Management and Organisations in Social Work

Trish Hafford-Letchfield

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781844452163
• eBook ISBN: 9781844455867
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This fully revised and updated second edition looks at the study of social work management and organisations, focusing on relationships with crucial partners such as central government agencies, local partners and other social care organisations. Through an examination of current research and practice, the author explores the relationships between ideology, professional and personal values and decision making in organisational culture. Included in the text are case studies, activities and further reading lists to aid learning.

Chapter 1

The nature of organisations
delivering social work and
social care: structure and
cultures

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ACHIEVING A SOCIAL WORK DEGREE

This chapter will help you achieve the following National Occupational Standards and General Social Care Council’s Code of Practice.

Key Role 1: Prepare for, and work with individuals, families, carers, groups and communities to assess their needs and circumstances.

• Inform individuals, families, carers, groups and communities about your own, and the organisation’s duties and responsibilities.

Key Role 5: Manage and be accountable, with supervision and support for your own social work practice within your organisation.

• Manage and prioritise your workload within organisational policies and priorities.
• Contribute to identifying and agreeing the goals, objectives and lifespan of the team network or system.

Key Role 6: Demonstrate professional competence in social work practice.

• Review and update your own knowledge of legal, policy and procedural frameworks.
• Identify and assess issues, dilemmas and conflicts that might affect your practice.

General Social Care Code of Practice

Code 6.7: Recognising and respecting the roles and expertise of workers from other agencies and working in partnership with them.

It will also introduce you to the following academic standards as set out in the social work subject benchmark statements:

3.1.3 Social work services and service users

• The relationship between agency policies, legal requirements and professional boundaries in shaping the nature of services provided in inter-disciplinary contexts and the issues associated with working across these boundaries.

3.1.2 The service delivery context

• The complex relationship between public, social and political philosophies, policies and priorities and the organisation and practice of social work including the contested nature of these.
• The issues and trends in modern public and social policy and their relationship to contemporary practice and service delivery in social work.

3.1.3 Social work theory

• Social science theories explaining group and organisational behaviour, adaptation and change.

3.1.4 The nature of social work practice

• The characteristics of practice in a range of community based and organisational settings including group care, within statutory, voluntary and private sectors, and the factors, influencing changes in practice within these contexts.
• The factors and processes that facilitate effective inter-disciplinary, inter-professional and inter-agency collaboration and partnership.

3.2.2.3 Analysis and synthesis

• Employ understanding of human agency at the macro (societal), mezzo (organisational and community) and micro (inter- and intra-personal) levels.

3.2.2.4 Intervention and evaluation

• Build and sustain purposeful relationships with people and organisations in community-based and inter-professional contexts including group care.

3.2.4 Skills in working with others

• Act within a framework of multiple accountability.

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Introduction

This chapter looks at the nature of organisations delivering social work and social care. We will start by looking at theoretical models used to describe organisations and identify the key elements of organisational structure and culture that are relevant to contemporary organisations in social care. We will briefly explore historical perspectives on how organisations have developed since the post-war period (1940s) to the current restructuring and transformation of children and adult services. This will enable you to take account of the main social, political and economic factors that affect organisational development. Debates about the structure and culture of public sector organisations often make reference to characteristics, trends and features adopted from, or traditionally associated with, private business sectors in the UK (Dominelli, 2002; Healy, 2002; Tsui and Cheung, 2004). We will look at the relevance of these debates to how organisations go about delivering support and care within an increasingly demanding and diverse public service sector environment. These debates will then continue throughout the book in relation to different topics related to modern social care organisations and management practice and explore the sometimes controversial relationships that can develop between organisations and their stakeholders.

Theoretical models of organisations in
social care

The study of organisations draws on disciplines such as sociology, political science, economics, social policy and psychology as well as from its own discipline, research traditions and networks. Organisational theorists are interested in the study of three interrelated questions: what are organisations trying to do? how do they try to do it? and why are they doing it in a particular way? To answer these questions, we will start by considering three interrelated elements: strategy, structure and culture, all of which should be considered simultaneously (Payne, 1996).

Organisational strategy

Strategy describes the means by which social care is organised, resourced and delivered. Having a strategy enables organisations to manage changes to secure their future growth and sustain success (Clegg et al., 2005). Without a clear strategy, organisations will drift; strategic plans enable the organisation to steer its way ahead and are often associated with the task of management at the top of an organisation. The origin of strategic theory comes from ideas of competition in relation to quality, performance, product, cost or price. Whilst social care organisations are not traditionally perceived as competitive organisations, we will see later on in this book that the way in which they have had to respond to the government’s modernisation agenda encourages competitive activity. Numerous legislative and fundamental policy shifts have required social care organisations to also collaborate towards the delivery of seamless and holistic services in the community within a financially demanding environment. Strategic plans emanate from these shifts and determine which changes are needed to organisational structure and environment to accomplish this. Changes in the environment in turn create a need for new strategies. As new strategies are developed, they require new organisational structures to adapt, setting up a cycle of continuous change which drives the organisation (Chandler, 1962). Chandler argued that as businesses enlarge, they have to cope with a greater volume of business and therefore modern organisational forms evolved as a necessary strategic adjustment to market conditions. Strategic action directs and shapes an organisation’s relationship with its environment: by forecasting changes, planning responses, and making these a reality. Modern management thinking sees the role of strategic thinkers in an organisation as defining the big picture, steering the organisation with a strong grasp. On the other hand, the lower levels of the hierarchy are said to realise and implement instructions from above. We will explore any controversies about this concept in Chapter 2 when we look at management and leadership styles. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about organisational strategies you will find evidence of it in the way in which services are planned and designed, in documents that state the intended outcomes of how the organisation operates, and through the way in which managers organise and direct activities within the organisation.

