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ORGANIZATIONAL CASE STUDIES

CMGT 573 will require that students carry out an organizational case study as their major assignment/Final for the course. This is a field research project in which you select a nonprofit or government organization and collect information about its management controls, its activities, its structure, its resource base, the institution it relates to, and its relationships with other organizations. The following is a description of some issues to consider when doing an organizational case study. It will give you an idea of the kinds of information you will have to collect to conduct your organizational case study.

Organizational Case Studies

The main purpose of this assignment is to give you exposure to the management controls of an organization and how they contribute to the success or lack thereof of the organization. What you must know is that in organizations many things go on behind the scenes that are absolutely central in shaping its reputation. Many of these things are easy enough to learn about if you know to look for them, and if you have a general idea about the major categories that shape life in organizations.

Most of these categories are familiar to us as members of the common culture, but it is important to list them and talk about how to get information that will tell how these elements work in the particular organization you are working in. What follows is a list of categories with a brief discussion of how to learn about them.

Most of the information about organizations listed is actually available to the public—or ought to be available (some nonprofit organizations do not like to release financial information but you can usually get it on your own by going to one of the following web sites: Internet Nonprofit Center (organizational profiles of all nonprofits: http://www.nonprofits.org; Duke University Nonprofit Program (general information on nonprofits: http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/courses/pps2805/index.html; National Charities Information Bureau (for fundraising charities): http://www.give.org; Guidestar; The Donor’s Guide to the Nonprofit Universe: http://www.guidestar.org ).

Also, you will find that some information may not be available for your organization or the questions do not make sense for the kind of organization you are studying. That’s OK, but you ought to write a note about why that’s true in the space provided for information. The way your organization does not fit is important information. We have culturally ingrained ideas about how a bureaucracy works and what kinds of responsibilities employees have. Discovering that the organization you are studying breaks the rules helps you understand in a more creative way what’s behind the stereotypes, and maybe what’s wrong with the “traditional model.”

The information described below gets complicated and can be an entire semester project in itself. Do not let the project of collecting this information swamp or overwhelm you. This is a learning exercise meant to alert you to the ways that your immediate work setting relates to a larger organizational system of services.

Kinds of Organizational Information

· Organizational Demographics. This involves basic information like the name, location of the organization, the year the organization was founded (both the local branch and the larger organization) and the geographic area the organization serves. This information sometimes gets complicated because an organization may have a number of branches in different locations and it may have a number of corporate subdivisions. The older the organization, the more complicated it is likely to be. If you are researching an organization more than ten years old, it would be a good idea to pick up a printed organizational history if one exists, or to ask someone about the organization’s history. This is especially helpful if the organization has changed its name or its location since some information you pick up later on may refer to these different names and locations and that will be confusing unless you have the history.

· Hierarchy and organizational form. Specify whether it is a government or non-profit organization. Some organizations are legally incorporated or legislatively mandated and they have an official organizational chart or hierarchy. Get a copy of this organizational chart, study it, and explain how the unit you are focusing on fits into the whole.

One way of understanding the hierarchy of your organization is to learn how its system of governance works. Government organizations may be very transparent, but non-profits organizations usually will have a board of directors that legally “owns” the organization, and understanding who is on this board and how board members are selected can help a lot in understanding things the organizations does. (For example, one reason a private institution may support fraternities is that many alumni who are fraternity members are on the board and will not allow changes.) Other times, practices of an organization that puzzle you may become more sensible if you understand some principles of governance. Understanding that hospitals have a formal business board of directors, a doctor’s board, and contractual arrangements with independent physician groups (which are private businesses working within the hospital) helps to explain hospital politics. Understanding that some organizations make governance decisions by consensus of all members (a Quaker style nontraditional school in our area, Alcoholics Anonymous, many religious congregations) helps you to understand that you need to get away from conventional managerial or professional thinking to make sense of what you are seeing.

Each week of class we will cover a different aspect of management controls. Those same areas of management controls need to be addressed in your case study. It is suggested that you pace your case study by addressing each segment of management controls for your selected organization the same week as we discuss them in class. This will help to ensure you cover that area and also keep the case study from becoming a very difficult project over the last weeks of the class. Ideally, if you pace yourself, the final week will just be drawing conclusions and recommendations and putting it into the final format.

The areas that must be addressed in the case study are:

· Planning – How does the organization use planning as a management control? How effective is their approach? Are strategic plans (if existing) connected to tactical plans and resource allocation plans? How are plans updated and maintained?

· Budget Systems and programming – What budget system does the organization use? How does the organization decide how resources are distributed across the organization?

· Budget process - How does the budget process work in the organization? What parts of the organization are involved?

· Budget execution – In general, how does the organization execute its budget? How does it ensure that resources are available throughout the fiscal year? What reporting does the organization require internally to monitor the execution of its budget?

