1.

The 4 common models of OB and change are consistent with a systems theory
i. Lewin’s three-phase model
 Offered a three-phase model of organizational change in which he described
change as a process of unfreezing, moving, and refreezing.
 Believe that current organizational practices need to be released (or unfrozen) to
be changed.
 Lewin pointed out that two forces worked together to maintain equilibrium in an
organization: forces promoting a change and forces promoting the status quo.
 Change can occur only when forces of change are greater than forces maintaining
the status quo.
 Happen in two ways: if forces promoting change are increased or forces
maintaining the status quo are decreased.
 An easily grasped description of change that has been widely adopted by
managers and practitioners.
 Explains that to embrace something new, something else must be left behind
 Organization must be freed from prior practices and must work to sustain the
change when it is implemented.
 The model reminds that organizational member must be prepared for a change,
and that levels of resistance can mean that the organization remains in a frozen
state until we work to unfreeze it.
 Members must be practically or symbolically released from previous practices in
order to change them, and following a change, conscious attention must be paid
to reinforcing the change in order to help it stick
 Become a useful tool for OD practitioners to use with clients. Help organizational
members understand what factors would support a given change effort and what
resistance might prevent the change from being adopted.

ii. Nadler-Tushman congruence model

 Offered an expanded version of system theory that contain additional concepts
intended to be more useful to practitioners.
 Explains that this model is particularly useful for organizational change.
 Puts its greatest emphasis on the transformation process and in particular reflects
the critical system property of interdependence
 Views organizations as made up of components or parts which interact with each
other
  These components exist in states of relative balance, consistency, or ‘fit’ with each
other
 The different part of an organization can fit well together and thus function
effectively, or fit poorly, thus leading to problems, dysfunctions or performance
below potential.
 Transformation processes, outputs and feedback are also included as part of the
congruence model.
 Inputs include environment, resources and history are merged with organizational
strategy to influence transformation processes.
 Market demands, human resources, technology, capital, information, and prior
patterns all comprise the organization’s inputs.
 Strategy is included in the congruence model as it determines what the
organization will work on and how the organization must work to achieve its
outputs
 Outputs also consist of organizational, group, and individual performance.
 Also include job satisfaction, stress, and other individual outputs as products of
the work environment as well.
 Transformation processes have been expanded in the congruence model to
include four important elements that relate to one another which are task,
individual, formal organizational arrangements and informal organizational.
 Task: encompasses the work to be done, but also the skills and knowledge
required to do it and the degree of independence or judgement required
 Individual: includes employees’ knowledge and skills, engagement and motivation,
preferences and attitudes, and other influences on individual behavior.
 Formal organizational arrangement: include explicitly defined processes and
organizational structures, job definition, metrics, the physical layout and
environment, and other officially specified aspects of the work.
 Informal organization: defined as the less explicitly defined or tacit
understandings, processes, methods and norms that comprise how work is
actually done.

iii. Burke-Litwin model

 Burke and Litwin developed their model of organizational performance and
change as a causal model that could be empirically tested, that would specify the
variables that would be affected by a given change, and that would take into
 account both first-order (transactional) and second-order (transformational)
change
 Theirs is explicitly a model of organizational change based in systems theory that
is intended to follow from its basic tenets.
 Many observers have remarked on the complexity of this model and express
confusion about the number and direction of the arrows.
 acknowledge that the model is complex but state that change is such a complex
phenomenon, the model is still likely a simplified version of what actually occurs
during change.
 the external environment at the top of the model represents inputs, the individual
and organizational performance box at the bottom of the model represents the
output, and all other boxes between these represent the throughput processes.
 Arrows indicate the greatest directions of influence among the variables, but the
downward arrows, they believe, have greater influence on lower boxes than do the
upward arrows to the variables above them
 External environment. Any outside condition or situation that influences the
performance of the organization
 Mission and strategy. What employees believe is the central purpose of the
organization and how the organization intends to achieve that purpose over an
extended period of time.
 Leadership. Executive behavior that provides direction and encourages others to
take needed action.
 Culture. “The way we do things around here”; culture is the collection of overt and
covert rules, values, and principles that guide organizational behavior and that
have been strongly influenced by history, custom, and practice.
 Structure. The arrangement of functions and people into specific areas and levels
of responsibility, decision-making authority, and relationships.
 Management practices. What managers do in the normal course of events to use
the human and material resources at their disposal to carry out the organization’s
strategy
 Systems. Standardized policies and mechanisms that are designed to facilitate
work Climate. The collective current impressions, expectations, and feelings of the
members of local work units.
 Task requirements and individual skills/abilities. The behavior required for task
effectiveness, including specific skills and knowledge required for people to
accomplish the work assigned and for which they feel directly responsible.
  Individual needs and values. The specific psychological factors that provide desire
and worth for individual actions or thoughts.
 Motivation. Aroused behavioral tendencies to move toward goals, take needed
action, and persist until satisfaction is attained.
 Individual and organizational performance. The outcomes or results, with
indicators of effort and achievement; such indicators might include productivity,
customer or staff satisfaction, profit, and service quality

