Signature Assignment Organization Design Paper
Turning Point of Central California Incorporation (Inc.) is a nonprofit organization that provides a full-service partnership with the communities from direct and referral services. The organization helps people, ages from sixteen through twenty-six years old, to become mentally stable and independent. They provide services in mental health, medication education, therapy, and intervention. The organization has fifty different locations in ten different counties throughout the state of California. In this paper, it will discuss the Turning Point program located in Fresno, California about their organization structure, power and politics, organization culture, and changes.
Organization Structure
Turning Point works in many structures: work specialization, departmentalization, change of command, decentralized and formalization.
Work Specialization
Every organization is structured differently. For Turning Point, they have a structure of work specialization. “ Work specialization describes the degree to which activities in an organization are divided into separate jobs “(Robbin and Judge, 2015, p. 246). The organization has groups that are specialized in certain skills to assist the process of helping the people that are in need. There are therapists, nurses, case managers, and peer support teams that carry out tasks throughout a person process in recovery.
Departmentalization
Each group at Turning Point, are grouped together into different departments. Each department has a different process they focus with a consumer that is referred from other organization. When an organization separate people into different departments it is called departmentalization (Robbins and Judge, 2015). Therapist and case managers are in the mental department which focuses on the consumers with a mental health issue and unstable living. In the medical department, the nurse education about medications and construct medical practice. The peer support department consists of peer support team members and the program director. They provide support to the treatment team and have the first interaction with the consumers.
Change of Command
According to Robbin and Judge (2015), the chain of command is who the employees are to report to from the levels the bottom to the top (p. 248). In which describe who has the power of making decisions. At Turning Point, the case managers, therapist, and nurses reports to the supervisor then next goes to the program director. The peer support only reports to the program director for any issues and directions. From the program director to the regional director and finally the Chief of Executive at the top level. Each level has their own degree of authority to meet their responsibility (Robbin and Judge, 2015, p. 249). When there is a difficult situation, they are to follow the chain of command.
Decentralized
Decentralized is “ Management efforts to make organizations more flexible and responsive have produced a trend toward decentralized decision making by lower-level managers” (Robbins and Judge, 2015, p. 250). Meetings are arranged for all team members to once a week to discuss any disagreement or issue. Therefore, during those meetings the team all together to find a solution to resolve any issues that there may have. For an organization to be successful, there is to be fairness, support from all employees, and employees’ engagement (Johnson, 2015). Turning Point implements this fairness for success by allowing their employees to be engaged to provide services to people in need in their program.
Formalization
The employees at Turning Point, there is very little formalization due to the flexibility in a decentralized organization (Robbin and Judge, 2015, p. 250). However, there is a 65% productivity activity monthly goal that each employee have to meet. The organization allows their employee to work however to meet that goal. Being flexible for the employee to be able to work from home and often longer hours if needed. Turning Point has a Mental Health Funds (MHF) that the employees use to encourage their consumer in order to reach their productivity goal. The MHF is used to encourage a consumer to comply with the process for their recovery. For example, the nurse offers to take the consumer to shop, using the MHF for some new clothes if they take their medications daily as directed. When consumer take their medications as directed, nurses are able to complete their report more easily. Employee feeling more at ease when their employer is flexible.
Power and Politics
Coercive power
The program director has strong coercive power over the employees. It is an application of force to which the higher level position has the ability to instruct employees, otherwise negative result follows (Robbin and Judge, 2015, p. 208). For example, when the supervisor at Turning Point, request for the nurses reports being completed within 24 hours. A written warning follows when the reports are not completed within the timeframe that is requested by the supervisor. The supervisor using her position as an authority to persuade the employees.
Legitimate power
Turning Point not just have the coercive power within the organization, but also legitimate power is present. According to Robbin and Judge (2015), legitimate power “ represents the formal authority to control and use organizational resources based on the person’s structural position in the organization” (p. 209). The position an employee holds, they have a certain power they hold within the organization. Like the program director, he holds more power than all the employees at the Fresno location. He has the power to enforce the policies and ensure goals are being meant. As well as for the supervisor, because of their position, they are able to assign work for the therapist, nurses, and case managers. Overall, the program director has the authority to tell the employees how to complete their task.