· Accounting – What accounting system(s) does the organization use? How prominent of a role does accounting play in the control of the organization?

· Financial management – Discuss the financial management approach.

· Financial reporting and auditing – What financial reports are required? How has the organization performed in its latest reports? What audits do the organization use? Internal audits? External audits?

· Performance management – How does the organization approach performance management? Does it cover organizational performance? Down to what level? Individual performance? How effective has it been?

· Risk management – Does the organization utilize risk management? If so, how does it approach risk management? How effective has it been for the organization?

· Management control decisions – What decisions are made from annual reports? How often are reports reviewed for making management decisions?

· Continuity - Does the organization have a continuity or business continuity plan? Does it address all of the elements of a good continuity program?

It is important for you to make a real effort to understand what people do in offices though you may have no daily contact with them. You can usually gain this understanding by having one or two people you work with go through the organizational chart. Ask them to tell you whether they know the people holding the different positions and ask them to tell what those people are like and what they seem to do. The people you talk to might not know and that’s OK (once more, it’s useful information to know that there are mystery people in the organization.) More likely, you will find that your informants have feelings about the people, the work they do, and how these other people affect the work you are observing. Pay attention to whether your informants seem to feel ownership of the organization and investment in its well-being or whether they feel like they are “just” employees and that they are somewhat distant or alienated from the center of energy and passion that makes the organization succeed (or fail).

You may find that the local organization is small, informal, and relatively democratic, but that it is part of some larger system or organization. Battering shelters and AIDS organizations, for example, are closely tied to state-wide associations that distribute public money for the state government. Churches are often part of regional church bodies to which they are more or less closely tied (Catholics are closely tied, Episcopalians less so, independent bible churches and reform Jewish synagogues not at all). Some organizations (the YMCA or local branches of the National Cancer Society) are like fast-food franchises that are locally owned but that must follow the directives of a national office. Some public organizations (like the Area Agency for the Aging—a “quasi-nongovernmental organization or QUANGO) may look like independent organizations, but actually they may turn out to be agencies of government with boards made up of elected officials. We call these connections “vertical ties” and they may lay down many of the rules people follow in day-to-day activities.

Other organizations are in charge of networks of organizations, rather than being subordinate in that sort of system. The United Way in your community is this sort of organization since it collects money for the community and then distributes it to member organizations that depend for survival on that money. The United Way has a powerful influence on what those organizations are allowed to do.

The United Way calls attention to another fact about your organization, that it is likely to be tied in cooperative ways to other organizations in the local community. For example, a program for high risk youth we work with receives referrals from the juvenile court and from ten to fifteen local school districts, it provides foster care programs and so coordinates with other foster care agencies, and it recruits volunteers from local churches. We’ve found that we cannot understand this organization without understanding these referral systems because those ties to other organizations set the rules that govern how the organization we are studying works. This set of relationships is called the “local interorganizational field”. Students usually will not be able to make sense of how it works since it involves the operations of many organizations. Be aware, however, that every social service agency is likely to have close ties to between five and twenty other organizations that shape and influence internal practices.

· Function or Service Industry. Often we refer to service industries as institutions and we recognize that professional training and service philosophies change profoundly when we shift from institution to institution. Think about the differences between a church, a prison, a hospital, a school, and a public welfare office, between a minister, a prison guard, a doctor, a teacher, and a public welfare social worker. Even without having taken classes related to each of these fields, you know many things about how these institutions and the professions that work in them are supposed to be different. If your organization is not in any of these categories, is there some other institutional or professional ethos that rules?

One of your important tasks is to learn about the values and service ethic among the people in your setting. It is a good thing to think self-consciously about how the service values you see are those that rule in another setting (one student emergency medical technician picking up a patient at the hospital reported how strange it was to have a guard yell as they departed, “let him die!”) You also need to be aware of the different service ethics held by different people in your organization. Doctors, nurses, administrators, and emergency medical technicians in the emergency have really different ideas about how to treat patients, how to relate to other staff, and how to exercise professional knowledge. Coaches and professors on your campus have really different ideas about what education is about.

· Structural characteristics. These are related to the question about hierarchy since when we talk about the “structure” of an organization we are referring to its subdivision or “division of labor” as well as to its system of governance and supervision, which is reflected in the system of hierarchy. The point of this question is to get you thinking about the size of your organization, and how that matters. If you are in a small social service organization this will not seem as important as it will if you are working in a big community hospital, a high school, a penitentiary, or a university. (Thinking about your university as an organization in terms of how its division of labor works is a really good exercise to help prepare for doing this in your field research organization.)

Size is important because in big organizations you have many divisions where people do very different things, and sometimes those things seem to be in direct opposition to each other. Those contradictory purposes can tell you a lot about why activities in a local field setting do not quite seem to achieve the goals and purposes that they are supposed to be advancing.

