Professional culture and organizational morality: an ethnographic account of a therapeutic organization

An ethnographic exploration of the social reality of a counselling and training institute points to the profound impact of the therapeutic paradigm on the 'patterned regularities', the general principles, rules and daily practices, in other words, the organizational morality. The limited house-rules or practices emerged mainly as 'enabling conditions' to let professional autonomy prevail and to maintain the game rather than to prescribe behaviour. Organizational rules, structures, mechanics served as a platform for negotiations among different groups of 'provinces of meaning'. These negotiations do not necessarily show any sense of organizational logic or administrative rationality. Perhaps the opposite is true. Loosely coupled interactions and consensual validation rather than goal-oriented thinking appeared to be the predominant organizational occupation. The irrational, at times even ironic dynamics operative in organizational morality are nevertheless meaningful. They function as 'mapping' and sense-making devices and can be seen as vehicles for reflecting and ordering underlying meanings.     

The Role of the American Nurses' Association in Maintaining Professional Accountability

Abstract

A professional association has been defined as a group of practitioners who organize to perform functions they cannot perform as separate individuals and to judge one another as professionally competent. History reveals that when a profession becomes clearly defined, the responsible practitioners form an association in order to establish standards of practice and enforce rules of conduct.

As the professional association for nurses, the American Nurses' Association is inextricably involved in the development of mechanisms that guarantee professional accountability. A standing priority of the association is to improve the quality of care provided to the public by such means as 1) setting a timetable for establishing qualifications for entry into nursing practice; 2) evolving a coherent credentialing system; 3) establishing systems to assure the profession's accountability for practice and for the delivery of services; and 4) providing for expansion, accessibility, and improvements in continuing education in nursing.

If nurses are to assume greater responsibility, the profession must be in a position to assure the public of quality nursing care. Since the public holds the profession (as a whole) accountable for the competence of its practitioners, the professional association has a responsibility to establish mechanisms by which to judge the competence of its practitioners and to evaluate the quality of care.     

The footwear factory's assembly sector: opposing organizational structure and quality from the ergonomic work analysis

Data from 2006 indicated that Brazilian footwear leather industry was composed of approximately 9,488 formally registered establishments, considering the leather industry, footwear and leather goods. It was responsible for 211,582 people employed. However, in spite of having many employees, this kind of organization found several problems when analyzed from the ergonomics view. With this premise, then, in order to identify bottlenecks and other engineering problems that could cause discomfort and motivation lack among workers, leading directly to the loss of the product quality, the assembly sector of women's shoes factory was characterized.     

The dual network structure of organizational problem solving: A case study on open source software development

We reconstruct the dual network structure generated by the association between 72 contributors and 737 software bugs engaged during a full development cycle of the free/open source software project Epiphany. Estimates of structural parameters of Exponential Random Graph Models for two-mode networks reveal the structural logics shaping activities of collaborative problem solving. After controlling for contributor-specific and software bug-specific characteristics, we find that contributors (“problem solvers”) tend to distribute their activity over multiple software bugs. At the same time, however, we find that software bugs (“problems”) tend not to share multiple contributors. This dual tendency toward de-specialization and exclusivity is sustained by specific local network dependencies revealed by our analysis which also suggests possible organizational mechanisms that may be underlying the puzzling macro-structural regularities frequently observed, but rarely explained, in the production of open source software. By combining these mechanisms with the influence of contributors characterized by different levels of involvement in the project, we provide micro-level evidence of structural interdependence between “core” and “peripheral” members identified exclusively on the basis of their individual level of contribution to the project.     

The organizational structure of child welfare: Staff are working hard,but it is hardly working

Child welfare has been overseen, litigated, reviewed, and chastised by those internal to the system and those who have never faced a traumatized child or an abusive parent. The work of child welfare occurs within organizations, generally large, public sector agencies. Literature has paid little attention to the organizational structure or staffing patterns of the agencies mandated to serve vulnerable children and families. This article explores the challenges facing child welfare and ponders the notion that the structure of public child welfare agencies has developed in response to internal and external factors. The resulting organizational structure may not be the best to support the myriad of mandates that child welfare must achieve.     

The distribution of a federal entitlement: The case of adoption assistance

Adoption assistance entitlements support children whose birth parents cannot care for them. The entitlements are meant to offset the extra cost to adoptive families of raising children whose early adverse experiences leave them with special needs. Unlike other Social Security Act programs, adoption assistance is not federally administered but is administered by states or localities. State-to-state variation in administration of this federal entitlement leads to unequal treatment of similar children. Moreover, although adoption assistance is an entitlement for children, payments made by many states are systematically correlated with the characteristics of adoptive families.     

Collectivism and reporting of organizational wrongdoing in public organizations: the case of county administration in Kenya

This paper explores dimensions of collectivism to explain patterns of reporting organizational wrongdoing in public organizations. The findings herein illustrate that responses to wrongdoing in public organizations in developing countries like Kenya are more rationalized or interpreted within communitarian or supported by parochial social ideologies, which tend to override instrumental accountability norms and structures. Accordingly, responses towards organizational wrongdoing are more informed by the logic of appropriateness, as potential and actual complainants prefer informal channels for addressing organizational wrongdoing over formal reporting mechanisms. These findings present important insights for designing accountability mechanisms or anti-corruption strategies in public organizations. With a focus on unfamiliar settings to the literature on ethical culture, the paper rides on its in-depth analysis while contributing to the current research on organizational behavior and decision-making.     