Politics behavior
Every organization encounters political behavior in some kind of ways. Robbin and Judge (2015), characterized political behavior as someone who works to link information to influence a certain objective (p. 216). Having political behavior within an organization like Robbin and Judge (2015), mentioned can be positive for an organization. The case managers at Turning Point, often perform political behaviors to individuals’ gain. Leading them to engage in politicking with their partner organization such as Community Behavioral Health Center (CBHC). For caseworkers, having more information about their consumer provides them with ways to work more effectively to complete their productivity activity report. In support of organizational politics, the productivity increases for the understanding of politic (Robbins and Judge, 2015, p. 219). Therefore, having the organization having some organizational behavior for politic is positive.
Impression Management
Having the conscious when working for any organization can be beneficial. Impression management is where the organization gives an individual to identify what their goals are instead of having someone else influence their perception. Working and understanding the organization goals can lead to employees to feel satisfied with where they work at (Sven, 2014). For employees working at Turning Point, supervisors promote how the nonprofit organization practices its core value: respect, responsibility, communication, and teamwork. As Robbin and Judge (2015) introduce impressions management to be where someone controls the way others see things. Program directors providing the community the positive of the organization leading to many referrals from Fresno County assistant programs, hospitals and CBHC. However, having impression management gives little impressions management for them to increase exploit.
Organization Culture
Every organization is unique in its own way. According to Robbins and Judge (2015), an organizational culture is what the organization share that represents them from other organization (p. 266). At Turning Point, they share a strong culture, organizational climate, socialization, symbol, and languages. The organization’s culture is a boilerplate for the organization to guide their employees.
Strong culture
A strong culture help motivates employees to be positive. Turning Point ensures that their core values are part of their culture. They focus on what is needed to assist their employees to understand and apply their core values (Turaga, 2015). It is a guide to help the employees work efficiently to help their consumers to become independent and mentally stable. “ A strong culture supported by formal rules and regulations ensures employees will act in a relatively uniform and predictable way” (Robbins and Judge, 2015, p. 268). When all employees share the same goal to which it will create a strong organization.
Organization climate
When someone enjoys where they work, it will increase their job satisfaction. A workplace environment is a major effect on employees. “ A positive workplace climate has been linked to higher customer satisfaction and organizational financial performance” (Robbins and Judge, 2015, p. 269). The contented is describing that the organization climate has some effects on the employees work performance. Employee’s concerns are taken seriously and discuss during their weekly meetings. As suggested by Cohen (2011), having meetings is a method to have a perception of the staffs. This allows them to conduct what is needed to achieve their objectives. Turning Point showing their employee that they matter by setting a positive work environment improves work satisfaction.
Socialization
Many organization may have their own ways for socialization. Socialization is where the organization has their way to adapt employees to their culture (Robbin and Judges, 2015). Turning Point allows each individual to be empowered during their weekly meetings. It is a way to build their team value and morals. As an adaptation of each work and individual to the workplace, therefore, to it is conceivable (Sven, 2014). Every new individual goes through orientations to learn about the organizations and training are provided. Many employees at Turning Point are very welcoming and willing to assist new employees to feel welcome.
Symbol and language
Employees at an organization, their culture are daily transmitted through symbol and languages (Robbin and Judge, 2015, p. 276). Turning Point provides a work vehicle for employees to use to transport their consumers to places that will increase their productivity level. Every employee has their own personal laptop. The laptop is for work use when needed to take home unfinished reports to assist them, in completing their reports by the deadline. The organization is flexible as they can be to decrease employees’ stress levels.
Besides using symbols, within Turning Point, they also use languages. Languages are used to help employees communicate and identify the culture (Robbin and Judge, 2015, p. 278). Turning Point has terms and acronyms that are internal use. It transits into the employees’ normal language usage. This language for them and can be different to the new employees.
Change
Turning Point has the vision to dedicate their services to the community. Reducing program participants’ social problems and assisting them to have a healthy and productive life. They help the community by motivating the people in need to become productive members of society. The organization carries out their vision by having to prioritize their consumers which are the participants that are being referred to the program. Their value is to have courage and honesty to accept responsibility for their own action. Turning Point has an urgency to change their employee communications.