Actually, one of the main themes in organizational sociology is that hidden influences, or latent functions, usually deflect organizations from carrying out their primary or manifest functions. As you become more familiar with your field setting, looking for and describing these latent functions may help you a lot in feeling that you understand your setting.

· Budgets. Most people get nervous when you start talking about money, but most organizations are required to produce annual reports that tell how large their budget is and what they spend their money on. Some organizations will willingly share with you audited annual budget reports. Public organizations are required to report salaries of all employees (figuring out where this reporting happens can be a challenge...it might be printed in the newspaper or it might be filed with an office of the state). All nonprofits with annual budgets over $25,000 are required to file Form 990 with the Internal Revenue Service and this information is available on the web as noted above.

In addition to raw budget numbers, you want to pay attention to how funding is secured to pay for the program you are working in. Many organizations receive grants from foundations or government offices to set up and operate programs. You need to know what the terms of the grant are to understand what the program is supposed to be doing, and not doing. Often these funds come with frustrating restrictions attached to them that create real organizational hardships. It is not fair as a field observer just to note that a program has certain areas of ineffectiveness if you do not at the same time note that staff members are compelled to operate in certain ways.

You also will learn that staff members in many organizations spend a lot of time worrying about “their funding”. It is worth recognizing that organizations may operate very differently if they gain funding by selling a service (what is called “fee for service”) and thus can operate somewhat like a business, if they gain money from grants, or if they gain money by running public appeals and fundraising campaigns. When a grant is about to run out and there is danger that it will not be renewed, staff members understandably worry about whether they will have a job down the road. Volunteers sometimes do important work helping to do research about where new grant proposals might be submitted or collecting information the organization needs to properly complete a grant proposal. Similarly, volunteers usually play a critical role in fundraising campaigns whether it be figuring out how to run an event or organizing the necessary grunt work of stuffing envelopes or ringing doorbells.

You also will find that money issues are handled very differently in public and private organizations. In public organizations elected officials have an important role in shaping program policies, and they in turn often act in response to the needs and demands of constituents. You may find that the organization you are working in cannot do certain things because it would run afoul of the public responsibilities or political commitments of elected officials. (Our nonprofit assistance center, organized in partnership with a consortium of local governments, could not set up a service to advise local nonprofits about how to combat efforts by those local governments to tax them.)

Knowing about where money comes from and what budgetary crises confront members of your organization is among the most important data you can collect about an organization. It is important to appreciate, however, that organizations often talk about money concerns as a way of avoiding other organizational issues. If members of the board are fighting with each other over who is going to control decision making, this may come out as a concern that the organization is spending too much money. Maybe the challenging group on the board wants to start new programs, and the power group wants to make its point by forcing the chief executive office to cut budgets and reduce services (this is a familiar scenario on many college campuses.)

You might find collecting this small mountain of data on your organization great fun. Most people will not, sad to say. But by collecting that information you ought to become a lot more aware of three things about your field setting.

· First, you will see how your immediate observational setting fits into a larger system that has three parts: the formal organization in which you work; the horizontal system in your community of organizations that link up with and cooperate with your organization; and the vertical system of regional funders, regulators, and lobbying organizations that make up most of the rules and regulations that your supervisors have to follow.

· Second, you will gain a sense of the culture and ethos of your organization and how management controls guide and influence them. As you visit different organizations and as you talk to classmates and other researchers you will probably come to see that the particular organization you work in has a culture, a set of beliefs, and some rituals and traditions that are unique to it. You also should come to appreciate how professional values from different fields play into and shape work and life in your organization and how those professional values would be different in other institutions. This, actually, is another way of seeing how your organization fits into the larger world—here we are talking about how the local organization fits into the culture of the larger society.

· Finally, you need to recognize that the staff members and administrators you work with have strategic problems that they work to solve in their work. It is tempting to see a program or service as static, unchanging, and written in stone. Hopefully, you will see how the organizational management controls are not only affected by changes in strategies and outside influences, but the controls themselves often are part of the strategy and influence the many changes within organizations but as at the least are part of how organizations implement change.

Your final case study should be able to answer or at least address all of the following questions:

· How does the organization use planning? 

·  Does it have a strategic plan? 

·  Does the strategic plan tie to its resource allocation? 

· If so, how?

· How does the organization decide on how to distribute its resources? 

· When resources are tight, what processes do they use to make the resources fit their priorities? 

· What kind of budget system do they use? 

· How does the organization ensure its annual resources carry them through the year? 

·  Does the organization use risk management? 

· If not , how does it view risk? 

·  If it does, how is risk management applied? 

· Does the organization use performance management? 

·  If so, how is it used? 

·  What kind of accounting system/measures are used?

·   How does it handle financial management and financial reporting? 

· What kind of audits are used? 

· What process is used to make management decisions? 

·  Does the organization have a continuity plan? 

·  If so, what does their plan address?