Organizational Design Of A Social Care Organization

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"Social care is a profession committed to the planning and delivery of quality care and other support services for individuals and groups with identified needs". Human nature can be defined as a set of traits and qualities that all humans universally share, while psychology is a science that studies human behaviour, to get an understanding of the internal processes that lead people to behave as they do. These factors are important to keep in mind for the organisational design of a social care organisation. Organisational designs for large social care organisations are in general like most large organisations bureaucratic, which may be argued is unavoidable. Mintzberg (1983) defines organisational design as the "ways in which labour is divided …show more content…

Social care organisations fall under professional bureaucracy as they operate in stable but complex environments that adopts the standardization of skills. Bureacracy is a hegemonic approach as the model exists out of a centralised hierarchical system in which the top layer of the hierarchy control the organisation by formalization. Creating strict rules, policies and regulations that are passed vertically down the hierarchy. The downside of this model is that decentralization is needed so that there is greater autonomy lower down the hierarchy as the top layer of the hierarchy are rarely in direct contact with the service user. Another drawback according to Jones (2007) is that the organisation may have many levels of hierarchy which creates a narrow span of control. Even though this will lead to close supervision it may also slow down communication with great effect. This theory is also agreed upon by The Quality Assurance in the Social Care sector report (2010), who identified that effective communication in a social care environment is best achieved through low levels of hierarchy. A social care organisation therefore needs few layers but a wide span of control. Modern empirical views concluded that wide spans of control incline to create environments for improved attitudes, better …show more content…

Thompson and Thompson (2008) argue that social care workers should not be seen as bureaucrats simply there to carry out tasks assigned by management but as individual problem solvers with skills for decision making. This argument for autonomy is accurate but close control and supervision is needed and a compromise must be made. This needed in a social care environment as Aras Attracta service users abuse incident showed. Humans don’t like to be independent but need to be part of a group. This makes us highly conformist and compliant. Strict rules and regulations are therefore needed to keep workers within their professional boundaries and conduct. Even though Bureaucracy lacks creativity and humanity for employees, it must be understood that this is for the common goal even if this creates low morale and motivation amongst employees. Employees need a sense of reality, morality, personality. where the impact of failure can lead to serious harm or even death to

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