Organization and Community

Tamara H. Norris, Instructor

Management and Community Practice

School of Social Work

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-3550

New York City Street – Lower East Side

Stages of Community Practice

Progressive Era Settlements

Designed for White immigrants and to ameliorate class conflicts

Return to Normalcy,1918-1929

Return to Conservatism, focus on efficiency and effectiveness

Great Depression – Rural America

Stages of Community Practice (cont’d)

Depression, New Deal, and War

Stock Market crash, recession, government activism, war

Cold war and the Fifties

Conservative cold war politics. Focus on self-help

50s Economic Growth

Civil Rights Movement

Stages of Community Practice (cont’d)

The Sixties: 1960-1975

Civil rights and advocacy for social justice

Since 1975: Community Practice in a Private World

Conservative politics. Focus on self-help (as a consequence of growth of ethnic groups?)

Since 1975: Conservatism, Privatization

*

* Now the largest U.S. ethic minority group

Community Practice Theories

…propositions used to explain or predict phenomena

…based on underlying assumptions about the nature of social life (paradigms)

…in social work, paradigms allow analysis between scientific thought and the social context in which it arises

Community Practice Theories – What’s the Real-World Application?

Theorizing improves practice

Theorizing facilitates learning and growth among community practitioners

Theorizing is necessary for community practice with social justice goals

Theorizing Helps Address Many Key Questions in Community Practice: What is sustaining the status quo and what can be mobilized

to create desired change? What should be assessed and incorporated into planning and

evaluation? What kinds of leadership are needed? How is power operating and how can we build on this? What kinds of alternate structures and processes can we

envision and work to create? Why isn’t the desired change already happening?

-- frame goals

-- create common understanding

-- why particular strategies are being proposed

Community Practice Theories

Evolutionary Change

Incremental

Political Economy

Economics and politics shape social change

Structural/Functional

Focus on stability

Community Practice Theories (cont’d)

Conflict Theories

Group differences, stresses and strains

Construction of Meaning

Ideologies (e.g., religious, political, cultural, etc.) and impact on social and power arrangements

Social Psychological, Social Learning

Focus at the personal and interpersonal levels, how individuals develop and learn and influence each other

Community Practice Theories (cont’d) Co-Construction: Interactions Shaping Behavior

How everyday interactions sustain or disrupt a system

Critical, Feminist, and Critical Race Theories

Explicit goals for promoting improved situations for those historically left out of societal decision making

The presentation and advocacy of: HER view rather than HIS view, MINORITY rather than MAJORITY views, demand for respect and equal treatment by GLBT citizens, etc.

Organization and Community

Organization—people organized to achieve a goal/deliver a service/produce a product (e.g., to produce manuals for teen pregnancy prevention, to teach teen females how to avoid pregnancy, to reduce the rate of teen pregnancy, etc.).

Are organizations necessary for human progress? Why or why not?

Organization and CommunityOrganizational Behavior—revolves around and

is resultant of attitudes, personality, power (formal and informal), leadership, communication (or lack thereof), degree of conformity, motivation, leadership, perception, knowledge, ability and willingness to learn.

Which elements of organizational behavior are essential for organizational success? Why?

Organization and Community

Organizational Complexity- is a function of leadership and organizational behavior and has to do with: “characteristics of the leader,” “interactions within the organization (within and between groups),” “demands on the organization,” “degree of followership,” “transformational leadership ability (fostering of teamwork),” “charisma,” etc.

Organization and Community

Complex Leaders—can perceive “networks and teams” and facilitate useful team-building behaviors.

Complex Leaders do not attempt to control the teams and networks they enable. “They simply coach them.”

This is how complexity thinking in complex organizations bears fruit.

Organization and CommunityOrganizational Trends

Diversity

Flexibility

Horizontal

Are such organizational trends necessary for organizational success in today’s organizations?

Organization and Community

Community—a group of people organized along social, geographic, work, economic, cultural, etc. dimensions residing/coming together in a place or places---varying in size.

Can an individual have a bridge to a community that is “alien” to his/her own?

Is SOWO 804 a community? Why or why not? If not, can it become one?

Organization and CommunityCommunity Behavior—the patterns of

“observable actions,” “conduct,” and “responses to internal and external stimuli” by individuals in a place.

Who norms community behavior?

Should all communities be sustained? How is that or should that be determined, and by whom?

Organization and Community

What are the challenges to organizational sustainability?

What are the challenges to community sustainability?

In complex adaptive systems, must human systems be “progressive” to be sustainable in the final moment?

Organization and CommunityIf an organization (or a representative thereof) is

interested in establishing a study committee for a community, how should it be structured?

Role of the organization?

Role of the community?

Do the “Shot in the Arm..” and “She Makes Their Voices Count” initiatives provide useful guidelines?

Organization and Community How can we foster empowerment for interdependence between

Organizations and Communities?

Can abnormality in a community be an effective coping strategy?

How do we create “win-win situations” between organizations and communities?

When is an Organization’s language counterproductive to Community progress?

How does an Organization know when a Community is healthy?

Organization and Community Organizational Behavior

Social Implications

Community Definitions vs. Organizational Definitions

Operational Biases

Creating Symbiosis between Organization and Community---”Inside” vs. “Outside” view

Is it really all relative? Can one view hold supremacy at a given time?

Organization and CommunityDiscussion Points

Communities in which today’s social workers operate are more racially, ethnically, socially, culturally, and economically isolated than the low-income/poor communities of a generation ago.

Families are in a greater state of disrepair/anomie.

Organizations delivering social/human services are in a state of dissonance in terms of “internal” and “external” functioning in their service areas.

Organization and CommunityQuestions

1. Why are social service organizations and the communities they serve often in conflict in terms of agendas and expectations?

2. What are some destructive community behaviors? Give examples of destructive organization behaviors.

3. How is increasing local, state, and national diversity impacting social service organization and community behavior?