Achieving content representativeness in organizational diagnosis

An organizational diagnosis provides analysts with information on which to base and plan an appropriate intervention to improve an organization’s functioning. In many instances, the data collected are from a sample of an organization’s population. However, the information collected must be considered representative of the whole organization. In this article, we discuss the importance of response rate in organizational surveys and non-response bias in achieving the necessary representativeness. We describe an action research project in which we involved members of a high-tech organization. Our data were collected through interviews and an anonymous web survey representing 42 percent of the organization’s population. We describe how we employed action groups to determine the content representativeness of our data. This step was deemed necessary before initiating the action planning step. We propose a guideline for action researchers to apply during organizational diagnoses requiring respondent anonymity.