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 selfhelp
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 Community
Organizational 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 teambuilding 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 Community
Organizational 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 Community
Community 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 Community
If 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 Community
Discussion Points
 Communities in which today’s social workers
operate are more racially, ethnically, socially,
culturally, and economically isolated than the lowincome/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 Community
Questions
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?