Spring 2026 SOWK 531 Week 03 - Understanding Organizations

title: Spring 2026 SOWK 531 Week 03 - Understanding Organizations date: 2026-02-07 00:43:24 location: Heritage University tags:

Heritage University
MSW Program
SOWK 531 presentation_video: > “” description: >

Week three is synchronous, with class on Saturday (2/7). Students will read about how to apply theory and understanding to organizations. There are forums exploring some questions related to the textbook, applying learning to a case study, and engaging with social justice-related media. During class we will engage in some of the following:

Parliamentary procedure fishbowl
Types of social service agencies and local examples
Organizational theories and systems perspectives
Agency politics and working in organizations
Hopeful models

Learning Objectives

Differentiate among types of social service agencies
Analyze social service organizations using multiple organizational theories and viewpoints
Apply systems concepts to assess how organizations function and respond to change.
Analyze social service organizations using organizational theory and macro practice frameworks.
Evaluate how management styles, agency politics, and managed care shape ethical practice and service delivery.
Apply organizational concepts to assess change efforts and justice outcomes in real-world contexts.

Parliamentary Procedure Fishbowl Activity

Topic: How should the group project be structured?

[Whole Group Activity] Introduce the activity and parliamentary procedure.

Discuss activity
Solicit if experience
Discuss the topic and what kinds of things might be able to be decided

[Whole Group Activity] Assign Roles

Seek nomination for meeting chair
Seek nominations for members

Roles assigned as follows:

Chair: keeps the process moving, recognizes speakers
Members (5): introduce ideas, debate, and vote
Open Seat: Available for an observer to join if has strong feeling

[Small Group Activity] Fishbowl Experience

Move to appropriate seating
Let the chair facilitate

[Whole Group Activity] Summarize and Debrief Experience

What did it feel like to be in this process?
Did parliamentary procedure make the space more or less equitable?

Kirst-Ashman and Hull (2018) define social services as: Social services include the tasks that social workers and other helping professionals perform to improve people’s health, enhance their quality of life, increase their self-sufficiency, support families, and help people and larger systems improve their functioning in the social environment.

Public Social Agencies: Government-operated agencies providing social services
Agencies operated by a unit of government (local, state, or federal) and governed by laws that directly shape policy and practice. These agencies are accountable to the public and typically overseen by government bodies (e.g., county boards or state departments). Funding usually comes from tax dollars, often with state or federal regulations attached.
Private Social Agencies: Non-government organizations delivering social services
Agencies that are privately owned and operated by individuals or organizations not employed by the government. They provide personal social services and may offer programs similar to public agencies (e.g., child protection, corrections-related services, job training). Private agencies can be either nonprofit or for-profit.
Nonprofit Social Agencies: Mission-driven agencies without profit distribution focus
A type of private agency that provides services without the goal of generating profit for owners or shareholders. Any surplus revenue is reinvested into the agency’s mission and services. These agencies are governed by a board of directors and may receive funding from a mix of sources, including government contracts, grants, donations, and service fees.
Proprietary (For-Profit) Social Agencies: Profit-driven agencies providing social services
Private agencies that provide social services with the primary goal of earning a profit. Services may closely resemble those offered by public or nonprofit agencies (e.g., residential treatment, corrections, counseling), but financial gain is a central purpose. Funding often comes from service fees or government contracts.
Hybrid Organizations: Profit-driven agencies providing social services
Agencies that blur the traditional distinction between public and private systems. Many public agencies contract with private nonprofit or for-profit organizations to deliver services the public agency is responsible for. These private agencies may rely heavily on public funding and could not operate without government contracts, making the public–private boundary less clear.

[Small Group Activity] How many can you name?

Working in small groups, students will try to come up with as many as they can for each of the categories.

Classical Organizational, Neoclassical, and Human Relations Theories

We can zoom out and look at some of the earliest ways scholars and practitioners tried to make sense of how organizations function. Even though these theories are older, they still shape how many social service agencies operate today, sometimes in ways we don’t immediately notice.

Classical Organizational Theories

Classical organizational theories are primarily concerned with structure, efficiency, and control. These approaches assume organizations function best when there is a formal structure, clear rules and roles, close supervision, and an emphasis on efficiency and productivity.
Within this tradition, we see concepts such as scientific management, administrative management, and bureaucracy.
Work is viewed as something that can be standardized and monitored, and people are often treated more as roles within a system than as individuals. Elements of this approach are common in large bureaucratic systems and government agencies.

Neoclassical Theories

Neoclassical theories begin to push back on purely structural thinking by asking what motivates people to participate and perform. While still focused on productivity, these theories recognize the importance of incentives, participation, and motivation in shaping behavior.
This perspective serves as a bridge between viewing workers as interchangeable parts and recognizing that people respond to rewards, expectations, and opportunities for involvement.