As communication is one of their core values, employees within lacks that value. An employee’s job can be determined how they perform (Sven, 2014). Not being able to transmit information to one other is a job quality that the employees at Turning Point need to improve on. Therapist, case managers, and nurses have productivity sessions with the consumer. However, this was a concern for the employees. When the consumer meets with a nurse, the nurse renders the consumer that they will take them to get anything they want if they take their medications as directed. Therefore, when the lab result proven that the consumer is taking his medications. The promise made by the nurse is not follow through. Thus leading the nurses to advise the consumer that their caseworker or therapist will take the consumer to a local store to buy household supplies with the MHF. Leading the consumer to demand his case manager or therapist to take him. As that was what the consumer was informed by the nurse. As neither the caseworker nor therapist was aware of this informative. Therefore, leading to having an upset consumer, which if it was a consumer with behavior problems, this situation will only make their behavior worst. As one of Turning Points vision is to reduce consumer’s social problems not to increase it. Addressing the process of helping the consumer is an urgent matter. Due to the fact that their value is to ensure the consumer status is their priority.
Stress at work
Working with at Turning Point, employees have consumers that varies from homeless, mental health issue, and consumers that are needing drug treatment. Some of their consumers consist of being unstable mentally and emotionally. Therefore, having internal colleagues to delay and decrease that improvement after many sessions of trying to improve a consumer productivity is stressful. According to Robbins and Judge (2015), stress at work can be caused by organizational factors such as interpersonal demand. For example, the nurses refer the consumer to follow up with their social worker to take them to get the store to get them some clothes. The nurse is referring them to provide less work for the nurse to report for her productivity activity report for the day. The case managers now are under the pressure to help the consumer. Nevertheless, stress can be avoided.
Lewin’s Three-Step Model
Many employees have come to the conclusion that having employee promising consumer, but having another employee responsibility for following through causes them stress. This is an urgent situation that Turning Point has lied on the table to discuss during weekly meetings. Because it is becoming an impact on employees workload. Many are becoming stress and unable to manage the normal task that is assigned to them. The program director has an innovation to improve this communication. As a result, an employee who promises the consumer any gift being award to them will be responsible in following through to complete the task themselves. Otherwise, another employee assist is allowed, but prior notification and approval from the employee have to be confirmed first. To solidify that the inner policy is continuing, the concern is follow up during the weekly meetings to ensure that it is not a continuing issue.
Conclusion
Turning Point has a cultural norm within the organization that builds overall a strong organization. They empower their employees by meeting with them on a weekly basis. The organization should have one on one review quarterly to ensure that everyone acknowledges the change that was implemented. The nurses have to acknowledge the need for her to change her work ethics.
References
- Cohen, M. A., Rogelberg, S. G., Allen, J. A., & Luong, A. (2011). Meeting design characteristics and attendee perceptions of staff/team meeting quality. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice , 15 (1), 90–104. https://doi. org/10. 1037/a0021549ap
- Johnson, M. (2015). ENGAGING A MULTIGENERATIONAL AND MULTICULTURAL WORKFORCE: One Style Does Not Suit All. Plans & Trusts , 33 (5), 10–15. Retrieved fromhttp://0-search. ebscohost. com. librarycatalog. fresno. edu/login. aspx? direct= true&AuthType= ip, uid, url&db= bth&AN= 109118447&site= eds-live
- Robbins, S., Judge, T., (2016). Essentials of Organizational Behavior. New York, NY: Pearson Education.
- Sven Hauff, & Stefan Kirchner. (2014). Changes in workplace situation and work values. Relations and dynamics within different employment regimes. Management Revue , (1), 27. Retrieved fromhttp://0-search. ebscohost. com. librarycatalog. fresno. edu/login. aspx? direct= true&AuthType= ip, uid, url&db= edsjsr&AN= edsjsr. 24331300&site= eds-live
- Turaga, R. (2015). Managing Difficult Workplace Conversations. IUP Journal of Soft Skills , 9 (1), 15–34. Retrieved from http://0-search. ebscohost. com. librarycatalog. fresno. edu/login. aspx? direct= true&AuthType= ip, uid, url&db= bth&AN= 103322288&site= eds-live
