Burke-Litwin Model of Organizational Change: 12 Drivers Explained

By Brian Tr · Updated Oct 10, 2026

The Burke-Litwin model is a causal framework from W. Warner Burke and George Litwin that links 12 organizational drivers to performance and change. It splits them into transformational factors, such as strategy, leadership and culture, and transactional factors, such as structure, systems and motivation, so you can see which levers move the whole system.

Use it when a change effort keeps stalling and you suspect you're fixing the wrong layer. This guide covers each of the 12 drivers, how the model compares with other change frameworks, a step-by-step diagnostic, and a template you can copy.

Key Facts

• Originators: W. Warner Burke and George H. Litwin, in "A Causal Model of Organizational Performance and Change," Journal of Management, 1992, volume 18, issue 3, pages 523 to 545.
• Core idea: organizations are open systems. Change in some drivers (the transformational ones) pulls much harder on everything else than change in others (the transactional ones).
• Size: 12 interrelated drivers, from the external environment at the top to individual and organizational performance at the bottom.
• Best used for: diagnosing why a change isn't landing, and deciding where to intervene first.
• Closest relatives: the McKinsey 7S framework, the Nadler-Tushman congruence model, Kotter's 8-step change model, and Lewin's change management model.
• Common failure: retraining people or redesigning processes when the real problem sits in strategy, leadership or culture.

What is the Burke-Litwin model?

Burke and Litwin set out to explain two things at once: how an organization performs, and how change actually happens inside it. According to the abstract of their 1992 article, they argue that a model of performance and change has to draw on two lines of theory, organizational functioning and organizational change. And they go beyond description by proposing causal links that hypothesize how performance is affected and how effective change occurs.

Their sharpest point is the difference between two kinds of change. Per the same abstract, transformational change happens as a response to the external environment and directly affects mission and strategy, leadership and culture. Those shifts then flow into what the authors call the transactional factors: structure, systems, management practices and climate. Together, the two sets affect motivation, and motivation affects performance.

That ordering is the practical takeaway. Most change programs start at the bottom: a new tool, a training day, a revised process. The Burke-Litwin model says those moves are real but narrow. If the mission has quietly shifted, or leadership sends mixed signals, tweaking procedures won't hold.

The model also sits on open-systems thinking. An overview in Frontiers in Organizational Psychology describes it as a framework for diagnosing organizational systems, rooted in open systems theory, with twelve interrelated variables. The environment feeds the organization, the organization produces performance, and performance feeds back to everything else.

Transformational vs transactional factors

Burke and Litwin treat the two groups as different kinds of change, not just different topics.

The wording on depth comes from the Frontiers overview, which also notes that the model is hierarchical, with transformational variables exerting broader influence, yet stresses reciprocal causality through its bidirectional arrows. So culture can shape systems, and systems can reinforce or erode culture.

If the distinction between the two kinds of change feels familiar, it echoes the leadership idea in transformational vs transactional leadership. That's a related contrast, applied to leaders rather than to organizational change.

The 12 drivers explained

Here's each box in the model, grouped the way the framework presents them. The names below follow the Frontiers overview of the model.

A note on grouping. Some summaries file motivation and performance in the lower half with the transactional factors, which is how the Frontiers overview lists them. The original abstract puts it slightly differently: transformational and transactional factors together affect motivation, which in turn affects performance. Both readings point to the same conclusion. Motivation and performance are what the other ten drivers are trying to move.

1. External environment

This is the input to the system. It's the one driver you can't redesign, only respond to. A new competitor, a regulatory change or a shift in what customers expect all start here, and Burke and Litwin place it at the top because it triggers the deepest changes.

2. Mission and strategy

Mission is why the organization exists. Strategy is how it plans to win. The model asks something subtle: do the people who run the business hold the same view of the mission that the written statement does? If the answers differ, everything downstream will wobble. For tools that help here, see mission vs vision statement.

3. Leadership

Leadership here means the behavior of senior leaders, not a job title. People watch what leaders reward, ignore and tolerate. A strategy memo says one thing; a leader who punishes bad news says another. The second message usually wins.

4. Organizational culture

Culture is the set of unwritten rules about how things get done. It's the slowest driver to move and the most likely to quietly undo a change. A company can install new systems in a quarter and still behave the old way for years.

5. Structure

Structure covers who reports to whom, who decides what, and where work is divided. It's the easiest box to change on paper, which is why reorganizations are so popular. The model's warning: changing the org chart without touching strategy or culture mostly rearranges the same behavior.

6. Management practices

These are the day-to-day habits of managers: how they set goals, give feedback, run meetings and make calls. A company can have a clear strategy and still fail here, when middle managers translate it into very different instructions.