Human Relations Theories

Human Relations theories take this shift further by emphasizing employee morale, leadership, and relationships within organizations. From this perspective, organizations are understood as social systems rather than purely technical ones.
Productivity is linked not only to rules and efficiency but also to cooperation, group dynamics, and a sense of belonging. This approach often aligns closely with social work values around dignity, participation, and human connection.

These theories do not replace one another. Most organizations, including social service agencies, contain elements of all three: bureaucratic structures, incentive systems, and human relationships. Understanding these frameworks helps us better analyze organizational behavior, power, and resistance to change.

(Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2018, p. 158)

Additional Organizational Theories

Theories such as Feminist Theories, Cultural Perspective, Political-Economy Theory, Institutional Perspective, Contingency Theory, Culture–Quality Theories all provide additional perspectives that help us analyze organizations more critically and contextually. These theories are especially useful in social work because they draw attention to power, culture, inequality, and adaptation.

Feminist Theories: Feminist organizational theories focus on fair treatment, self-determination, and empowerment, particularly for women and other marginalized groups. They encourage us to use a gender lens to examine how organizations are structured and how power operates within them.

A key idea here is that “the personal is political.” Everyday organizational processes—such as decision-making, supervision, and communication—are not neutral. Feminist theories emphasize the importance of process, inclusion, and viewing diversity as a strength rather than a problem to manage.

Cultural Perspective: The cultural perspective views organizations as having their own distinct cultures shared values, norms, assumptions, and expectations about how work should be done.

From this view, culture shapes:

How decisions are made
What behaviors are rewarded or discouraged
How change is accepted or resisted

This perspective helps explain why two organizations with the same mission or structure can function very differently.

Political-Economy Theory: Political-economy theory emphasizes that organizations do not exist in isolation. Instead, they are shaped by the external environment, including funding systems, resource availability, and broader power structures.

Key ideas include:

Dependence on external resources
Power struggles within and between organizations
Adaptation to political and economic pressures

This framework is especially useful for understanding social service agencies operating under contracts, grants, and shifting policy priorities.

Institutional Perspective: The institutional perspective focuses on legitimacy. Organizations often adopt certain rules, policies, or practices not because they are the most effective, but because they are seen as appropriate, expected, or credible by external institutions.

This helps explain why agencies may:

Follow rigid procedures
Resist innovation
Prioritize compliance over outcomes

The goal is often to appear legitimate to funders, regulators, and the public.

Contingency Theory: Contingency theory argues that there is no single best way to organize or manage. What works depends on the situation, the environment, and the specific organization.

This perspective highlights:

Organizational uniqueness
Flexibility in management approaches
Adapting strategies to different problems

For social workers, this aligns with the idea of tailoring interventions to context rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions.

Culture–Quality Theories:

Culture–quality theories emphasize the relationship between a strong organizational culture, high-quality services, and employee commitment.

These theories suggest that:

Engaged employees contribute to better outcomes
Participation in decision-making increases commitment
Organizational quality is linked to how workers experience the agency

This perspective bridges human relations and organizational performance.

(Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2018, p. 163)

Assessing Organizations from a Systems Perspective

Systems theory as a way of understanding organizations, which should feel familiar because it builds directly on person-in-environment thinking—just applied at the organizational level.

Systems Theorys: Is another theory we might use to understand organizations. While we ca n use the other other theories to assess an organization as well, we like your book are going to focus on this theory and how we can use it to assess an organization.

From a systems perspective, organizations are not made up of isolated parts. Instead, every part of the organization is connected to every other part. A change in one area—policy, staffing, funding, leadership—inevitably affects other areas.
A key assumption here is that organizations are open systems. They constantly interact with their environments—funders, policies, communities, political systems, and clients.
Systems theory emphasizes Inputs include funding, staff, clients, policies, and community needs and Outputs include services delivered, decisions made, outcomes achieved, and unintended consequences

The key terms listed here give us a shared language for organizational assessment:

Boundaries help us understand what is inside the organization and what lies outside
Subsystems remind us that departments, teams, and programs operate within the larger system
Homeostasis explains why organizations resist change, even when change is needed
Entropy and negative entropy help us think about organizational decline versus renewal
Equifinality reminds us there is more than one path to the same outcome

(Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2018)

