A necessary step in the design and management technology for the internal object, subject, and goal of a company is to determine its condition, the approach to resource utilization, and performance outcomes. The tools for determination of these aspects are organizational diagnosis allowing the partners and owners to find appropriate and relevant significant issues of Whole Food Market and improve them.
Application of the Models of Organizational Diagnosis
Force Field Analysis
Application of the organizational diagnostic model dealt with force field is easy as it determines those drivers and restrains that guide the influence on an organization. Current state of a problem faced by an organization is driven by external environment, necessity of change, and is restrained by limited organizational factors and morale (Cronshaw & McCulloch, 2008).
The model of OD is advantageous, because it distinguishes driving and restraining forces. This feature allows an organization to strengthen its facilitating influencers and correct impedimental circumstances. The model clearly states the desired and expected goal, which makes the efforts well-organized and purposeful. Although the model represents two sides of the same system, it does not provide an organization with intermediate condition. The force field analysis omits essential processes and tools applied to accomplish all transformations of organizational resources that restrain change management and implementation. Different businesses may use various approaches according to their potential and specification, but the model does not give any valuable recommendations and does not contain any other detailed factors and the measure of their influence.
7 S Model
The diagnosis of Whole Foods Market must be made taking into account the approaches of the organizational diagnostic model of 7 “S” (Hanafizadeh & Ravasan, 2011). This model is a way of thinking about the problems associated with restructuration and development of an organization. This approach and its results do not pretend to be a clear guidance on the development of a company or appropriate strategy. Instead, this model simply represents a holistic view of business development. Seven different components may vary in different sequence provided by Whole Foods Market or ABC Company.
System in the 7S model is the routine or business processes that occur in a company with the involvement of many stakeholders, the decision-makers, doing various types of work, etc. (Jurevicius, 2013).
The advantages of the model are the following: it can be applied as a diagnostic tool for the analysis of inefficient institutions and for directing organizational change; it combines rational and specific elements with emotional and non-specific ones. The disadvantage of this model is that these factors are interrelated. Consequently, insufficient attention to one element could entail drawbacks in the other. In addition, the relative importance of each factor may occasionally vary. Therefore, the model does not ensure clear long-term concept of behavior.
Weisbord’s Six-Box Model
The model offered by Weisbord represents the interaction of elements of an organization’s life as separate boxes, which are identified by the inner system under the influence of external environment (Stegerean, Gavrea, & Marin, 2010). These boxes should be taken into account when implementing changes or diagnosing the inner environment. Thus, Weisbord admitted purposes, structure, leadership, relationship, helpful mechanisms, and rewards as the main guidelines.
The advantage of the six-box OD model is compositional demonstration of the main conceptual basis of an organization, which can be changed and managed in order to succeed. The model identifies the most flexible objects and resources. The author correctly and clearly determined the interrelated connections between the resources that enable the organizational manager to make well-grounded decisions relied on inclusion of all organizational aspects. Nevertheless, Weisbord’s model limits the purposes of an organization only by goals and mission despite the importance of short-term objectives. In addition, the model lacks perception of human resources as individual and authentic resource that requires a specified managerial approach in terms of external environment. The model omits the mutual agreement of personnel with the stated organizational purposes.
Leavitt’s Model
The model is concentrated on simple perception of structure, technology, task, and people as the main landmarks of an organization’s performance (Lyytinen & Newman, 2008). They are variables that can be changed in response to each other. They are interrelated and dynamic.
The model offered by Leavitt is simple in demonstration of interdependence of the structural elements of an organization. It is also sufficient in demonstration of mutual correlation. However, it is rather isolated from external environment of an organization, which is an open system susceptible to changes in these variables due to external impact
Likert System Analysis
The model of Likert determines motivation, interaction, communication, goal setting, decision-making process, performance, and control as the dimensions affecting organizational success (ElBardissi et al., 2007). Therefore, they require different types of management systems within an organization. These types are exploitative-authoritative, benevolent- authoritative, consultative, and participative teams.
The model can be applied successfully as it is attached to the managerial style, prevailed leadership, and other conceptual things. It also provides the instruments for determination of employees’ perception, which is important for organizational improvements, elimination of change resistance, and development of a motivational mechanism. Despite the provided opportunities to characterize the inner behavior of an organization, the model does not respond to external signals and eliminates the meaning of other non-human resources.
Congruence Model
Congruence model is a more complex tool. It is based on a systematic approach to an organization as an open system in a bilateral constant interaction with the surrounding environment (Cheung, 2007). Among the environmental factors that affect the organization are environment, resources (capital, materials, and staff), the history and strategy of the organization, which are distinguished as inputs. On the other hand, the results of the organization have an impact on the environmental factors, such as organizational, group and individual behavior, and intergroup relations. Also, there are internal transformative processes including tasks, people, and formal and informal organization.
