Open Systems Theory: National Presto Industries

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Introduction-Why Organizational Diagnosis

Organizational diagnosis (OD) provides codified methods to align an enterprise's operations with its overall strategy. Many excellent business plans have failed owing to a disconnect between strategy and tactics. OD strives to build a model of an organization which can then be diagnosed for improvements. The field has evolved over the past 50 years, with many competing models offering difference balances between simplicity and complexity, different foci varied between inputs, throughputs, and output. Regardless of the focus and scope chosen, OD offers enterprise leadership the opportunity to objectively assess their organization and directly apply efforts to affect change.

Force Field Analysis
Conceived over 50 year ago by Kurt Lewin, Force Field (FF) theory seeks to analyze and manage organizational problems, (Falletta, 2008). It is a broad, generalized theory of group interaction that requires a great deal of customization to be useful to a specific organization. This can be considered a strength, as it can be applied across disciplines and industries. FF Analysis begins with an organization's current state. This state is the result of various forces applied at equilibrium. Changing some combination of driving forces (those promoting change), and restraining forces (those resisting change) allows transformation of the organization into a new, desired equilibrium, (Falletta, 2008).

Some of the underlying assumptions of FF make its application difficult. First and most fundamental is that an organization is ever at equilibrium. Defining the current state of affairs in order to identify the differentiated fields assumes they are constant- and identifiable at all, (Business, 2009). Modern business is likely obsolete if ever in equilibrium.

Leavitt's Model
An attempt to refine FF Analysis occurred with Leavitt's Model in 1965, (Falletta, 2008). Leavitt expanded the idea of force fields into specific categories: structure, technology, people, and task, (Harwood, n.d.). Similar to FF Analysis, all four variables are interdependent-changes in one likely motivate subsequent changes in another, (Falletta, 2008). Leavitt's model cannot be considered an improvement on FF in that it is even more generalized, lacks any specific criteria for how each variable affects the others, and makes no attempt to consider the organization's relationship- as a whole- with the surrounding environment.
Likert System Analysis

Focusing much more on how internal elements interact-and much less on defining each internal element-Likert System Analysis focuses on the vertical integration of an organization. Likert describes four primary types of organizations, from most to least vertically organized: Exploitive-Authoritarian, Benevolent-Authoritarian, Consultative, and Participative Group, (Falletta, 2008). The major improvement on previous theories was Likert's inclusion of an exhaustive survey for gauging how the target organization operates. Limitations include the dated nature of the theory (written in 1967), as well as a lack of practical application. The crux of Likert's work was the idea that employees were beginning to expect a more democratic work environment, and any movement toward a Participative Group would result in beneficial change throughout the organization, (Likert, 2006). Likert offers more a process for statistical categorization-applicable across disciplines-than specific organizational diagnostic tools, (QuickMBA, 1999).

Weisbord's Six-Box Model
In 1976, Marvin Weisbord developed his six-box model to assess the functionality of organizations, (Reflectlearn.org, n.d.). He divided an organization into six segments, and sought to survey participants in order to optimize relationships between each segment (see Figure 2). The result was a true improvement over previous OD tools- for example, the fields of FF are at least subdivided into specific categories for further study, and the ...