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Throughput and Motivation- Industrial Services of America

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Identify key transformation or throughput processes and look at the relationships between them. To do this draw on the Burke-Litwin Causal Model.

Research Industrial Services of America, Inc. on its throughput variables. This may take some digging, since companies do not usually provide this inside information liberally. You may have to make some inferences.

REQUIRED READING:

Burke, W.W. & Litwin, G.H. (1992) A causal model of organizational performance and change. Journal of Management, 18(3), 523-545. Click Here to Download the Article.

CASE 4 ASSIGNMENT:

Make a Case that the amount of Motivation in the chosen company has a direct effect on the Performance.

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Solution Summary

Uses Burke-Litwin Causal Model of Organizaitonal Performance and Change to focus on performance as a function of throughput and motivation for Industrial Services of America. 7 Pages, APA format with references.

Solution Preview

Please find the attached solution. Ignore the the running header, it was mistakenly retained from a previous template.

Introduction
Much academic effort focuses on assessing business organizations as open systems?akin
to living organisms. Like living organisms, business organizations operate in, and are affected
by, the aggregate environment. For all the research on this relationship, it can miss the key
element of any organization?it's internal processes or throughput. Without effective motivation
operating efficient transformational processes, any organization will wither and die?regardless
of how effective the strategy might be. The internal workings of an organization are comprised
of two parts? the processes themselves and the motivation that powers those processes. Of the
two, motivation has vastly more profound impact on the performance of the organization.US
Army General George Patton is credited with a quote during World War Two that summarizes
perfectly: "A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan applied ten minutes
later." As we'll see looking into Industrial Services of America (ISA) as case study?motivation
comprises the critical consideration to an organization's performance.
Burke-Litwin Model
The Burke-Litwin Model addresses an organization as a whole assuming the organization
operates in an open system. That is, the organization is affected by its environment on both sides
of the throughput?both input and output. This makes for a very comprehensive model, but also
adds considerable complexity. For the purposes of this case study, only the internal factors?
what Burke and Litwin term "transactional factors" are considered. These are illustrated in
Figure 1, and comprise the internal value-adding processes of any organization. While the
organization of the elements in Figure 1 is not chronological or in priority order, the bidirectionality
of the arrow is noteworthy. For example, "Work unit climate" affects "Motivation"
but "Motivation" also affects "Work unit climate." Because all of these arrow are bi-directional,
any one element leverages effects on all other elements.
Figure 1: Burke-Litwin Model Transactional Factors (Burke, Litwin, 1992. Pg. 532)
Industrial Services of America Organizational Structure
The company's organizational structure is based on its two primary product segments?
waste management and recycling operations. These segments are subdivided into four divisions:
recycling, alloys, logistics, and WESSCO, (ISA, nd, A). These are a divisional structure
concerned with placing various skills and ...

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