SOWO 874: Introduction to Organizational Theories

Walter C. Farrell, Jr., ProfessorManagement and Community Practice

School of Social WorkUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillChapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3550

wfarrell@email.unc.edu

Nature of Human Service Organizations (HSOs)

HSOs can be contradictory to clients and workers Is this the case? If so, explain

Workers have a goal to help people

HSOs offer intrinsic and extrinsic benefits

HSOs can also cause frustration

Clients are the “raw material? Is this TRUE?

HSOs process, sustain, or attempt to change people

Human Services as Moral Work

Moral judgments and statements of social work

Diagnostic labels----statements of social worth

Allocation of resources:

Rationing

The Deserving Client Explain

Gendered Work Women have been historically assigned caretaker

roles

Patriarchal ideology---women as nurturers

Women are the majority of frontline workers

Conflict between women’s contributions to social work and HSO norms and values

Devaluation of women’s work in human services: in earnings, positions, and social status

Note Frances Perkins—The Woman Behind the New Deal (Kirstin Downey 2009), the driving force behind social security in the 1930s

The Primacy of Institutional Environment

HSOs conform to dominant cultural, social symbols, and belief systems of “interest groups” in their environments

HSOs’ access to resources is dependent on their adherence to environmental norms

HSOs’ technical proficiency matters less than the ability to accommodate the escalating, often competing “diversity” in their service areas

HSO rules and legitimacy are in flux

Moral Entrepreneurs and Cyclical Legitimacy

HSOs influence public perceptions of their clients:

parents as partners

consumers as potential welfare cheats

Cycles occur within the communities of HSOs:

Support for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) 1965

1996 Welfare Reform: Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act (PRWRA)

PRWRA changed the perception of welfare from allowing “dependency” to mandating “work”

Human Service Technologies as Enactment of Practice Ideologies

Technologies are socially approved and sanctioned

State Plans are best judgments of “best practices” that are frequently resource-based—What does this mean?

Measures of effectiveness involve moral choices that are part of practice ideologies

Effectiveness is also politically determined. How so?

Client Reactivity and Service Trajectory

Clients can react and participate

The reactions of neither clients nor staff can be completely controlled

Many HSO services are compartmentalized and delivered in discrete ways. Is this the best practice?

The diagnosis of a client’s needs may not take into account his/her total ecology. Why is this so often so?

Client Compliance

Selection of clients who are amenable to services enhances control and responsibility

Limiting and constraining client options improves tracking

Social control is the result

Is such control the best approach?

Centrality of Client-Worker Relations

Client-Worker relations are the core of HSOs

The quality of these relations are critical to service delivery and successful outcomes

Best cooperation is based on “trust!”

But trust is impersonal and difficult to maintain due to the often irregular contact between HSOs and clients

HSO Forms as Moral Practices: The Case of Welfare Departments

Need to understand how HSOs select and implement moral rules that guide their work

HSOs and their workers participate in this process (“micro interaction”)

HSO rules are also driven by political interests (“macro interactions”)

Moral assumptions are a constant in the welfare system

Theoretical Approaches

Rational-Legal Model (RLM)

HSOs have a clear and specific set of goals and their internal structure and processes represent a rational design to attain them

Internal divisions of labor, clear definitions of roles, and levels of authority are formalized

The RLM cannot handle multiple and changing “environmental influences”

Human Relations Approaches (HRAs)

HSO effectiveness is a function of its goals and the personal needs of workers

The “quality of “leadership” is an important determinant of workers’ job satisfaction

Burn-out is an increasing problem in today’s HSOs

HRAs, alone, cannot overcome political and economic constraints

Negotiated Order and Political Economy

Work structures are a product of “negotiated order” among the participating actors (clients & workers)

Services must have legitimacy, power, and resources (money, clients, and personnel)

Political economy understates values and ideologies that transcend power and money in shaping HSO behavior

Marxist and Institutional Theory

Labor in HSOs is controlled through hierarchy, standard operating procedures, and the deskilling of jobs

The market economy impacts HSOs

Rules from the institutional environment determine the HSO structure

Societal and HSO values are the driving forces

Population Ecology Groups and organizations that have similar

characteristics and structure

Focuses on the evolution of HSOs: founding, disbanding, and change in population

Population ecology is sometimes inappropriately applied to HSOs and generates inaccurate interpretations of HSO environments

Organizational Theory and Behavior

Classical Organization Theory

Scientific Management Theory (Taylor 1917)

Four Basic Principles

Find one “best way” to perform task

Match each worker to the appropriate task

Supervise workers, using “reward’ and “punishment” as motivators

Management’s role is “planning and control”

Organizational Theory (cont’d)

Bureaucratic Theory

Clear lines of “authority” and “control”

Hierarchical structure of power

Division of labor and specialization

Rules for stability and uniformity

Administrative Theory

Emphasize universal set of management principles that can be applied to all organizations

Neoclassical Organizational Theory

Barnard (1968)

Organization is a system of consciously coordinated activities.

Success depends on leader’s ability to create a cohesive environment.

Authority is derived from subordinate’s acceptance, not hierarchical power structure.

Neoclassical Organizational Theory (cont’d)

Limited Rationality Model--Simon (1945)

Workers may respond unpredictably to managerial attention

The scientific method has to be rigorously applied

Contingency Theory Chandler (1962)

Form follows function

Organizations act in a rational, sequential linear manner to adapt to changes in the environment

Ability to adapt=effectiveness

Lawrence and Lorsch (1969)

Managers should be given authority over their domain

Systems TheoryLudwig von Bertalanffy (1928)

All components of an organization are interrelated, changing one variable might impact many others

These relationships can be nonlinear

Nonlinearity=complexity

Organizational Structure Systems Theory and Organizational

Structure

Relationship Patterns Among Organ. Parts

Integration

Differentiation

Structure of hierarchical relationships.

Formalized policies, procedures, and controls

Relationship Between Organization and Environment

Complex environments=greater differentiation

Two-way flow of information and energy

Organizational Birth and Growth (cont’d) Four Stages of Organizational Life Cycles

Entrepreneurial

Collectivity

Formalization and Control

Elaboration

Land and Jarman (1992)

Entrepreneurial and Bifurcation

Reversal in strategy toward rule standardization

Organizational Birth and Growth (cont’d)

Growth Can Occur in Four Organizational Models

Striving for dominance with existing field/domain

Diversification into new domains

Technological advancements

Improved managerial techniques

Organizational Decline Biological Determinism( Boulding1950)

Irreversible trend toward death.

Biological Life Cycle

Peak and decline or never reach peak

Signs of Decline Loss of morale, leadership, planning, innovation

Conflict, secrecy, rigidity, scapegoating

Conservatism, over-confidence

Organizational Turnaround Biebault (1982)—Four Stage Model

Change in management

Evaluation

Implementing emergency actions and stabilization procedures

Return to growth

Five Process Domains—Zammuto and Cameron (1985)

Defense and Offense

Creating new domains

Consolidation and Substitution