Thanks for pointing this out, Silburn.  This is exactly the kind of work I feel is very important for my fellow enterprise architects to understand and bring into our work.  

I can't answer your question from the literature, but in my cursory look at the original paper, it seems relevant and useful to me.

Here's where I found the paper: http://documents.reflectlearn.org/Offline%20OA%20Models%20and%20Frameworks/BurkeLitwin_ACausalModelofOrganizationalPerformance.pdf

For decades, organizations felt comfortable with policies, strategies, structures, systems, and business processes that kept them in the middle of the road—it made sense: after all, that is where clients stood or sat. These days, however, the middle of the road is the road to nowhere: there is so much change; there is so much pressure. There are so many different ways of doing everything that business-as-usual is dead. Without going into details, I am not sure such models as the McKinsey 7S Framework or the Burke–Litwin Model can serve sufficiently well in the 21st century: they are too tightly wedded to Taylorism.

In 1994–1995, Sumantra Ghoshal and Christopher Bartlett published a trilogy of articles on Changing the Role of Top Management. The first, Beyond Strategy to Purpose, set the scene and argued that purpose—not strategy—is the reason an organization exists. In that and in the other two pieces, they recommended that organizations should move beyond strategy, structure, and systems to a framework built on purpose, processes, and people. They reckoned that a fatal flaw of the traditional strategy–structure–systems construct—which of course owes to scientific management mindsets—is the intention to minimize the idiosyncrasies of human behavior. They recommended (i) less emphasis on following clear strategic plans, and more importance to defining engaging purposes; (ii) less focus on formal structures, and more attention to effective processes; and (iii) less concern for control through systems, and more appreciation of capabilities and perspectives.

@Olivier Serrat -  I wonder if you could elucidate the areas of Burke and Litwin's paper that exhibit some degrees of Taylorism?  I fear that I'm missing that implication as I read their work.  It's interesting that you imply a rather dated mindset to these authors, and then offer a counterpoint that was published one year after their paper.  Is it contingent on the fact that they do not actually use the word "purpose" in their publication?

Doug / Olivier,

Thank you both for sharing those contrasting perspectives.  Appreciate the tie-in to Ghoshal & Bartlett

Prof Sumatra Ghoshal and Chris Bartlett certainly thought that the strategy, structure, systems paradigm was ill-fitted to the requirements of modern organisations and had started moving to develop what they characterized as a "managerial theory of the firm".  Their book "Individualized Corporation" asserted the notion that successful modern competitive firms were,  at their core,  people-powered. They rejected the notion of business management as being one solely of viewing, treating and managing organisation members as  "rational utility maximizers" ;  terming leaders and managers of firms with that approach "worn-out mindsets".  Entities needed to be driven by vision and purpose and less by a sterile economic strategy; be people-centred rather than systems-focused and more attentive to processes rather than structures.  The old hierarchical top-down command-and-control management model / mindset (Taylorist ?)  of constraint, control, contract and compliance needed to give way to a culture of stretch, support, trust and discipline respectively.  These four dimensions were indicators of what they termed the "quality of management" - see paper "Linking Organizational Context and Managerial Action: The Dimensions of Quality of Management" attached.

In contrast,  Burke & Litwin appears to have embarked on a rather ambitious approach to build out a broad holistic framework for firm-level explanations of performance and output. I take Olivier’s point that the danger of a broad firm-level model is that it would severely masks the idiosyncratic behaviours associated with individual humans in organisations. And so to the extent that man in the organisation is treated as merely an economic cog in a wheel (ie a rational utility maximizer driven solely by self-interest and opportunistic behaviour),  then to that extent the model may be regarded as Taylorist. The critique rests largely on the grounds that there is no one ‘organisation man’ type and hence no one ‘managerial’ or ‘supervisor’ behaviour nor any one ‘employee’ behaviour. On the other hand, while Burke & Litwin relies on strategy, structure, systems they also recognised that individual needs and motivations of employees varied. The question becomes; was the model sufficiently fine-grained to effectively take into account these human  differences at the individual level in the workplace..

