Reforming human services : change through participation
"In this book the authors try hard not to downgrade the continuum of work-related problems. The authors stress this continuum by surveying the highlights of recent organizational reform, including (as reviews must) the "classics" that have inspired reformers. This book is in part a primer or a summary recapitulation of today's trends in organizational change theory and experimentation. It is also a blueprint, and as such, contains a prescription or "model" of planned change. The prescription is eclectic. It combines elements of what are now the "mainline" work reform strategies (job enrichment, quality of work life, and action research) into a package that we hope is coherent and deployable. In this book the authors contend that workers work best and most contentedly, that they are most apt to exercise ingenuity and decency and helpfulness, when they have a voice in shaping organizational goals and defining their own jobs. This ideal condition--which the authors call "grass-roots management"--Is neither utopian, nor revolutionary, nor hard to create. The authors shall outline how organizational democracy can be achieved, and how it has to varying degrees--been attained. The authors shall suggest why the strategy works--why, in fact, it must work. In this connection, the authors assume that strategies vested in "classic management" have been tried and found wanting. Reasons for the shortfall are many: some have to do with changing needs or expectations, some with needs we have known but ignored. The reason (whichever it may be) is academic, because manifest needs of workers, whether they are new or "discovered," are intense and irreversible. If we ignore workers' needs, we violate human nature. And nature (as the commercial points out) has a way of avenging itself when it is violated"--Preface. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)
Sage library of social research, v. 142
1 online resource (272 pages)
9780803918863, 9780803918870, 0803918860, 0803918879
212893927
I. The problem
Definition of the problem
Alienation and burnout
Shape of the work problem
Cynicism: the human equation
II: The prospect
The notion of "job enrichment": from chores to challenges
Job enrichment in the human services
The notion of "quality of work life": humanizing the assembly line
Humanizing client assembly lines
III: The prescription
The notion of participation
Participation and change
Receptivity to change
Research, action, and action research
IV: The demonstration
Grass-roots management
The New York prison survey
The correction officer teams
Team proposals
From cup to lip: implementation of proposals
Epilogue: where do we go from here?
Electronic reproduction, [Place of publication not identified], HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010
English
University of Alberta Access from PsycBooks
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