| Course | GB740 Organizational Development |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 2 |
| Paper type | Diagnostic model comparison |
| Length | About 1,330 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | MBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for GB740 Unit 2
Three Models, Three Places to Look: A Unit 2 Diagnostic Model Comparison for a Civil Engineering Firm
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
GB740: Organizational Development
Unit 2 Diagnostic Model Comparison
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Tallis Engineering, its offices and every figure are composite and illustrative; the diagnostic models and sources cited are real.
The Presenting Problem
Tallis Engineering employs 640 people across twelve offices, a firm built over the last decade through two acquisitions: a transportation design firm in 2019 and a water engineering practice in 2024. Its leaders describe the firm's problem in two figures. In 2025, closed projects finished with a median margin 5.8 percentage points below the margin estimated in the winning proposal. And voluntary turnover among project managers reached 19 percent, against about 11 percent among technical staff.
Margin fade has many possible sources: optimistic proposals, scope creep, weak change-order discipline, poor staffing, or clients who pay late. Each diagnostic model below would direct attention to some of these and away from others. The purpose of this paper is to make those directions explicit before any data are gathered, so that the choice of model is a choice about where to look rather than a habit.
Burke-Litwin: Leadership and Culture After Acquisition
Burke and Litwin (1992) split their model in two. Transformational factors sit at the top: what happens outside the firm, its mission and strategy, its leaders and its culture. Transactional factors sit below them and govern daily work, among them structure, the practices of managers, the firm's systems, the climate of work units and the motivation of individuals. In their model, change in the transformational factors drives change throughout the organization, while transactional factors affect day-to-day performance.
Applied to Tallis, the model would look first at leadership and culture. Two acquisitions in five years have brought three different firm cultures under one name. Legacy water offices describe headquarters as distant; headquarters describes the water group as unwilling to integrate. Burke-Litwin would predict that margin fade reflects an unresolved culture, in which project managers working across offices lack shared norms for how projects are run and who owes what to whom. It would recommend examining how leaders communicate the firm's mission and whether staff in acquired offices accept it.
The model's strength is its attention to the effects of acquisition, which are real at Tallis. Its weakness for this problem is that it would take a long time to reach the operational detail of how projects are staffed and costed, and it might attribute to culture a problem that sits in the rules.
Weisbord's Six Boxes: Rewards and Helpful Mechanisms
Weisbord (1976) gave managers six boxes to search: purposes, structure, relationships, rewards, leadership and the helpful mechanisms, meaning budgets, meetings and procedures, that coordinate work. Around all six sits the environment, which pushes on each of them. The model is deliberately practical, designed to give a manager a checklist of places where problems commonly hide.
Applied to Tallis, the six boxes point most strongly toward rewards and helpful mechanisms. Project managers carry a utilization target of 82 percent, meaning that 82 percent of their hours must be billed to clients. Coordination work on a project, such as arranging staff from another office, chasing a subconsultant or reconciling budgets, is often not billable. A project manager who coordinates carefully misses the utilization target; one who skips coordination meets it. The model would predict that margin fade follows from rewards that discourage the coordination projects need, and from weak helpful mechanisms, such as the absence of any system for requesting staff from another office.
The model's strength is its focus on concrete arrangements that can be changed. Its weakness is that it treats the boxes separately, so it may identify problems in rewards and mechanisms without explaining why they matter more now than they did ten years ago.
Nadler-Tushman: Misfit Between Work and Formal Organization
Nadler and Tushman (1980) treat an organization as an open system that turns its inputs into results. Four components do the turning: the tasks to be done, the individuals who do them, the structures and rules the organization writes down and the unwritten norms and relationships that grow up around those rules. Performance depends on the fit, or congruence, between each pair of components. When the work changes and the formal organization does not, misfit results.
Applied to Tallis, the congruence model points to a specific change in the work. Before the acquisitions, most projects were staffed from a single office. In 2025, about 41 percent of the firm's projects drew staff from two or more offices, often because the water and transportation specialties sit in offices different from the client's. But the formal organization still measures each office on its own profit and loss. An office leader who lends an engineer to another office's project loses that engineer's billable hours from their own results. The model would predict that margin fade concentrates on multi-office projects, where the work requires cooperation that the formal organization penalizes.
The model's strength is that it explains why the problem appeared now: the work changed, through acquisition, faster than the formal organization did. Its weakness is that it can understate the informal organization's resilience, since people often find workarounds that make a misfit tolerable for a time.
Burke-Litwin asks who the firm has become, Weisbord asks what it rewards, and Nadler-Tushman asks whether the way it is organized still fits the work it now does.
Comparing the Models
The three models can be compared on six criteria relevant to this study. On explaining timing, Nadler-Tushman is strongest, since it ties the problem to a change in the work, while Weisbord is weakest. On pointing to changeable arrangements, Weisbord and Nadler-Tushman both do well, while Burke-Litwin points toward culture, which changes slowly. On attention to the acquisitions, Burke-Litwin is strongest. On data demands, Weisbord is lightest and Burke-Litwin heaviest, since its twelve components each need measurement. On treatment of the environment, Burke-Litwin and Nadler-Tushman both place it explicitly as an input, while Weisbord treats it more loosely. On testability against project records, Nadler-Tushman is strongest, because its central prediction, that multi-office projects fade more, can be checked against the firm's own data before a single interview.
