Organisational Change

7.2.3 Normative Approach

Another approach pursued by the diagnostician is essentially normative. The organisation, at the point of time of diagnosis, is as if sick and, therefore, deviant from the normal. The role of the diagnostician is to find out where the deviation exists and also to estimate the nature and magnitude of these deviations such that ameliorative, corrective action can be taken to revert it back to the normal. This is the stance of the physicians in diagnosing patients' ailments. When they find that the deterioration is irreversible, they attempt to arrest or retard further progress of the disease. Some “business healers” tend to follow the same principle.

The assumptions about organisational diagnosis have been influenced by ...