7. Systems

Systems are the policies and procedures that standardize work: performance reviews, budgeting, hiring, incentive plans, reporting. If you want people to behave differently, check what these systems pay for. Misaligned incentives are the classic reason a new strategy gets ignored.

8. Work unit climate

Climate is how it feels to work in a particular team: trust, fairness, clarity, psychological safety. Two teams in the same company can have very different climates. That's why a company-wide message lands well in one department and flops in the next.

9. Task requirements and individual skills/abilities

This box asks about fit. Does the job, as designed, match what the person in it can do? Too little challenge bores people; too much without support burns them out. It's where training, hiring and job design show up.

10. Individual needs and values

People bring their own priorities to work: security, growth, recognition, purpose, flexibility. A change that ignores these gets compliance at best. The question for leaders is whether the new direction gives people a reason that matters to them.

11. Motivation

Motivation is the energy people put toward goals. In the model, it's where the transformational and transactional forces meet before they show up in results. You can't order it; you can only shape the conditions around it.

12. Individual and organizational performance

Performance is the outcome: output, quality, productivity, results. It also feeds back. Weak numbers pressure leadership and strategy, and strong ones reinforce current practices.

How the model compares with other change frameworks

The Burke-Litwin model isn't a change process. It's a diagnostic map. Several better-known frameworks answer neighboring questions.

A sensible pairing: use Burke-Litwin to find where the problem lives, then use a process model such as Kotter's or Lewin's to carry out the change, and ADKAR to track whether individuals are moving with it. If your issue is about turning plans into results, strategy execution is the companion topic.

How to use the Burke-Litwin model as a diagnostic

1. Name the problem in performance terms. Write down the result that's off: missed targets, slow delivery, high attrition. This is box 12, and it keeps the exercise tied to something measurable.
2. Scan the external environment. What has changed outside in the last two or three years? List regulation, competitors, customer expectations and technology shifts.
3. Check mission and strategy. Ask five leaders to describe the strategy in one sentence each. Compare the answers with each other and with the written version.
4. Examine leadership and culture. Look at what's actually rewarded, tolerated and talked about. Use short interviews or a pulse survey rather than assumptions.
5. Walk down the transactional boxes. For structure, management practices, systems, climate, task fit, needs and values, and motivation, ask: does this support the strategy, or work against it?
6. Mark the gaps and trace the links. Draw the arrows. If a gap in culture explains a gap in systems, the culture issue comes first.
7. Choose the highest-leverage fix. Prefer changes high in the model that explain several lower-level symptoms. Fix transactional items too, but expect them to hold only if the upper layers support them.
8. Plan the change, then re-run the diagnostic. Use a process model for execution. Revisit the 12 drivers after a few months to see what moved.

Burke-Litwin diagnostic template

Copy this table into a spreadsheet and fill one row per driver. Rate alignment with strategy from 1 (poor) to 5 (strong).

Fill the "Linked drivers" column carefully. It's the one that turns a list of problems into a causal story, and it's where most of the insight comes from.

Examples by business function

These are illustrative scenarios, not real companies.

Take a hypothetical software company whose support team keeps missing response targets. The first instinct is training. The diagnostic suggests another look: leadership has been announcing a premium-service strategy while the incentive system pays for ticket volume. The transformational message and the transactional system pull in opposite directions. Fixing the incentive plan to match the strategy will do more than another workshop.

Do's and don'ts

Do:

• Start with a measurable performance problem, not a general sense that things feel off.
• Test whether leaders agree on the strategy before changing anything else.
• Follow the arrows. Ask which driver is causing another one.
• Collect evidence from several levels: executives, managers and frontline staff.
• Pair the diagnosis with a process model for the actual rollout.

Don't:

• Treat the 12 boxes as a checklist where each gets equal effort.
• Start with training or tools because they're easy to fund.
• Confuse a reorganization with transformational change.
• Run the diagnostic with executives alone. Climate and motivation show up lower down.
• Expect a one-time diagnosis to stay accurate when the environment keeps moving.

Common mistakes

Fixing symptoms in the lower layers. If the problem is a strategy mismatch, a new process won't solve it. The model's whole point is to push you to look upward.

Ignoring reciprocal effects. The arrows run both ways. A culture shift can stall because the systems below keep rewarding the old behavior.

Treating culture as a slogan. Culture is what people actually do under pressure, not what's printed on a wall. Diagnose it through behavior and stories.

Rating everything by opinion. Without evidence, workshop discussions drift toward the loudest voice. Back each rating with data, interviews or observed examples.

Stopping at the diagnosis. The model identifies where to intervene. It doesn't tell you how to lead the change, so you still need a plan, sponsors and follow-through.