Organizations and Communities Quiz

Key argument about community

scholars and policy makers need to work with a nuanced and dynamic understanding of community formation

Gemeinschaft

• Pre-industrial society, strong personal ties, tradition, common bonds

• (small communities)

• organic (Durkeim)

Gesellschaft

• Modern industrial society, limited social ties, relationships mediated by contracts/exchange ect

• (ex larger places Toronto, densely populated)

• mechanical (Durkeim)

Community presented as a dichotomy

• Imagined vs real community

  • Futuristic community vs reality

• Informal vs formal

• Community lost vs community found

  • Community that was had: past tense vs finding community in x place

• Geographic vs interest group

• Conscious vs unconscious community

Boundaries

• Community has to have a boundary of some type that serves to mark what is inside and what is outside of a community

• Often at the boundaries where sources of community conflict emerge

• It would be possible to have a world but it would still exclude elements outside the natural boundaries of the world

Communities of interest

• Communities of interest reflect broad interest groups, subjects, forms of practice, identities, issues ect

• Ie professions are communities of interest/practice

  • Includes sw, medicine, nursing, architects, lawyers

• Ethnic and racial groups are sometimes considered communities of interest/identity

Public spaces

• The existence, protection and advancement of public space is also critical to the development of cohesive and progressive communities

• Public space is space that is typically available to all and at often no charge

  • Ex: public parks, public libraries, public beaches, public transit, public healthcare

 

• Private space aims to exclude the general public, uses fees, boundaries, membership criteria ect to select its users

 

• Public space provides opportunities for the general public to gather and exercise free speech and free association

 

• Its existence has been under threat since the advent of neoliberalism in the latter part of the 20th century (increasing charge for public spaces)

 

New Public Governance (NPG)

• NPG is concerned with the institutional and external environmental pressures that enable and constrain public policy implementation and the delivery of public services within such a plural and pluralist system

 

• NPG emphasizes the significant strengths that nonprofit organizations can bring to the delivery of public services

 

• NPG approach calls for extensive collaboration btw the government and the nonprofit sector in the delivery of public services

Citizen exclusion

• Exclusion related to citizenry such as legal status, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture and rights

• Citizenry exclusion motivates INO emergence

• Citizenry exclusion of immigrants is a necessary condition for INOs to emerge

Government failure theory

• Nonprofits emerge in response to the governments failure to meet consumers needs

Contract theory

• Nonprofits emerge due to contract failure

• Occurs when consumers do not have sufficient info to assess goods or services leading to transactions that are inefficient or discriminatory

Interdependence theory

• Voluntary failure

  • When nonprofits lack financial resources and an inability to foster true self-reliance

  • Philanthropic particularism

    • Organizations that form along ethnic, religious or sectarian lines form due to communal or individual pride

• Third party government

  • Partnership relationship between nonprofits and the govern sector

3 dimensions of citizen exclusion

• Legal, rights, cultural

  • Legal status, cultural identity

Organizations

• Organizations are actual or virtual entities that through collaboration, research development and knowledge aim to advance ideas, goals and objectives of interest to those composing the organization

 

• Organizations may be private, public, hybrid

  • Private:  ex united way

  • Public: ex healthcare

 

• Orgs may be for profit, nonprofit, hybrid

Formal organizations

• Central to the existence of a formal organization is that they are recognized by the State as a legitimate entity through its laws and procedures

  • Informal org tend to lack this element of legitimacy

Non-profits

• tend to be funded through donations, memberships, fundraising, contracts, fee for services and government or voluntary grants

  • United Way is an important organization in its own right but is also instrumental for providing funding to other organizations

 

• Public funding for non profits and government organizations come via taxation of individuals and corporations

History of nonprofits

• Nonprofits emerged from voluntary activities that included the first social work organizations in Europe and North America

  • These included settlement houses and charity org societies

  • Emerged to address many of the social ills created by the industrial revolution such as widespread poverty, unemployment, workplace injuries ect

 

• The advent of neoliberalism in the 1970s/1980s contributed to a reshaping of non profit organizations forms and functions