Organisational culture is also an essential element in this chain of events and our experiences of behaviour, rituals and jargon in the organisational setting are all manifestations of organisational culture. Therefore, making changes to an organisation’s strategy and structure alone will not guarantee success in achieving government’s objectives. Processes and attitudes also need addressing and this is the joint responsibility of politicians, managers and professionals (Cabinet Office, 2000). In conclusion, the culture that precedes, develops and emerges through organisations embracing changes is vitally important and management has a unique role in nurturing and influencing organisational culture.

Organisational structure

The ways in which organisations are physically structured play a significant part in shaping people’s relationships to it, for example in their attitude and behaviour. An organisation is defined by its external boundaries, such as those with the locality, the nature of the building it inhabits and its area of business. Likewise, internal boundaries such as job descriptions, units of work, and the titles used to describe teams or services within it, provide a means of organising work and communicating with people about the job they are expected to do within the organisation. Roles played by managers and employees, customers and service users are in turn influenced by any external constraints or demands on them; for example, the resources available, legislative and policy requirements as well as internal constraints from the decision-making process and support available. If you were to take a more psychological approach to understanding organisations, you would look to the internal or individual factors which determine human behaviour in organisations. In summary, organisational strategy and structure can in turn determine or influence culture.

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ACTIVITY 1.1

Take five minutes to come up with your own definition of an ‘organisation’. What words come to mind and what metaphors or images might you use for thinking about organisations in social work? It might help to think of an organisation you are already familiar with such as a children’s initial assessment service, community centre, women’s refuge or a service user led organisation. Try to draw a diagram or chart that shows the structure of the organisation you are thinking of. How would this be different for different organisations?

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One definition of an organisation is:

A social arrangement for achieving controlled performance in pursuit of collective goals. (Buchanan et al., 2004, p. 5)

With the government’s drives towards more joined-up government, organisations with rigid or fixed structures have to become more fluid or chameleon-like in order to adapt to their new environment. Government policy continuously creates new sets of organisational enclaves, for example in response to cross-cutting social policies around particular service user groups away from more traditional functions such as health care or housing. Examples of these enclaves can be found in Drug Action or Youth Offending Teams or care trusts around particular service user groups. For professional staff delivering services, different practice protocols and service models can pose major barriers to effective and efficient joint working, for example to meet the needs of children who leave care or people with complex mental health problems. Such ingrained professional practices cannot be changed overnight and harmonising or simplifying joint approaches to social issues is bound to require a longer-term effort (Pollitt, 2003).

Models of organisations

In Activity 1.1, you may have concluded that there is no such ‘one size fits all’ when describing organisations. The purpose of organisational structure is firstly to divide up organisational activities and allocate them to sub-units and, secondly, to co-ordinate and control these activities so that they contribute to the overall aims of the organisation. The role of a manager is to support and facilitate these two functions.

One way of depicting the structure of any large organisation is that of a pyramid or triangle, showing its vertical and horizontal dimensions, as in Figure 1.1.

Figure 1.1 A typical hierarchical bureaucratic structure

In this structure the vast majority of employees are located at the operating core of the pyramid, undertaking day-to-day work and delivery of goods and services. It is through these people who have direct contact with service users that the purpose of the organisation is realised. Reporting relationships exist between these, up towards the strategic apex where senior managers co-ordinate, motivate and control employees so that they work together to achieve overall organisational goals. Management at the middle of the pyramid are responsible for ensuring decisions are executed and manage and monitor the resources of the organisation. You may recognise this type of structure in a large care trust. These generally operate as rigid bureaucracies led by a senior management team (Morgan, 1987). This type of organisation can be slow, but efficient, with a rule-bound structure where a senior management team makes the majority of decisions and departmental heads are responsible for decisions in their specific areas of specialism. The term ‘bureaucracy’ often carries negative connotations. It was originally coined by an organisational theorist, Weber (1976), to articulate a form of organisation design defined by a n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The nature of organisations delivering social work and social care: structure and cultures
• 2 Management, leadership and change management in social care
• 3 Working within the organisational performance and regulatory framework: quality assurance systems
• 4 Service user involvement and customer care
• 5 Resource management in social care organisations
• 6 The organisational equalities framework
• 7 Dignity at work
• 8 Learning organisations
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• References
• Index