[Whole Group Activity] Review HU Social Work Department as a System

System: The Social Work Department as a whole, including faculty, students, curriculum, policies, field education, and administrative structures working together to educate future social workers.
Boundaries: The formal and informal lines that define what is inside the department and what is outside it, such as admission requirements, course prerequisites, faculty roles, and distinctions between the department and other university units.
Subsystem: Smaller units within the department, such as the BSW program, MSW program, field education team, advising function, or adjunct vs faculty.
Homeostasis: The department’s tendency to maintain existing practices (e.g., such as keeping the same course sequence or teaching methods) even when external pressures (accreditation changes, student feedback) suggest the need for change.
Role: The expected functions associated with specific positions, such as faculty as instructors and mentors, students as learners, field coordinators as liaisons, and administrators as decision-makers.
Relationship: The interactions between roles, such as faculty–student mentoring, collaboration among faculty, or coordination between the department and field placement agencies.
Input: Resources and influences entering the department, including students, funding, accreditation standards, university policies, community needs, and faculty expertise.
Output: The immediate products of departmental activity, such as course delivery, student learning experiences, assignments, community partnerships, and field placements.
Outcomes: Longer-term results of departmental work, such as student competence, graduation rates, licensure eligibility, employment in social work roles, and impact on communities served by graduates.
Positive and Negative Feedback: Information the department receives about its performance.
Interface: Points of contact between the department and its environment, such as field education partnerships (placements, ESD), advisory boards, accreditation bodies (CSWE), university administration, and community agencies.
Differentiation: The development of specialized roles and functions within the department, such as distinct responsibilities for practice-focused faculty, field instructors, Chair or director
Entropy & Negative Entropy: Entropy might appear as burnout, outdated curriculum, or loss of clarity in roles. Negative entropy shows up when the department renews itself through curriculum revision, new hires, professional development, or innovative teaching practices.
Equifinality: The idea that the department can achieve the same goal (e.g., competent social work graduates) through multiple pathways, such as different teaching styles, course formats (in-person or online), or varied field placement models.

[Small Group Activity] Review Practicum Placement as a System

Look at the parts and discuss what how you would define some of them

[Whole Group Activity] Debrief and share out

Using Agency Politics for Positive Change

As agency workers, social workers are often in positions to advocate for positive change on behalf of clients, staff, or programs. Understanding and using agency politics ethically can increase influence with decision makers.

Conduct a political diagnosis: Identify where power exists, who influences decisions, and how power is typically used within the organization.
Developing contacts and relationships with people in power: Build professional relationships with key decision makers to gain support, information, and influence.
Form coalitions: Work with others who share common goals to increase credibility, visibility, and collective influence.
Stay informed: Keep up with organizational issues, decisions, and priorities to strengthen advocacy and decision-making.
Provide positive feedback when possible: Offer specific, sincere recognition to build trust and strengthen working relationships.
Use assertive communication: Communicate ideas clearly and respectfully while considering both your goals and the perspectives of others.

(Kirst-Ashman & Hull, 2018)

Constructing a Culture of Caring

I want to leave today thinking about a couple of things that I think we should be building to in our organizations. First in a broad perspective we can develop organizations that have a culture of caring:

Remember that organizational culture consists of shared values, norms, beliefs, and expectations that guide how members think, feel, and behave at work.

A culture of caring emphasizes connection, support, and shared responsibility among staff. It strengthen cohesion and help staff work toward agency goals together.

Job ownership -broom… everybody does the work- encourages workers to see their work as part of their identity and strive for excellence.
Seeking a higher purpose -have extended vision- helps employees feel their work makes a meaningful difference within a larger system.
Emotional bonding supports genuine care and connection among staff, especially in high-stress environments.
Trust -pinky promise- allows workers to rely on one another, reducing conflict and negative interpersonal dynamics.
Pride in one’s work fosters self-esteem, motivation, and continued commitment to high-quality practice.

Share why selected images.

Qualities of a Servant Leader

The other one that I wanted to share is around Servant Leadership. I do appreciate Total Quality Management (TQM) as well…

Long history and engagement with. Connect strongly with the values of…

Qualities they describe:

Calling: A deep sense of purpose and commitment to serving others through one’s work.
Listening: Actively hearing and valuing others’ perspectives before making decisions.
Empathy: Understanding and respecting the feelings, experiences, and needs of others.
Healing: Supporting emotional well-being and helping repair harm or stress within individuals and the organization.
Awareness: Being self-aware and attentive to organizational dynamics, power, and ethical implications.
Persuasion: Influencing others through dialogue and reasoning rather than authority or coercion.
Conceptualization: Seeing beyond day-to-day tasks to envision long-term goals and possibilities.
Foresight: Anticipating future consequences of decisions based on past experiences and present realities.
Stewardship: Taking responsibility for the care and ethical use of organizational resources and power.
Growth: Committing to the personal and professional development of others.
Building Community: Fostering connection, collaboration, and a sense of belonging within the organization.