Examining implementation and preliminary performance indicators of veterans treatment courts: The Kentucky experience

Veterans’ Treatment Courts (VTCs) are posited as a solution to offer rehabilitation for veterans involved in the criminal justice system. Despite the pervasive implementation of VTCs, there is little research focused specifically on VTC implementation and outcomes, which are based on other problem-solving court models such as drug court. The current study presents qualitative process evaluation data from key stakeholders (n = 21) and veteran participants (n = 4) to show accomplishments, challenges, and lessons learned during first-year implementation at two VTC sites. Quantitative performance data is also presented on veteran participants (n = 19) served during the first year to show: types of services, monitoring, judicial interaction, sanctions/therapeutic responses, and rewards, as well as preliminary data on recidivism. Qualitative data, from both key stakeholders and veteran participants, suggests that offering rehabilitation via various program components, services/referrals, and accountability are critical to the success of the VTC. Data also provides valuable lessons learned for VTC implementation including communication, collaboration, information/protocols, and resources. Performance data shows that a variety of services are utilized and that frequent judicial interaction, drug testing, and sanctions are cornerstones of the VTC. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.     

Ingesting the organization: The embodiment of organizational food rituals

This exploratory paper asks: ‘how do organizational food and drink rituals shape, reflect or create organizational culture?’ Adopting an embodied approach based on Merleau-Ponty's [1945. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by C. Smith, 2003. London: Penguin. New York: Routledge] phenomenological work, this paper explores the significance of food-based rituals. Data were collected from different organizations using mixed methods and an embodied, reflexive approach – which is relatively novel in organizational research. Embodied experiences are potent, and this paper proposes that workplace food and drink rituals can powerfully influence perceptions of organizational culture. The unique contribution is in showing how embodied organizational rituals create and sustain organizational culture by using the pre-reflective moment of food ingestion to shape cognitive reconstructions of organizational culture. However, food rituals can be controlled and shaped by the organization to specifically influence employee perceptions of organizational culture. Control of food rituals can be perceived as a deliberate effort to create a constructive culture and encourage reciprocity through employee loyalty and effort.     

The future of public sector labor-management relations: Part II — The federal sector

Journal of Labor Research -     

Oral health in long-term care: The implications of organizational culture

When an investigation designed to compare extant models of delivering oral health and dental services to the institutionalized elderly revealed that structural variables explained very little of the difference between effective and ineffective programs, secondary analytic techniques were employed to consider alternative explanations. The original study was a program evaluation based on a comparative case study of 12 long-term care (LTC) facilities. Data for each case included interviews with administrators, care providers, family members, and residents, administrative documentation, and clinical measures of oral health from the residents. The secondary analysis revealed the mechanisms through which the organizational context of each facility influenced the effectiveness of the oral health services. In addition, it revealed how administrative and leadership issues influenced the quality of care.     

The ‘greening’ of organizational change: A case study

There are many emerging corporate strategies designed to make large, complex business enterprises more responsive to environmental concerns. One major corporate innovation that has a direct environmental impact is the increased use of telework options for employees. These programmes significantly reduce the amount of employee travel, thereby reducing air pollution. However, adoption of telework programmes requires a change in organizational management strategies. The prevailing attitude of “If I can't see them, how do I know they are working” must be changed. This attitudinal change, coupled with the structural move towards the ‘virtual corporation’ can be managed using existing organizational development strategies and tactics. The paper reports the results of several field studies in California which examined the phenomenon of telework. The studies consistently report increases in worker productivity of 16 per cent and a significant reduction of personal automobile travel of between 20–40 per cent while engaged in telework. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for a management strategy for managing this change and highlights areas for future research.     

Network stability in organizational flux: The case of in-house management consulting

This article explores the effects of organizational flux on the statics of interpersonal knowledge exchange structures. In our empirical case, organizational flux refers to high rates of personnel turnover, temporary project work, constant recombination of team memberships, and short-term collaboration. Network statics refers to the balance between forces composing and decomposing a network. Set in continuously changing organizational compositions of an in-house management-consulting unit, our study offers insights into the relationship between organizational characteristics and informal networks between experts. Against conventional intuition, we find a dense and stable structure of knowledge exchange. Furthermore, we elaborate on the two concepts of organizational flux and network statics, by comparing the observed structures with theoretical (random graphs) and empirical references (other empirical cases), and by using ERG models to account for different factors of organization, social balance, and individual attributes.     

Humanitarian work psychology: The contributions of organizational psychology to poverty reduction

Achieving the MDG goal of reducing world poverty by 50% by 2015 requires the cooperative effort of many disciplines. To date the discipline of organizational psychology has not played as significant a role as it might in this endeavor. With the recent establishment of the Global Task Force for Humanitarian Work Psychology, this discipline signaled its commitment to the global effort. Organizational psychology offers to bring its expertise to poverty reduction: its ability to assess needs and capacity, develop partnerships with stakeholders, bring about and manage change, and systematically review, evaluate, monitor and revise high level mandates, policy development, program implementation and consultation on personnel issues. Its successes as practitioners-scientists in private enterprise will enhance its credibility for success in the public sphere. The article reviews the research and practice of some of the organizational psychologists presently engaged in poverty reduction and how humanitarian work psychology might enhance the efforts of anti-poverty organizations.     

Emotional intelligence and counterproductive work behavior: The mediating role of organizational climate

ABSTRACT

This research investigates the impact of emotional intelligence on counterproductive work behavior through examining the mediating role of organizational climate. Data were collected from 304 administrative employees working in nine private universities in Amman, Jordan. Validity and reliability tests were conducted using factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha. Research hypotheses were tested through multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling methods. Outcomes of the analysis indicate that there is a significant impact on the relationship between emotional intelligence and counterproductive work behavior. The research proposes several recommendations for managers to apply specifically in private universities, and/or in any type of sector in Amman- Jordan. It also laid the groundwork for future research.