Building Cultures and Climates for Effective Human Services

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Human Services ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Research Experience ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Organizational Improvement ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Arc Model ◽  
Service Barriers ◽  
Human Services Organizations

This book explains how organizational culture and climate affect the quality and outcomes of human services and describes the Availability, Responsiveness, and Continuity (ARC) model of organizational effectiveness that the authors developed for improving social service, behavioral health, health care, and other human service organizations. The authors summarize decades of practice and research experience, including organizational improvement efforts, randomized controlled trials, and nationwide studies with hundreds of human services organizations. The book provides a balance between the use of empirical data and applied examples in explaining how human services can be improved. By combining numerous case examples and experiential knowledge with decades of organizational research, readers learn about empirically proven approaches tested in real organizations that are supported with case examples of organizational change. The book explains that creating the organizational social contexts necessary for providing effective services requires three types of organizational strategies. These strategies include organizational tools for identifying and addressing service barriers, principles for aligning organizational priorities to guide improvement, and the development of shared mental models among organizational members to support the principles and tools.

Improving Organizational Social Contexts for Effective Human Services

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Human Services ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
The Social ◽  
Quality And Outcomes ◽  
Improve Service Quality ◽  
Organizational Principles

Emphasizing five basic points, this chapter summarizes what the authors have learned in their development of evidence-based organizational strategies. First, human service organizations vary in their social contexts, and those differences affect the way services are provided. Second, the social contexts of human services can be changed with organizational strategies, and those changes can improve service quality and outcomes. Third, organizational social contexts are essential for innovation because they reflect the power of social systems to promote changes in individual behavior. Fourth, organizational research illustrates that social contexts affect the implementation of best practices to improve effectiveness. Fifth, strategies for improving an organization’s capacity for innovation build upon a century of work on improving organizational effectiveness that has direct implications for human services. This chapter introduces the ARC strategies that include: (1) key organizational principles, (2) organizational components that drive innovation, and (3) mental models to support improvement efforts.

Introducing the ARC Organizational Strategies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
New Technologies ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Mechanisms Of Change ◽  
Organizational Strategies ◽  
Arc Model ◽  
Service Barriers ◽  
Innovation Capacity ◽  
Quality And Outcomes ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Organizational Principles

This chapter describes the ARC model of three core strategies for developing effective human service organizations. These include (1) embedding guiding organizational principles, (2) providing organizational component tools for identifying and addressing service barriers, and (3) developing shared mental models. ARC’s strategies provide the tools and the reasoning to guide behaviors and processes among organizational members that ensure improved service quality and outcomes. These strategies are reviewed as part of ARC’s orchestrated and structured process to improve OSC (i.e., the cultures and climates that influence attitudes, decision making and behavior in organizations). The chapter identifies mechanisms of change that highlight the alignment of organizational priorities with the ARC principles, fostering relationships that provide availability, responsiveness, and continuity, as well as developing innovation capacity to adopt new technologies and approaches.

Critical Applications of Heterogeneity Theories to Power in Nonprofit Human Services Organizations

2021 ◽  
pp. 089976402110297
Author(s):  
Shawn Teresa Flanigan
Keyword(s):  
Human Services ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Services Research ◽  
Nonprofit Studies ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Human Services Organizations ◽  
Nonprofit Human Service Organizations

The field of nonprofit studies often assumes that efforts of actors in the nonprofit landscape are beneficial, especially when considering nonprofit human service organizations. However, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons for scholars to adopt a more critical lens when examining these organizations. Taking nonprofit human services organizations as a common setting, the article uses a critical lens to apply classic, “mainstream” theories of the role of heterogeneity in nonprofit sector formation and illuminate risks often neglected in nonprofit human services research. In this way, the article demonstrates that classic social science theories of heterogeneity already offer us the tools we need to critically question dominant assumptions about nonprofit human services provision and challenges the reader to consider why we so rarely use these well-known theoretical frameworks in a critical manner. The article concludes by inviting scholars to utilize additional critical theoretical perspectives in future studies of nonprofit human services.

Organizational Change for the Human Services

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Change Process ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Change Leadership ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Arc Model ◽  
Organizational Culture Change

This book presents an evidence-based conceptual framework for planning and implementing organizational change processes specifically focused on human service organizations (HSOs). After a brief discussion of relevant theory and a review of key challenges facing HSOs that create opportunities for organizational change, a detailed conceptual framework outlines an organizational change process. Two chapters are devoted to the essential role of an organization’s executive or other manager as a change leader. Five chapters cover the steps of the change process, beginning with identifying a problem or change opportunity; then defining a change goal; assessing the present state of the organization (the change problem and organizational readiness and capacity to engage in change); and determining an overall change strategy. Twenty-one evidence-based organizational change tactics are presented to guide implementation of the process. Tactics include communicating the urgency for change and the change vision; developing an action system that includes a change sponsor, a change champion, a change leadership team and action teams; providing support to staff; facilitating the development and approval of ideas to achieve the change goal; institutionalizing the changes within organizational systems; and evaluating the change process and outcomes. Four case examples from public and nonprofit HSOs are used to illustrate change tactics. Individual chapters cover change technologies and methods, including action research; team building; conflict management; quality improvement methods; organization redesign; organizational culture change; using consultants; advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice; capacity building; implementation science methods; specific models, including the ARC model; and staff-initiated organizational change.

