PSYCH 668 Week 5 OD Diagnosis and Action Research Example

Why Day Shift Keeps Quitting: An Action Research Diagnosis Using the Congruence and Burke-Litwin Models

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

PSYCH/668: Organizational Development, Leadership, and Management

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The distributor, its employees, the survey and all figures are composites written for a model paper; theories and models come from the sources listed.

Leadership analysis in earlier weeks explained part of our company's difficulties, but the most expensive problem remains unsolved. Day-shift turnover among warehouse employees reached 68 percent last year, while night shift held at 22 percent. Greg, the president, has proposed a pay increase. Before the company spends money, this paper diagnoses the problem through action research.

Action Research as the Frame

Lewin (1946) described action research as research tied to social action, carried out as a spiral of steps in which each step involves planning, taking action and gathering facts about the results, which then informs the next round of planning. He argued that research producing only reports would not change practice and that the people affected by a problem should take part in studying it.

For our diagnosis, that meant forming a steering group before collecting any data: two day-shift pickers, one night-shift picker, Teresa as a lead, a day supervisor and me. The group helped write survey items and interview questions, reviewed preliminary results and will help decide what to do.

Data Sources

We used four sources. A twenty-five-item anonymous survey on supervision, scheduling, training, workload, pay and belonging was completed by 118 of 142 warehouse employees, an 83 percent response rate. A college intern conducted twenty confidential interviews with current and former day-shift employees. We analyzed eighteen months of exit records and compared scheduling and attendance data across shifts.

What the Data Showed

Pay was not the leading concern. On a five-point scale, day-shift satisfaction with pay averaged 2.9, only slightly below night shift's 3.1. The largest gaps involved supervision, where day shift averaged 2.4 and night shift 3.9; schedule predictability, 2.2 against 3.6; and the belief that "my supervisor would help me if I had a family emergency," 2.1 against 4.0.

Interviews filled in the picture. Day-shift pickers, many of them parents of school-age children, described schedules posted on Thursday for the following Monday, mandatory overtime announced at noon and attendance points for leaving to pick up a sick child. Exit records showed that forty percent of day-shift departures occurred within ninety days of hiring and that departures clustered after attendance point warnings.

The numbers say people are not leaving for a dollar more an hour; they are leaving because the schedule makes their lives impossible.

The Congruence Model

Nadler and Tushman (1980) proposed a model for diagnosing organizations as open systems. Inputs from the environment, resources and history shape strategy, which is carried out through a transformation process with four components: the work or tasks, the individuals who do them, the formal organizational arrangements such as structure and policies and the informal organization of norms, relationships and communication. Outputs occur at the individual, group and organizational levels. The central idea is that performance depends on congruence, the fit among these components, and that problems arise where components are mismatched.

Applying the Congruence Model

The task of picking is now standardized and fast-paced. The individuals on day shift are younger and more often parents than night-shift veterans. The formal arrangements, a rigid attendance points system, short-notice schedules and supervisors measured on rates, were designed for efficiency. The informal organization on day shift is fragmented, with few lasting relationships, while night shift has a strong informal network around Teresa.

The poorest fit lies between individuals and formal arrangements. Parents of young children cannot meet short-notice overtime and a points system that treats a sick child the same as an unexplained absence. On night shift, Teresa's informal flexibility softens the same rules, which helps explain the turnover gap.

The Burke-Litwin Model

Burke and Litwin (1992) linked twelve components in a model of what drives performance and change. Four of the components, in their account, are transformational: the outside environment, the organization's mission and strategy, its leadership and its culture. Shifting these takes deep change, usually prompted from outside. The remaining components are transactional, including structure, day-to-day management practices, systems and policies, the climate of a work unit, the fit between tasks and skills, individual needs and values and motivation, and these respond to steadier, more routine improvement. Changes in transformational factors tend to drive changes in transactional ones, and both affect individual and organizational performance.

Applying Burke-Litwin

Our data point mostly to transactional factors: management practices of day supervisors, scheduling and attendance systems and day-shift work unit climate. These are fixable without remaking the company's culture. But one transformational factor, leadership, sits above them: Greg's emphasis on efficiency set the priorities supervisors follow. Lasting change in supervision will require that the president signal that retention matters as much as rates.

Feeding Back the Findings

Action research requires that findings return to the people who provided data. The steering group will present results in short sessions on each shift, show the main charts and quotes without identifying anyone and ask employees whether the diagnosis matches their experience and what they would change. Their responses will shape the intervention plan next week. If employees reject part of the diagnosis, the steering group will treat that as data and return to the interviews before acting, which is the cycle Lewin described.

What Supervisors Said

Day supervisors were interviewed too, and their view complicates the picture. They described being judged almost entirely on picks per hour and on-time loading, with no measure of retention, and said they had no authority to approve schedule swaps or excuse an absence for a family emergency. Two said they privately agreed the points system was unfair but feared being seen as soft. In congruence terms, the formal arrangements for supervisors are as misaligned as those for pickers: the people who could fix the scheduling problem are rewarded for ignoring it. Any intervention aimed only at pickers would leave this second misfit untouched.

Limits of the Diagnosis

Because the survey captures one moment, it can link conditions to attitudes but cannot prove one causes the other. Former employees willing to be interviewed may not speak for those who declined. And comparisons between shifts are confounded by differences in workforce age and tenure. Still, four sources point in the same direction, which increases confidence.

Why Not Just Raise Pay?

Greg's instinct to raise pay is understandable, since higher wages at nearby warehouses are real competition. But the diagnosis suggests that a raise would treat a secondary symptom while leaving the main causes untouched. Pay satisfaction differed little between shifts, while turnover differed greatly, and departures clustered around attendance warnings, not pay dates. A modest raise could still help recruitment, but without changes in scheduling and supervision, new hires would meet the same conditions and leave at the same rate. Spending the money on flexibility and supervisor development is likely to buy more retention per dollar.

Conclusion

Day-shift turnover is driven less by pay than by a misfit between rigid scheduling and attendance systems and a workforce of working parents, reinforced by supervision focused on rates. Action research involved employees in finding this out, and two diagnostic models located where change will matter most.

References

Burke, W. W., & Litwin, G. H. (1992). A causal model of organizational performance and change. Journal of Management, 18(3), 523-545. https://doi.org/10.1177/014920639201800306

Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 34-46. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1946.tb02295.x

Nadler, D. A., & Tushman, M. L. (1980). A model for diagnosing organizational behavior. Organizational Dynamics, 9(2), 35-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/0090-2616(80)90039-X