• Aimed to transfer state level responsibilities to the non profit sector where possible through contracting for services

  • Often involves provision of resources to orgs with lengthy cost control provisions and outcome measure

Issues and elements that impact contemporary nonprofits

• Understanding of the relationship between the internal and external organizational environments

• How professional values and ethics are actualized within a neoliberal context

• Tension between the public and private sectors

• Role of race, class and gender in orgs

• Role of funding

  • Funding remains a driving force in many orgs

    • Orgs need to raise money from diverse sources including online sources

• Sw is unique in that most of the people we work with cannot pay for service themselves

  • Dependent on third party payments of various forms

• Power

  • Orgs aim to have power to realize their goals and objectives

    • Applied within the orgs as well from the external environment

• Trust

  • Organizational trust within and without the orgs is central to its success of failure

Human relations model

• Focuses on relations within the agency (ie what motivates employees)

Resource dependency or resource advantage model

• Understanding an organizations resources (ie where does their money come from, who are they dependent on)

Scientific management theory

• Focused on efficiency-> speed

Contingency theory

• To understand orgs you have to understand their environments

• Things happening on contingent on external things

Management by objectives

• Focusing on an orgs objectives

New Public Management

• Management matters, controlling workers, efficiency

Community organizing

• Social power

  • Gained through collective action

  • Community action

• Learning

  • Individuals can develop many skills and learn to become leaders

• Capacity for democracy

  • Democratic practice at the local level is one of the most important contributions of community organizing

• Sustained social change

  1. Improvement of the quality of life through the resolution of shared problems

  2. Reduction of the level of social inequalities caused by poverty, racism, sexism

  3. The exercise and preservation of democratic values as part of the process of organizing

  4. Enabling people to achieve their potential as individuals

  5. Creation of a sense of community

Reactionary perspective

• Shaped by values that promote efforts to stop social change and to decrease the power of the lower class and minority groups

Conservative perspective

• Values that attempt to maintain the political and social status quo, changes that advance conservative ideas

• ie small government, low taxes, personal freedom for some, private programs/services

Liberal perspective

• sets of values that include freedom, self-determination, scientific explanation, equality of opportunity, use of government to advance and protect interests

• Shragge viewed as a reformist position: favours modest/large government, some taxation, democracy, supports capitalism

Radical perspective

• to describe those who see the capitalist system as the cause of social problems and organizing as a way to make more basic changes

Pluralist theory

• Argues that power in society is not concentrated in a particular group but is diffused between competing interests

• Continual bargaining btw groups on social issues

• State plays a role in mediating

• Community organizing plays a role that is acting in supporting and encouraging participation in political and administrative processes 

Marcuse 4 approaches to reform

• Efficiency reforms

  • Designed to improve the efficient of what exists

• Liberal reforms

  • Aimed at improving aspects of policy that are undesirable

• Radical reform

  • Redistribution of power and reduction of inequality

• Transformative claims

  • Alter relations of power, propose solutions, advocate redistribution of resources and prioritize human use

Locality development approach

• Based on assumptions of common interest among groups in wider society

• Social problems can be solved by bringing together representatives of as many groups and their contributions

• Diverse interests of the local community and emphasizes social processes

• Conflict is absent

• Direct involvement of citizens

Social planning model

• Top down approach to problem solving

• Technical solutions, rational tools and the expertise of professionals

• Specific services or programs that are designed to meet particular needs

Social action model

• Promotes changes in power relations and direct action from a segment of the community that is without power/resources

• Conflict is central

• Direct action

Functionalism

• People fall into the roles in which they fit, any movement is through individual action or personal change

• Poor people need opportunity and cooperation, not power as a means of moving out of poverty

Conflict theory

• Society as divided

• Conflict is a means of seeking social change

• Power as a key issues

• Groups building power to contest issues that affect their lives

Integration/development

• currently the dominant practice approach

  • Includes community development

    • Social partnerships, supporting civil society organizations, consensus-oriented strategies