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The advantage of this model is that it reveals the consistency of factors of external and internal environment. In addition, it allows controlling further organizational changes. During the implementation of the change, stages of motivation to change, management transition and the formation of the dynamics of the organization are provided gradually. The disadvantage of this approach for Whole Food Market is that congruence aligns information on the impact of various factors, which t may lead to an inadequate perception of the mixed signals.
Burke-Litwin Model
Burke-Litwin Model most fully reflects the content and communication of internal variables diagnosed in Whole Food Market. Burke and Litwin distinguished different elements (Martins & Coetzee, 2009). The model is developed for the analysis of the process of organizational change. However, it should be noted that organizational changes occur due to changes in the external environment (competitive environment, technological breakthroughs, government regulation) and affect the outcome of an activity.
The advantages of the Burke-Litwin Model are the use of a systematic approach, a clear reflection of the hierarchy of factors, the allocation of key elements, transactional and transformational processes, organizational behavior, a reflection of the causal relationship between the elements, group and individual efficiency, and a detailed description of the influence these factors have. The model is highly theoretically elaborated.
However, the model of Burke-Litwin does not pay enough attention to the variable “technology”. Information technologies and their impact on the enterprise subsystem are not included in the model. Instead, it negatively influences the competitive advantage, strategy, business processes, organizational structure, leadership, organizational culture and climate, the system of incentives, staff competency, etc.
Issues of Whole Food Market
The company faced the difficulty in determining the qualitative characteristics of personnel, relevant reasons for their employment, and low rates of capacity of growth market (Darby, Batte, Ernst, & Roe, 2008). One of the direct causes of the predicament of Whole Food Market is the difficulty of the growth dynamics, when the organization is ready for a transition to a different state of development, but it retards the growth and development by lacking organizational changes. Further funding problems were poorly reflected in planning documents on future development. In addition, the reason why the company ceases to be an independent organization is the weakness of reaction to fluctuations and signals of the market.
The main task of the company’s management is to create conditions for its activities in such a way that the employees would contribute to corporate goals with a minimum expenditure of funds, time, effort and materials, and with minimal disruption of organizational order. Furthermore, Whole Food Market needs to develop interrelated principles of staff employment and management as these resources are strategically important for ongoing and ultimate performance. Although the resource potential of the organization is significant and includes strong financial and tangible support, human resources determine the main directions and perspectives of organizational development and market growth (Diamond, 2008).
Suitable Model
The best approach to organizational diagnostics of the company is provided by the 7S model: it accurately describes the most relevant issues of economic value for the company’s activities and presents appropriate tools to identify and eliminate existing problems. The 7S model takes into account all the elements of the internal environment of the organization and their alignment to the external influence and conditions of economic development (Vitale, Armenakis, & Feild, 2008).
All compositional elements of the model are shaped by the employees of the company. Consequently, their participation in different organizational changes and the entire company’s transformational processes will encourage human resource management to improve the most problematic processes, address the challenges, increase internal efficiency, and ensure competitive flexibility of Whole Food Market.
The binding values allow Whole Food Market to determine the performance of staff and their single-minded focus on the expected ultimate results. Hence, the company’s operations would get a more successful focused vector of functioning, which would improve its competitiveness on the market. As the strategy, as a part of the model, includes the strategic objectives with the action plans to achieve them, the involvement of staff of Whole Food Market would be the criterion of selection of leaders and formation of diverse career opportunities, which means an improvement of quality indicators of human resources.
Systems in the model include processes and procedures involving all employees. Consequently, the structure will be easier to reshape in case of any organizational changes and external influences (Bissell & Keim, 2008). This aspect, among other circumstances, outlines the characteristics of flexibility of Whole Food Market. In addition, the system approach to all organizational resources would integrate and rationally distribute this resource potential of Whole Food Market.
Staff acts as the central element in the organizational diagnosis of the company. Their qualitative and quantitative composition should be reviewed, taking into account compliance with professional duties, social and financial business capabilities, and the features of the socio-economic system. However, to shape a new image of the organization, top management should change the style of work. A competent approach would identify organizational leaders that would encourage the company to better adhere to social responsibility, corporate culture, and values. The further step is training appropriate skills that can be used in the development of growth strategies and recruiting new employees.
Conclusion
In summary, the tools of organizational diagnosis include diverse models and methods which facilitate proper and relevant understanding and assessment of necessary issues emerging in the activity of any company. Before the next organizational phase of its existence, Whole Food Market and its potential partners can assess its capabilities and potential through the application of the 7S model, the Congruence Model, the Burke-Litwin Model, and others. They have both advantages and disadvantages when used in different business spheres. The challenging issues relate to the disadvantages in recruiting processes of the company and its employees striving for promotion and development. Organizational diagnosis and improvement of these problems are possible through the use of 7S model as the most adequate and relevant to the peculiarities of the company’s condition.