iv. Weisbord Six-Box model

 Become a popular diagnostic model to illustrate elements of a system that are out
of sync with other parts of the system, in particular to explore how formal and
informal systems are often misaligned or contradictory.
 Refers to the model as a “radar screen” depicting the interrelationships among six
of an organization’s component parts.
 The model categorizes six common problem areas in an organization and helps to
illustrate how symptoms can be seen in a systemic light.
 There 6 components in this model which are purposes, structure, rewards, helpful
mechanisms, relationships and leadership.
i. Purposes. This box includes formal goal clarity (how well the goals are
explained) and informal goal agreement (how well the goals are truly
understood and acted upon).
ii. Structure. How well does the organizational structure match the needed
outputs? Is the organizational structure followed or undermined in daily
practice?
iii. Rewards. Does a (formal) reward system exist, and does it actually produce
results, making employees feel as if their contributions are being rewarded
(informal)?
iv. Relationships. This concerns the degree to which people can work
interdependently and manage conflict successfully.
v. Helpful mechanisms. What formal mechanisms exist to facilitate work, such
as budget processes, meetings, reviews, or other communications? How well
do these helpful mechanisms meet their objectives?
vi. Leadership. How do leaders lead? What do they state as their formal
expectations? What norms do leaders informally role model or informally
communicate?
2. Organizations as socially constructed
 The social construction view argues that organizations are not exactly things at all,
but that the organization is really a concept developed out of our own actions and
language.
 The view of organizations as socially constructed differs sharply from the systems
theory perspective in many respects.
 Interactions and language are important areas of attention in the social construction
perspective because it is through regular interaction and dialogue that organizations
are developed and change can occur.
 It resonates with what we experience in organizations as we make sense of our
activities and the actions of others.
 It also respects the ambiguity and multiple meanings that many organizational
members experience and the necessary interpretive processes that characterize
much of organizational life.
 Decisions are considered and rationalized based on complex and contradictory facts.
 Roles are negotiated and enacted, not predetermined by job descriptions.
 Multiple contexts and facts can be brought to bear on any situation to result in
ambiguous and inconsistent interpretations.
 It describes how members experience organizations as social environments where
interaction is fundamentally how work is accomplished and sensemaking is how it is
understood and experienced.
 The social construction perspective has gained a following among organization
development practitioners because it offers several distinct benefits. It comes with
few values of the social construction approach.
i. First, like systems theory it offers a useful (but different) explanation for human
behavior.
- It explains why, for example, organizational members would be less willing to take
risks after witnessing a layoff in another division in which risk taking was common.
- The social construction perspective directs the OD practitioner’s attention to the
cultural processes of sensemaking that result in action.
ii. Second, the social construction perspective emphasizes the active role that
members take in creating the organization.
- Relationships among supervisors and employees are not confined to rigid role-
based interactions, but are multidimensional and can be friendly, cold, formal,
sociable, and so on.
 - Relationships between coworkers or departments are more complex than simply
sharing orders or instructions between them and can be cooperative or contentious,
relaxed or rigid.
- The social construction perspective illustrates the active choice that we make in
creating these systems and relationships.
iii. Third, the social construction perspective helps OD practitioners to see the
importance of communication in creating change.
- Words and their context are important, and the interpretive processes that we use
to make sense of words often go unexplored.
iv. The social construction perspective stresses that organizational change has as its
foundation a change in meaning.
- Sensemaking logics lie beneath values, beliefs, and attitudes, as well as
organizational practices, identities, and processes.
- Simply changing a practice, a role, a title, or a department name does not always
change the underlying interpretive processes that members have adopted.
- The approach assumes that change can best be accomplished when organizational
members have the opportunity to work together to define new practices.