Interestingly, the perspective of the individual-level Self-determination Theory (SDT) by Deci & Ryan entered the consideration of both the work of Ghoshal & Bartlett as well as that of Burke & Litwin. Ghoshal & Bartletts 1994 piece (attached) references Deci Connel and Ryan 1989 on SDT and Work Motivation while Burke & Litwin references Deci’s 1975 book on Intrinsic Motivation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUddgE8rI0E

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/40960987_Linking_Organizational_Context_and_Managerial_Action_The_Dimensions_of_Quality_of_Management

Article Linking Organizational Context and Managerial Action: The Di...

Silburn, just to follow up briefly, to try to get to a shared understanding of the question you raised, and the various reactions, I want to question your characterization of Burke & Litwin as Taylorist.  You suggest that their position "man in the organisation is treated as merely an economic cog in a wheel".  Yet, here is what they actually say about individual needs and values "Many behavioral scientists believe that enriched jobs enhance motivation, and there is evidence to support this belief."  They note that not all workers look for enriched jobs, but they say "As the American workforce continues to become more diverse, the ability to understand differences among people regarding their needs and values with respect to work and job satisfaction increases in importance."  And about motivation they say that it is "the resultant net energy generated by the sum of achievement, power, affection, discovery, and other important human motives."  Somehow that doesn't strike me as a view that treats people as mere economic cogs in a wheel.

I think it's worth reminding ourselves of the specific problem (the 'greatest evil') that Frederick Taylor addressed in his book The Principles of Scientific Management.  I have added the italics in the last sentence. "Whenever an American workman plays baseball, or an English workman plays cricket, it is safe to say that he strains every nerve to secure victory for his side. He does his very best to make the largest possible number of runs. The universal sentiment is so strong that any man who fails to give out all there is in him in sport is branded as a "quitter," and treated with contempt by those who are around him. When the same workman returns to work on the following day, instead of using every effort to turn out the largest possible amount of work, in a majority of the cases this man deliberately plans to do as little as he safely can to turn out far less work than he is well able to do in many instances to do not more than one-third to one-half of a proper day's work. And in fact if he were to do his best to turn out his largest possible day's work, he would be abused by his fellow-workers for so doing, even more than if he had proved himself a "quitter" in sport. Under working, that is, deliberately working slowly so as to avoid doing a full day's work, "soldiering," as it is called in this country, "hanging it out," as it is called in England, "ca canae," as it is called in Scotland, is almost universal in industrial establishments, and prevails also to a large extent in the building trades; and the writer asserts without fear of contradiction that this constitutes the greatest evil with which the working-people of both England and America are now afflicted."

The view that workers need a system of some kind to overcome their pervasive and intentional laziness is fundamental to Taylorism.  If your question, Silburn, is really whether the Burke & Litwin model was "sufficiently fine-grained to effectively take into account these human differences at the individual level in the workplace", maybe not.  It certainly seems to point in that direction, though. 

My main point is that I just have this feeling that 'Taylorism' is a very pejorative term, based on the world view of its originator. It doesn't seem to me to apply very strongly to Burke & Litwin.

Doug,

Love the perspective in the excerpts from the Principles of Scientific Management.

I support the observation that Burke & Litwin had referenced individual level issues and noted that the perspective of the individual-level Self-determination Theory (SDT) by Deci & Ryan entered the consideration of their work through their engagement with individual concepts drawn from Deci’s 1975 Intrinsic Motivation.  

My challenge was whether the model really accommodated individual variables like motivation, needs and task behaviour although the authors spoke about them

The model sought to capture environmental issues, firm-level issues and these individual level variables and so the Burke&Litwin model was in reality only properly implementable as  a multi-level model.  But did this really occur ?  The model seems heavily weighted to a firm-level unit of analysis

To the extent that the model may not be able to ingest individual-level variables, then to that extent it would effectively treat individual differences as one black box.  It is within that context that the observation of a Taylorist model was made ie that the fine-grain necessary for individual-level analysis appears not to be implementable in the model.  Not meant as a comment on worker laziness or to be pejorative. 

Thanks for everything, Silburn.  To emphasize the point I alluded to in my first response, my interest here is as an enterprise architect.  I'm on a bit of a mission, with a few colleagues,  to take the EA discipline into an understanding of all dimensions of 'the architecture of enterprise'.  The Burke & Litwin model has a strong architectural feel to it, so I appreciate that you introduced me to it via your question here.

Take care!