The Decision
The congruence model is chosen for the remaining units. It explains why the problem appeared after the acquisitions, it points to arrangements the firm can change, and its main prediction can be tested against records of closed projects. If multi-office projects do not fade more than single-office ones, the model's account fails early, and the study can turn to the alternatives.
The choice has costs. The congruence model may miss what Burke-Litwin would catch: that culture after the acquisitions shapes how willingly offices cooperate, regardless of the rules. To reduce that risk, the assessment in Unit 4 will include interview questions about how staff in acquired offices view headquarters, so that cultural explanations can surface even within a congruence frame. And Weisbord's attention to rewards will be carried into the analysis of formal arrangements, since the utilization target is part of the formal organization in Nadler and Tushman's terms.
The First Test the Choice Faces
The congruence model's prediction can be checked within weeks. Finance already codes every closed project by the offices that charged time to it, so the 212 projects closed in 2024 and 2025 can be split into single-office and multi-office groups and their fade compared before any interview is scheduled. If the two groups fade by similar amounts, the misfit account loses its main support, and the assessment would shift toward the cultural questions Burke-Litwin raises. If multi-office projects fade substantially more, the next question is which part of the formal organization produces the gap: the office profit measure, the utilization target, the lack of a staffing process or all three. Either result tells the study where to spend its forty interviews.
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
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
Weisbord, M. R. (1976). Organizational diagnosis: Six places to look for trouble with or without a theory. Group & Organization Studies, 1(4), 430-447. https://doi.org/10.1177/105960117600100405
Reading the GB 740 Unit 2 instructions
The second GB740 assignment asks you to compare diagnostic models against a real presenting problem and choose one. Start with the problem in figures, so each model has something concrete to explain. Give each model its own section stating how it describes an organization, where it would look first at your site and what it predicts about the cause. Name each model's strength and weakness for this problem specifically. Then compare the models on criteria that matter for your study, such as data demands, attention to the environment and whether the main prediction can be tested. Choose one model and justify the choice. Explain what the chosen model may miss and how your assessment will guard against that. Seven pages with a comparison table or matrix is a common length for this work.
How this GB740 Unit 2 example is built
The paper opens with Tallis Engineering's history of acquisitions, the 5.8 point fade and the turnover figure, and explains why model choice decides where to look. Burke-Litwin's transformational and transactional factors are applied to three firm cultures under one name. Weisbord's boxes lead to rewards and helpful mechanisms, with the utilization target as the clearest example. The congruence model ties fade to the 41 percent of projects that now draw staff from several offices. A highlighted sentence contrasts the three questions the models ask. Six criteria compare them, a decision section explains the choice, and a final section shows how the records of 212 projects can test the prediction within weeks.
Where the points sit in the GB740 Unit 2 rubric
Marks in the GB740 model comparison go to the quality of the predictions. Each model should be applied to the organization, so that the reader learns where it would send the researcher and what cause it would expect. Instructors give weight to strengths and weaknesses stated for this problem rather than copied from a textbook. The comparison earns credit when its criteria fit the study, especially testability against data the organization already holds. A choice backed by reasons drawn from the setting scores higher than one backed by preference. Naming what the chosen model may miss, and planning around it, also draws points in nearly every section. Citing Burke and Litwin, Weisbord, and Nadler and Tushman from the original articles demonstrates doctoral reading.
GB740 Unit 2 help from the desk
GB740 comparisons often summarize the three models without ever testing them against the firm being studied, so the comparison cannot show a difference. Some students choose the model they know best and then search for reasons. Weaknesses are frequently listed as generic limitations, such as being complex, instead of what the model would miss in this firm. The presenting problem is sometimes stated only in words, leaving the models nothing measurable to explain. Few papers say how the chosen model's prediction could be checked. State the problem in numbers, apply each model to it, name strengths and blind spots for this case, compare on criteria that matter, choose with reasons and plan a first test. Send us your presenting problem, and we can apply the models to it.
Get a GB740 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
Identify the organization and presenting problem you will follow all term, list the models assigned for comparison, and include the Unit 2 prompt and rubric. A custom comparison that reads each model for what it forecasts, then chooses, arrives in 24-48h. There is no fee for a first request. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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- GB740 Unit 6: Seminar Reflection
- GB740 Unit 7: Intervention Proposal
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GB740 Unit 2 questions, answered
Must the Unit 2 comparison cover exactly three models?
Instructions differ. Some sections ask for two models compared and one chosen, others for a chosen model defended against two alternatives. The analytical work is the same: what each model predicts for this organization, what it would miss and why the chosen one fits the evidence. Adding a fourth model rarely helps unless it covers a gap the others leave.
Can a model be chosen before the data are in?
It has to be, to some extent, since the model shapes what data are gathered. That is why doctoral sections ask for the choice to be justified against the presenting problem and for its blind spots to be named. A candidate who states what evidence would make the choice look wrong has handled the circularity honestly.
Are newer diagnostic approaches acceptable alongside the classic models?
Often, and some sections encourage them. Complexity-based and dialogic approaches offer useful critiques of models that assume a stable system. The comparison still needs a clear choice for the term, and a newer approach used as a lens on the classic models can be stronger than one substituted for them without argument.
Where can I find a free GB740 Unit 2 sample paper?
A complete GB740 Unit 2 diagnostic model comparison is on this page, applying Burke-Litwin, Weisbord's six boxes and the congruence model to margin fade at a civil engineering firm.
What does congruence mean in the Nadler-Tushman model?
It means fit between components such as the work, the people, the formal structure and the informal norms. When the work changes and the formal structure does not, performance suffers.