-
Authority types: Charismatic, traditional, rational-legal
- Treatment of employees, clients--Universalism vs particularism
- Importance of skill/expertise in hiring (vs kin relations ...)
- Office vs office holder
- Work standards are measurable
- Record-keeping, documentation (the higher the stakes the more the documentation--e.g., child welfare)
- Rules--lots of 'em--why?
- Hierarchy--top down
- Chain of command
- accountability
- Division of labor
- coordination of work
- concentration of power?
- Rewards
- individual (fixed salaries, wages)
- Organizational (for meeting missions, goals (of whom? e.g., DHS--to serve the disadvantaged, or reduce budgets?)
- Tenure--pros and con
- Protections
- grievance procedures
- from termination
- promotion, rules
- harassment
- etc. -- public vs private vs non-profit differences?
- Issues
- Stucture and agency--humans are pesky critters
- Offices can be appropriated--what does that mean?
- People are not robots
- bureaucracies and change:
- they're often unadaptive
- routine vs non-routine tasks -- routine tasks work well often in bureaucracies
- Power: potential for centralization--Hierarchies don't necessarily imply concentrated power at the top (though that often happens, it isn't predestined by the structure of the organization)
- Uncertainty and rules. Actually, the organization with rules may be preferable. Some of us have worked for those firms whose main qualifications for hiring seem to be kin relations.
- They're impersonal--isn't that part of the point?
- The upshot--most social workers are employed either directly within a bureaucratic organization, or work with them (more than one). Understanding how they are structured, how they function, where dysfunction is most likely, how to successfully navigate them for your own sanity and effectiveness, and how to make them function more effectively (e.g., make changes) will ease personal and professional frustration on your part, and on the part of clientele.
|