  • Change is understood as a internally defined, local process

Integration/action

• a pressure group approach

  • Assumes political pluralism

  • Gain local improvements by applying pressure on those with the authority of power to bring about those changes

Opposition/action

• comprises social action organizations that work beyond the local

  • Social movements

• needed to advance fundamental change (same as action/development)

Opposition/development

• links services and/or development processes of social change

  • Create alternatives to present systems

  • Creation of economic and developmental alternatives

  • Ownership is collective instead of individual

Bevins reading (slideshow)

• Historical overview of protest actions primarily in NA

• 3 areas of interest

  • Recognition in the 1960s/70s of the role of mass media

  • movements needed to focus on the new, express intensity

  • surprise its audience

Prefigurative politics

What you are doing now will prefigure or model the world you want to live in tomorrow

Structureless organizations

• Uses material from Wini Brienes that notes the tyranny of structurlessness

• When a movement insists it has no leaders, they emerge anyway except there are no fair or transparent mechanisms to select or remove them

• Highlights the importance of organization and culture to organizing

  • Many forms of representative and participatory democracy

• Examples

  • SDS, the Occupy Movement

In Mobilizing the Poor

• Effective social movement and many community organizing efforts, rely on formal organizations which tend to contain the groups efforts as they inevitably become focused on organizational maintenance and growth

• They suggest that informal sometimes loosely structured organizations are nimble but focused with high energy (ie participatory democracy) and can sometimes be more successful than formal ones

• Often disappear after goals are achieved

Resource Mobilization Theory

• Resources refer to money, staff, volunteers, buildings, ideas, materials, access to technology ect

 

• Resources tend to be part of organizational structures and being able to mobilize/marshall them in effort of a cause is considered crucial

Community Organizing (Shragge)

• often shaped by the tension between visions of social change and pragmatic engagement (Shragge)

  • Vision is needed to guide and move others to act

  • Pragmatism is needed to ensure one is able to navigate and negotiate for immediate and perhaps small change

Power

• A (person, organization ect) is about to get B (person, organization ect) to do what they otherwise would not have done

  • Provides guidance for actions and a way to understand what has or has not occurred

 

• This definition suggests that power is everywhere and being constantly exercised

• Power has a negative and positive character

Rothman’s 3 Models of Organizing

• Locality development

  • Focus is on developing a local geographic area

  • Ex building a house to address homelessness

  • Often associated with liberal and sometimes conservative perspectives

• Social planning

  • Focus is on rational and professional planning

  • Can be geographic or interest group oriented

  • Focus is often on service development, policy change ect

  • associated with the liberal perspective

• Social action

  • Focus is on action, conflict, pressure group tactics

  • Use of direct action means to obtain objectives

  • Often associated with radical left wing groups

  • most supported by Shragge

Frame alignment

• How an individuals interests values and beliefs are linked and in harmony with the activities, goals and ideology of a social movement organization

Collective action frames

• Action-oriented beliefs and meanings that legitimize and inspire social movement campaigns and activities

4 basic strategic frame alignment processes

• Frame bridging

  • Linkage of 2+ ideologically congruent but structurally unconnected frames regarding a particular issue or problem

• Frame amplification

  • Some issues and beliefs are highlighted more than others

• Frame extension

  • Interests and framings are extended beyond their primary issues to include issues that are potentially important and relevant to their adherents

  • Necessary for social movements to maintain their relevance

• Frame transformation

  • Old understandings of individuals or collectives are changed and new meanings are generated

The credibility of a frame depends on 3 factors

• Frame consistency

  • When a frame is in line with the ideas and principles of an SMO

• Empirical credibility

  • Fit between framing and the events in the world

• Credibility of the frame articulators

  • Frame resonance

Social movements are shaped by the intersection of various spatialities

• Space

 

• Place

  • As location/site

  • Locale

  • Sense of place

 

• Place based identities shape local collective action

6 spatial strategies to study the importance of place, scale, mobility, creativity, emotion and discourse

• Know your place

• Make some space

• Stay mobile

• Wage war of words

• Extend your reach