Organisations are not bricks and mortar, they are people
ORGANISATIONS ARE NOT BRICKS AND MORTAR, PLANT AND EQUIPMENT OR EVEN NEAT LITTLE DIAGRAMS ON PAPER. THEY ARE PEOPLE!ANALYSE THE ABOVE STATEMENT USING EXAMPLES FROM THE CARE SECTOR TO EXPLAIN WHETHER OR NOT YOU BELIEVE THIS STATEMENT IS AS OVER-SIMPLIFIED VIEW OF ORGANISATIONS.As the title suggests, organisations are living things, consisting of groups of diverse people whose efforts are held together by their structure. "The structure of an organisation is a skeleton which does not come alive until there are people, groups and tasks to get the blood running and the nerved working" 1(Managing social work Handy 1988 p 103) one definition of an organisation is "Organisations are social arrangements for the controlled performance of collective goals"2(Organisational Behaviour 2nd edition Derek Pugh)No matter what form an organisation takes it is essential for it to change and adopt its structure now and then in response to perceived changed e.g. "the Griffith inquiry" which looked at the structure of the NHS, its recommendations were later applied to Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland. 3(Health & Health care in Britain Rob Baggot 2nd Ed p133)The environment and the people in an organisation effect how it operates, whe
4(Organisational culture Schein 1985:9) But although organisations are people they are also bricks and mortar, plant and equipment and neat little diagrams because for example with reference to the care for the elderly, there are a lot of different organisation involved, like home help, district nurse, G P, health visitor etc but where do these people come from? How do they operate? The answer is simple, they all have a base in which they work from, that somewhere is in a building hence bricks and mortar and they will also be surrounded by equipment like phones photocopiers, fax's and computers. Those who need the power, authority strive to be at the top of the hierarchical ladder, while those who merely work for the money by which to survive by form the base of the ladder. Computers can be expensive but for any organisation they are seen as an investment because they create higher productivity, which in turn creates more money, but there are problems with incorporating computer into the workplace, such as; it takes time to learn how to use them and there's the risk that they might break down. Maslow's hierarchy of needs shows us we must have job satisfaction to self-actualise. For an organisation to be strong this depends highly on the people within it, working as a team, co-operating and interacting with each other. The structure of an organisation varies according to size and nature of it's activities, the environment has an effect on how things are run for example, where its situated, who uses the organisation and whether the organisation is in the public or private sector and the size of the population has an effect on the organisation as well. Therefore a social worker in England with the same case scenario may have totally different beliefs on how to tackle the same problem than say a social worker in Japan, this is called organisational culture. Organisations are efficient ways of producing the goods and services that are useful in every day-to-day life. One definition of organisational culture is; "culture is a pattern of basic assumptions - invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation integration - that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. An organisations structure normally tends to be of hierarchical in nature. Elton mayo recognised that people are a very special resource; "They not only work for an organisation, they are the organisation"5(Management in social work, Veronica Coulshed 1990) . Within each organisation the managers at the top of the hierarchy wear business suits, pass orders on and make decisions on behalf of the workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. Some may even be working for stability in their life, so it is clear to see that everyone has different goals and objectives. People all have different values, beliefs, and attitudes and these vary from country to country. With all the technological advances that have been made computers have now done away with a lot of clerical and administrative work they are also very good for storing information like files on clients.
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