Understanding and Assessing Organizational Social Context (OSC)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Organizational Development ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Organizational Improvement ◽  
Organizational Assessment ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Social Service Organizations ◽  
Worker Attitudes ◽  
Multiple Dimensions

This chapter describes the OSC measurement system. The OSC measure assesses culture, climate, and worker attitudes as the key components of OSC. Including multiple dimensions of culture and climate, the OSC measure provides a personality profile of organizations based on the responses of direct service providers within the work units that are assessed. Empirically derived, the dimensions and resulting measurement profiles allow users to assess the health of their organization’s social context using national norms for behavioral health and social service organizations. The authors explain the use of the OSC measure in their ARC organizational improvement process, and they integrate research and case examples to illustrate how the OSC measure can be applied for organizational assessment and change efforts. These efforts include using social context profiles to identify targets for change, action plans, and objectives to achieve within organizational development efforts.

Case Examples Illustrating the Importance of Social Contexts in Human Service Organizations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Human Service ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Services Quality ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Service Effectiveness ◽  
Worker Attitudes ◽  
Shared Beliefs

This chapter provides case examples from the authors’ work within human service organizations that illustrate the importance of addressing OSCs: including culture, climate, and worker attitudes. These examples of the influence of OSC provide the reader with an understanding of how social contexts affect human services quality and outcomes along with implications for improving them. The chapter explains the sensitivity of human service effectiveness to OSC and describes the social processes that explain its influence. Case examples are used to illustrate the influence of shared mindsets and worker attitudes within OSCs. These examples include the influence of shared beliefs, assumptions, and attitudes of service providers on client and staff relationships that affect services quality.

Exploring Policy Implications of Ethics of Care and Justice in Care Work and Human Services Organizations

2021 ◽  
pp. 193672442110274
Author(s):  
Christa J. Moore ◽  
Patricia Gagné
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Bureaucratic Constraints

Much attention has recently been focused on the efficacy of cross-sector collaboration within the field of human services in response to increasing rates of child maltreatment and subsequent foster care entries nationwide. Our research includes 200 hours of participant observation, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 65 professionals broadly involved in the protection of vulnerable children and the support of their parents, and an analysis of 45 case files. It was carried out in a rural region of Kentucky between May 2015 and July 2017. We used established principles of analytic induction to analyze our data. In this study, we explore perceptions of power, authority, inequality, and bureaucratic constraints that emerge during organizational processes of interagency collaboration among multidisciplinary human service organizations situated within the child welfare system. We argue that ethics of care and, subsequently, care work are constrained by power dynamics, primarily embedded in bureaucratically structured human service organizations as well as in policy mandates that embody ethics of justice. We conclude that the tensions between bureaucratic constraints and professional workers’ desire to care for and serve clients often disrupt and undermine organizational missions and policy goals targeting child protection. We indicate the need to examine these structural dynamics at a policy level and provide recommendations with policy implications.

Change Models for Human Service Organizations

2021 ◽  
pp. 292-309
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Human Service ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Change Models ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Arc Model ◽  
High Participation ◽  
Services Innovation ◽  
Getting To Outcomes

Organizational change models designed for human service organizations include the ARC model, the sanctuary model, getting to outcomes, and design team. Their use might require assistance from expert consultants. Each includes high participation of staff members, using structured systems and processes to identify opportunities to improve operations in a program or in administrative operations, followed by analysis and brainstorming to generate improvement ideas. Innovation and intrapraneurship are concepts that have been adapted from the for-profit sector for application in the human services. Innovation can be defined as a process, method, product, or outcome that is new and creates an improvement. Intrapraneurship is the use of entrepreneurial principles within an organization to solve problems or improve operations. Cutback management is not specifically identified as a change model, but is a process for changing organizations by addressing funding cuts, through methods ranging from efficiency improvements to, ideally, finding new revenue sources.

Learning from the Managers of Human Service Organizations

2020 ◽  
pp. 140-165
Author(s):  
Austin Michael ◽  
Sarah Carnochan
Keyword(s):  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Service Agency ◽  
Agency Staff ◽  
Partnership Model ◽  
Human Service Delivery ◽  
Service Delivery Systems ◽  
Study Participants

Chapter 7 of Practice Research in the Human Services: A University-Agency Partnership Model focuses on the experiences and perspectives of human service agency managers. It describes a multiphase study examining the experiences of public and nonprofit managers involved in human services contracting. The study aimed to further our understanding of the accountability and service coordination challenges that these cross-sectoral relationships pose for managers, especially in the context of increasingly complex human service delivery systems. This study integrated case studies, a multi-county survey, and review of contract documents. The chapter also describes a second study that sought to inform managerial practice by examining managerial perspectives and experiences related to evidence-informed practice, using a multi-county survey incorporating closed and open-ended questions. Principles for practice research relate to the study design process, recruitment of study participants, engagement of agency staff, and translation of implications into concrete practice recommendations.

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