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.

The Role of Mental Models in Organizational Change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Work Experiences ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Quality And Outcomes ◽  
Improve Service Quality ◽  
Organizational Principles ◽  
Effective Service

This chapter describes ARC’s third strategy of employing mental models. This strategy fosters reasoning and thinking that reinforces the use of ARC’s organizational components and that maintains alignment with ARC’s five principles of effective service organizations. Reasoning and thinking are reflected in the mental representations of work experiences service providers hold, and these mental models guide priorities followed when providing services. Case examples are provided to illustrate work with mental models to influence organizational members’ thinking, reasoning, and subsequent actions to improve service quality and outcomes. This chapter reviews the empirical evidence for mental models, including research from social cognition and neuroscience. The description of this strategy highlights several activities and techniques used to explore and alter mental models. These activities foster examination of implicit assumptions and beliefs that help drive reasoning and thinking toward or away from ARC’s key organizational principles, tools, and desired OSCs.

scholarly journals Advocating for Structural Change? Exploring the Advocacy Activities of Immigrant-Serving Organizations in an Unwelcoming Policy Context

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 682-703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Roth ◽  
Seo Yeon Park ◽  
Breanne Grace
Keyword(s):  
South Carolina ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Policy Advocacy ◽  
Social Service Organizations ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact

The growth of the immigrant population in the United States has prompted a recent increase in the number of restrictive immigration policies at the state and local levels. The literature on policy advocacy and social service organizations suggests that these local providers can engage in political activities that challenge the restrictive nature of these contexts. This qualitative study explored how immigrant-serving social service organizations engage in policy advocacy in a state with restrictive, anti-immigrant policies. In-depth interviews with directors of 50 service providers in South Carolina clearly indicate a tension between the need for policy advocacy and the risks associated with engaging in such activities. Fifty percent (50%) of the providers in our sample reported engaging in some form of policy advocacy. However, their policy advocacy activities were often indirect, non-confrontational, and episodic. Most were engaged in coalitions and other forms of indirect advocacy tactics. We discuss implications for the social work profession and recommendations for future research, including the need to further explore the impact of policy advocacy efforts on changing the policy landscape in places that are unwelcoming to immigrants.

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.

Addressing race, racism, and commercial sexual exploitation in practice through an action-based research partnership

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lara B Gerassi ◽  
Amanda Colegrove ◽  
Deanna Kopriva McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Commercial Sexual Exploitation ◽  
Service Access ◽  
Adult Women ◽  
Social Service Organizations ◽  
Methodological Rigor

This paper analyzes the participatory research process stemming from a five-year transformative relationship between anti-trafficking coalition members (including service providers from multiple social service organizations), the coalition organizer, and a service provider who became a sex trafficking/commercial sexual exploitation researcher. We describe the collaborative process in the study design (including development of research questions, methodological and analytic planning, interview guide development, member checking, dissemination of findings, and creation of action steps) for one study, which sought to understand barriers and facilitators to service access and engagement among adult women involved in commercial sex. We analyze how our relationships enhanced methodological rigor and overall feasibility of the study, while creating a pathway to change in the community. Finally, we reflect on the role of our own diverse racial identities in collaborating on this research study, as well the implications for action.

scholarly journals Midwestern Service Provider Narratives of Migrant Experiences: Legibility, Vulnerability, and Exploitation in Human Trafficking

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 887-910 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Chappell Deckert ◽  
Sherry Warren ◽  
Hannah Britton
Keyword(s):  
Human Trafficking ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
State Level ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Social Service Organizations ◽  
Migrant Populations ◽  
Local Responses ◽  
Social Service Delivery

This exploratory study examined the vulnerability and exploitation of migrants from the perspective of service providers who work in social service organizations. Researchers conducted 16 interviews and 1 focus group with service providers whose clientele had direct experience with migration. These service providers indicated that there is incongruence, even tension, between a welcoming local response to migrant populations and the state-level political rhetoric and policy initiatives, which are predominantly anti-immigration. This study demonstrates that there are contradictions and tensions related especially to exploitation in Midwest migrant populations. Service providers acknowledged complexity in the problems related to migrant vulnerability and exploitation and were interested in change. Findings of this study highlight particular vulnerabilities of migrant populations, a lack of legibility of human trafficking in social service organizations, and a difference between political rhetoric and local responses to migrant populations. Policies and practices in social service delivery need to reflect the subtleties of risk for exploitation and offer broad preventive support for migrant populations through education and advocacy.

The Racial Politics of Place in Faith-Based Social Service Provision

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bolger
Keyword(s):  
Social Service ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Service Providers ◽  
Geographic Location ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Service Access ◽  
Social Service Organizations ◽  
Faith Based

Abstract Prior research indicates that faith-based social service providers are overrepresented in disadvantaged neighborhoods, which has led some to advocate for their increased involvement in the U.S. social safety net. Yet, we have little understanding of how they and other social service organizations understand the significance of place in their work. Here I explore how conceptions of place matter for social service provision by drawing on 12 months of ethnographic observation and interviews with 24 key informants in two faith-based social service organizations in Houston, Texas. I find that faith-based organizations attach significance to their geographic location based not only on their proximity (or lack thereof) to their target service recipients, but also through relationships with key stakeholders. Agencies label places as safe or unsafe to recruit donors and volunteers, but in doing so they channel resources unequally between communities in ways that perpetuate racial disparities in social service access. The results have implications for understanding the importance of place within social service organizations, particularly faith-based agencies, which are increasingly relied upon to serve the urban poor.

Service Provider Perspectives Regarding Knowledge Sharing Activities in Community-Based Services

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 25-39
Author(s):  
Casey Fulford ◽  
Virginie Cobigo
Keyword(s):  
Service Providers ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Practical Implementation ◽  
Knowledge Mobilization ◽  
Community Based ◽  
Distributed Information ◽  
Social Service Organizations ◽  
Provider Perspectives ◽  
Adults With Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Community Based Services

Evaluation of knowledge mobilization (KM) activities in community-based mental health and social service organizations is needed. Our objective was to understand how service providers want to access and share knowledge, in order to improve KM practices to better support adults with intellectual disabilities. We distributed information about five strategies for supporting friendships; this included strategy descriptions, outcomes of strategy evaluations, and practical implementation considerations. We distributed information through a conference presentation, online presentations, and online modules. Service providers completed questionnaires and phone interviews. We present findings on their perspectives regarding the format and content of the material, which can inform future KM efforts.

Psychosocial Factors, Predicting Attitude towards Organizational Development among Employees of Social Service Organizations

2015 ◽  
Vol 74 ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Loreta Bukšnytė-Marmienė ◽  
Auksė Endriulaitienė ◽  
Loreta Gustainienė ◽  
Giedrė Genevičiūtė-Janonienė ◽  
Gabija Jarašiūnaitė ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Development ◽  
Psychosocial Factors ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Social Service Organizations
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document