Friday, June 12, 2009

How do you construct a questionnaire for the purpose of organisational diagnosis?

How do you construct a questionnaire for the purpose of organisational diagnosis? Discuss this with reference to your organisation or an organisation you are familiar with. Describe the organisation you are referring to.

Organisational diagnosis
Organisation is a framework that works when operated by people. The purpose or mission of an organisation provides the direction in which it moves. An organisation has several parts each having its own independent minds and they may not always function in a fully unified way. An organisation can put itself through periodic check ups or diagnostic exercises to assess its growth, dynamism, strength, weaknesses etc.
Most of the calculated management decisions are based on some sort of diagnosis. Every manager irrespective of his level, is in a continuous cycle of diagnosis-decision-action –evaluation, so long as his decisions and actions are not impulsive.
Organisational diagnosis is an exercise attempted to make an analysis of the organisation, its structure, subsystems and processes in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of its structural components and processes and use it as a base for developing plans to improve and/or maximise the dynamism and effectiveness of the organisation
Organisational diagnosis could be done as a periodic routine exercise like the case of periodic medical check up of an individual or may be undertaken whenever there is a cognizable problem that is affecting the functioning of an organisation.
The approaches to organisational diagnosis vary not only with the nature of relationship between the diagnostic and the organisation, but in a very substantive way depends on: (a) the preferred domain of diagnosis,(b) the methodology adopted in diagnosing, and (c) the assumptions in diagnosing.
Since, I am working as Manager (HRD) with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL).Today, BSNL is the No. 1 Telecommunications Company and the largest Public Sector Undertaking of India and its responsibilities include improvement of the already impeccable quality of telecom services, expansion of telecom network, introduction of new telecom services in all villages and instilling confidence among its customers.
Responsibilities that BSNL has managed to shoulder remarkably, deftly. Today with a 43million line capacity, 99.9% of its exchanges digital, nation wide Network management & surveillance system (NMSS) to control telecom traffic and nearly 3,55,632 route kms of OFC network, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd is a name to reckon with in the world of connectivity. Along with its vast customer base, BSNL's financial and asset bases too are vast and strong.
Being a Personnel Manager of such a large organization, I am quite aware of the process of workshop method being followed in our organisation for organisational diagnosis.

Questionnaire is a very useful diagnostic tool. There are several questionnaire developed by organisational scientists in our country that are useful for diagnostic purposes. These questionnaire could be used with appropriate modifications to suit the diagnostic needs of each organisation. It is advisable to develop organisation specific questionnaire for diagnosing problems unique to the organisation. Comparative data may be available if standardised questionnaire are used for general diagnosis purposes. Participative methods of developing questionnaire enhance the quality of questionnaire through increasing the organisational relevance of items.

Ready made questionnaire have some limitations and some advantages. One advantage is that they are normally standardised and data from other organisations (norms etc.) may be available for interpretation and comparison purposes. The main disadvantage is that they may not suit the needs of an organisation seeking diagnosis. For example, most of the available questionnaire are developed in business settings and hence may be of limited value to educational and such other organisations. Secondly an organisation may be interested in having a look at a few specific aspects than studying everything outlined in the questionnaire.

• Questionnaire for organisational diagnosis normally measure the perceptions of employees or participants in an organisation. It is the aggregate of these perceptions that indicate the organisational strengths and short-comings.
• The employees/participants of an organisation sometimes are in a good position to provide dimensions/variables on which questionnaire can be framed. For example, to diagnose the organisational health of an agriculture university a group of scientists of that university were assembled and requested to make statements about what in their opinion is good and bad in the university. All their statements were collected, edited and a questionnaire was made. Subsequently it was administered to all the scientists in the university. Thus interviews/group discussions/meetings/workshops help in developing questionnaire.
• Another form of developing a questionnaire is to sample test any standardised questionnaire on a group of respondents. The respondents could be asked to indicate variables/items that should be used for diagnosis.
• In preparing a questionnaire, structured questionnaire are more easy to analyse data and for providing statistical information.

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