state—improved relations between officers and subordinates in Case 1 and provision of a wider range of health services by a more professionalized staff in Case 2. Each of these diagnostic studies involved a search for ways to narrow gaps between the current and desired states. The consultants also assessed effectiveness in terms of a standard (e.g., ratings of officers in comparable units).

In light of the diagnostic findings, consultants often point to the need to change one or more key features of the organization, such as its goals, strategies, structures, technologies, or human resources. Moreover, consultants may recommend a wide range of steps (interventions) that management or other clients can undertake to bring about the desired improvements. Clients sometimes ask the practitioners who conducted the diagnosis or other consultants to help them implement these steps toward improvement.

Uses of Diagnosis

Diagnosis can contribute to many types of consultations for organizational change. The following sections compare its use in different types of change projects.

Diagnosis in Organization Development and Change Management

Diagnosis plays a role in both organization development (OD) projects and business-oriented change management projects. OD, which includes action research and planned change, involves systematic applications of behavioral science to the planned development and reinforcement of strategies, structures, and processes that lead to organizational effectiveness (Cummings & Worley, 2001, p. 1). Business-oriented projects aim more explicitly than OD at improving a firm's economic performance and its competitive advantage and rely more on techniques drawn from business, engineering, and other technical fields (Beer & Nobria, 2000).

OD projects can be thought of as moving through a series of stages (Kolb & Frohman, 1970; Waclawski & Church, 2002). Projects usually begin with an entry (or scouting) stage, in which clients and consultants get to know one another and consultants gain their first impressions of the client organization (Levinson, 1994). After consultants and clients clarify their expectations for the consultation and formalize them in a contract, the consultant conducts a diagnosis of the current state of the organization and provides feedback to clients on the findings. Thereafter, consultants and clients work together to define objectives for the change project and plan interventions that will promote desired changes. During the action stage, the consultants guide or actually conduct these interventions, sometimes gathering additional diagnostic data and providing additional feedback on the experimental or transitional phases of the change project. Thereafter, clients and consultants evaluate the results of the project. In practice, consultation in OD often shifts back and forth between these stages rather than following them sequentially (e.g., Case 4, below); some projects skip one or more stages (e.g., evaluation).

OD consultants may engage in diagnostic activities during several phases of a consultation. In particular, during entry, consultants may unobtrusively observe interactions between clients and other members of the organization to get a feel for interpersonal processes and power relations. At the same time, consultants may also conduct interviews or discussions with important members to become familiar with the organization and assess members' attitudes toward the proposed consulting project. Consultants will also read available documents on the organization's history, goals, and current operations. Based on this information, consultants usually make a preliminary diagnosis of the organization's needs and strengths and its capacity for improvement and change. In particular, experienced practitioners seek to determine as early as possible whether key members of an organization are likely to cooperate with a more formal and extended diagnosis and whether these people are able to make decisions and act in response to feedback. This preliminary diagnosis can determine the subsequent development of the project. As consultants and clients discuss these preliminary assessments, they redefine their expectations for the consultation. This process increases the chances that the consultation will benefit the clients and helps both parties avoid entering a relationship that will become an exercise in frustration.

Diagnosis itself can be a form of intervention because it interrupts organizational routines, may affect members' expectations concerning change, and may influence how they think about themselves and their organization (Argyris, 1970). In process consultation (Schein, 1998), for example, the practitioner provides diagnostic feedback on group processes to heighten awareness of these processes and thereby help participants improve them. Similarly, practitioners sometimes conduct diagnostic workshops for management teams or steering committees responsible for change projects (e.g., see p. 113). The workshops are intended to promote teamwork and facilitate planning and decision making. During workshops, the consultants may help participants examine their organization's culture, clarify their goals and strategies, or consider ways to restructure the organization.

Traditionally, OD consultants assumed that organizations become more effective as they foster reductions in power and status differences, open communication, participative decision making, cooperation, solidarity, and development of their members' human potential (Strauss, 1976). Moreover, OD practitioners envisioned a broad role for consultants in helping organizations move toward this ideal type of stru...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Diagnosis: Approaches and Methods
• 2 Open Systems Models
• 3 Assessing Individual and Group Behavior
• 4 System Fits and Organizational Politics
• 5 Environmental Relations
• 6 Challenges and Dilemmas of Diagnosis
• Appendix A General Orientation Interview
• Appendix B Instruments for Diagnosis and Assessment
• Appendix C A Guide to Diagnosing Behavior during Meetings
• Appendix D Resources for Developing Expertise in Diagnosis
• References
• Author Index
• About the Author