The concept of congruence is not new one.
George Homans in his pioneering work on social
processes in organizations emphasized the inter
action and consistency among key elements of
organizational behavior. Harold Leavitt, for
example, identified four major components of or
ganization as being people, tasks, technology, and
structure. The model we will present here builds
on these views and also draws from fit models
developed and used by James Seiler, Paul Law
rence and Jay Lorsch, and Jay Lorsch and Alan
Sheldon.
It is important co remember that we are con
cerned about creating model for behavioral sys
tems of the organization—the system of elements
that ultimately produce behavior patterns and, in
turn, organizational performance. Put simply, we
need to deal with questions of the inputs the sys
tem has to work with, the outputs it must pro
duce, the major components of the transformation
process, and the ways in which these components
interact.