Challenges and Opportunities

2021 ◽  
pp. 17-33
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Board Members ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Technical Aspects ◽  
Organizational Goals ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

Human service organizations are faced with environments of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The COVID-19 pandemic, other healthcare challenges, expectations for evidence-based practice usage, and racial justice are vivid examples. Clients and communities deserve effective services delivered by competent, compassionate, and committed staff members. Taxpayers, donors, philanthropists, policymakers, and board members deserve to have their contributions used to deliver programs that are effective and efficient. All these forces create demands and opportunities for organizational change. Planned organizational change can happen at the level of a program, a division, or an entire organization. Administrators and other staff will need complementary skills in leading and managing organizational change. Staff deserve opportunities to have their unique competencies used to achieve organizational goals. Organizational change involves leading and mobilizing staff to address problems, needs, or opportunities facing the organization by using change processes that involve both human and technical aspects of the organization.

Improvement Methods for Human Service Organizations

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-291
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Research Network ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Evidence Based Practices ◽  
National Implementation ◽  
Fund Development ◽  
Practice Implementation

A number of methods for improving organizational operations are becoming more common in human service organizations. Capacity building typically addresses enhancing management systems capacity in areas such as strategic planning, information systems, and fund development. Benchmarking and best practices are tools that can be used at the level of the entire organization or for specific service delivery practices to search for models that can be adapted to one’s own organization. Implementing evidence-based practices, known broadly as implementation science, is a very common organizational change challenge for human service organizations these days. Formal evidence-based practice implementation methods for human service organizations include the exploration, adoption/preparation, implementation, and sustainment model and the work of the National Implementation Research Network. Organizational learning and learning organization principles are become increasingly better known in human service organizations and actually represent an arena of organizational change that can help organizations develop ongoing methods for continuous improvement.

Organizational Change

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Packard
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Conceptual Models ◽  
Change Readiness ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Or Manager ◽  
Evidence Based Model ◽  
Change Efforts

This article presents an overview of the field of organizational change as it applies to human service organizations (HSOs). It offers definitions, conceptual models, and perspectives for looking at organizational change and notes common reasons that organizational change efforts fail. The article takes the perspective of an agency executive or manager who has the responsibility for initiating and implementing a planned organizational change initiative. It offers a comprehensive, evidence-based model for tactics to use and steps to take, from assessing change readiness and change capacity to institutionalizing and evaluating change outcomes within the organization. Common change methods, including those particularly relevant to HSOs, such as implementation science, the use of consultants, and change efforts which can be initiated by lower-level employees, are reviewed A research agenda, with particular attention to change tactics, is offered.

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.

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.

Conclusion and Future Challenges for Improving Human Service Organizations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Human Service ◽  
Human Services ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Extended Period ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Evidence Based Practices ◽  
Future Challenges

This concluding chapter suggests that future research and development efforts focus on four interrelated areas. These four areas, together, describe how more specific information about the ARC strategies can increase the capacity for improving human services. The authors argue that the emphasis on evidence-based practices should be expanded to include strategies that focus on the organization’s social context. Knowing which strategies are most effective to alter specific OSC profiles and knowing the sequence of strategies that are most effective for targeted outcomes will allow organizations to tailor improvement efforts with the greatest efficiency. The chapter calls for more information about how an array of strategies can be used most efficiently by an organization to target outcomes over an extended period and how to determine, a priori, the optimal application of the various strategies necessary to achieve success with the least amount of resources.

scholarly journals Organizational Identification: Perspectives of Dispersed Social Workers

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharlene A. Allen Milton ◽  
Michael M. Sinclair ◽  
Halaevalu Ofahengaue Vakalahi
Keyword(s):  
Social Workers ◽  
Organizational Identification ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Organizational Goals ◽  
Socially Isolated ◽  
Dispersed Work

Human service organizations are often challenged to become more efficient while maintaining the quality of their services. As a result, more organizations have restructured, adopting the practice of dispersed work, which allows employees more freedom and flexibility to meet organizational goals outside of the traditional workplace. While dispersed work allows social workers to engage in work activities beyond the traditional office environment, it may also impact their sense of belonging to the organization. Eleven dispersed social workers were interviewed to understand how interaction via new communication technology impacts organizational identification. Overall themes gleaned from this study suggest that although dispersed social workers perceive themselves as having more autonomy and flexibility, they also can feel socially isolated and disconnected from their peers and supervisors, which may negatively impact organizational identification. Despite the enhanced efficiency that technology can bring, human service organizations must strive to understand the unintended consequences of a dispersed workforce.

Results-oriented versus Process-oriented Human Service Organizations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony L. Hemmelgarn ◽  
Charles Glisson
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Change ◽  
Mental Models ◽  
Goal Setting ◽  
Human Service ◽  
Human Service Organizations ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Service Organizations ◽  
Implicit Beliefs ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Process Oriented

This chapter explains the ARC principle of being results oriented versus process oriented. The results-oriented principle requires that human service organizations evaluate performance based on how much the well-being of clients improves. The principle addresses deficits in service caused by the conflicting priority of evaluating performance with process criteria such as the number of clients served, billable service hours, or the extent to which bureaucratic procedures such as the completion of paperwork are followed. Results-oriented organizations are described in detail, including case examples from decades of organizational change efforts by the authors in human service organizations. The chapter documents the importance of results-oriented approaches and underlying implicit beliefs to help the reader understand how mindsets and mental models shared among organizational members influence results-oriented approaches and effectiveness in practice. Supporting research, including feedback and goal-setting research are highlighted.

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