Information Use by Levels in Human Service Organizations

Summary

Theories on organizational structure and the value of information informed observations of patterns of information use by workers in a human service organization. Differences were found in the type and frequency of information used by workers at three different levels-executive, manager and direct service. Findings suggest a gap in the education and training of human service practitioners; suggest effectiveness and efficiency improvements through an organization based design of information systems, To facilitate this, schools of social work must teach the decision-making purposes and processes at each level of the organization. Schools also must expose students to the technologies available to support practice decisions.