Human Services Organizations as Systems
Social workers use the person-in-environment approach to understand the relationship between individuals and their physical and social environments. This ecological perspective is a framework that is based on concepts associated with systems theory. Systems theory guides social workers when they assess how factors in the environment such as school, work, culture, and social policy impact the individual. Although social workers commonly use the systems approach to focus on the individual, they may apply this approach to human services organizations as well. Human services organizations exist within the context of the social, economic, and political environments, and any type of change in one aspect of the environment will influence the organization’s internal and external functioning.
For this Assignment, consider how administrators of human services organizations may apply systems theory in their work. Also, consider what you have discovered about the roles of leadership and management and how these contribute to an organization’s overall functioning.
Assignment (2–3 pages in APA format): Explain how systems theory can help administrators understand the relationships between human services organizations and their environments. Provide specific examples of ways administrators might apply systems theory to their work. Finally, explain how leadership and management roles within human services organizations contribute to their overall functioning.
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Administration in Social Work
ISSN: 0364-3107 (Print) 1544-4376 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wasw20
Theoretical Perspectives on the Social
Environment to Guide Management and
Community Practice
An Organization-in-Environment Approach
Elizabeth A. Mulroy PhD
To cite this article: Elizabeth A. Mulroy PhD (2004) Theoretical Perspectives on the Social
Environment to Guide Management and Community Practice, Administration in Social Work, 28:1,
77-96, DOI: 10.1300/J147v28n01_06
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Theoretical Perspectives
on the Social Environment to Guide
Management and Community Practice:
An Organization-in-Environment Approach
Elizabeth A. Mulroy, PhD
ABSTRACT. This paper introduces a conceptual framework called Or-
ganization-in-Environment that is intended to help social work students,
particularly those preparing for careers in management and community
practice, understand the complexity of the social environment in the con-
text of a global economy. This model is based on two assumptions. First,
organizations and communities are embedded in large, complex macro
systems that helped to create institutional barriers of the past. Second, or-
ganizations are civic actors with the potential to strengthen communities
and change institutional inequities set in larger societal systems. Theories
of social justice, the political economy, vertical and horizontal linkages,
organization/environment dimensions, and interorganizational collabora-
tion are presented and used to help analyze the model. Case examples of
privatization, gentrification, and homelessness are used to illustrate theory
for practice. Finally, implications are drawn for a future-oriented practice
that emphasizes external relations and their political dimensions: strategic
management, interorganizational collaboration, community building, re-
gional action, and a commitment to social justice. [Article copies available
for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH.
E-mail address:
Elizabeth A. Mulroy is Associate Professor, School of Social Work, University of
Maryland-Baltimore, 525 West Redwood Street, Baltimore, MD 21201 (E-mail:
emulroy@ssw.umaryland.edu).
The author thanks Michael J. Austin for his very helpful comments on earlier versions
of the article.
Administration in Social Work, Vol. 28(1) 2004
http://www.haworthpress.com/web/ASW
2004 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1300/J147v28n01_06 77
http://www.HaworthPress
http://www.haworthpress.com/web/ASW
KEYWORDS. Social justice, social environment theory, organizational
change, social change, community theory, collaboration
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of the social environment and
to consider some theoretical perspectives of management and community practice.
The study of macro level factors begins with an examination of the social environ-
ment; namely understanding how people interact–how they respond, adapt, and
cope with family, friends, peers, and intimate others, and how they interact in less
personal relationships within work organizations, schools, or associations in which a
person assumes a role as citizen, producer, consumer, or client. It should then exam-
ine social norms, social institutions, and institutional arrangements–the working
agreements about the distribution of wealth, power, prestige, privilege associated
with race, ethnicity, gender, age, mental status, or sexual orientation. While de-
signed to create stability for society, institutional arrangements can be a source of
conflict for those who experience institutional inequities (Mulroy, 1995a).
Students of management and community practice, and in fact all social work stu-
dents, need to critically examine how macro level factors affect the lives of people
who live in neighborhoods and communities, especially the lives of very low-income
children and their families who live in neighborhood poverty. Gephart (1997) writes:
Existing research suggests the interaction of several forces in American
cities over the past fifty years has led to the increased spatial concentration
of poverty, the geographic spread of concentrated poverty, and the in-
creased clustering of poverty with other forms of social and economic dis-
advantage. These forces have altered the context of urban poverty at the
community level and created the neighborhoods and communities of con-
centrated poverty . . . (1994, pp. 3-4)
The concept of the social environment becomes more holistic when we in-
clude the physical environment, especially in relation to land use and population
distribution (Norlin & Chess, 1997). The question for management and commu-
nity practice is how do we understand the social environment in this way, and
how do we educate students to manage and change it?
While a discussion of the social environment usually begins with community
theory and organization theory as if communities and organizations were separate
topics, a broader and more integrated conceptual framework is needed for the edu-
cational task at hand. Communities and organizations are located in larger, com-
plex systems as part of an ecology of shifting resources and constraints. Based on
a theoretical foundation that informs this reality, the next generation of practitio-
ners will need to:
78 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
• Identify and understand the critical strategic issues external to their organi-
zations.
• Assess the inter-relatedness and cross-cutting impacts of the issues.
• Analyze how the issues affect their agency’s mission, purposes, resources,
and operations.
• Learn which other organizations are affected across a range of community
types such as geographic community and communities of interest.
• Determine which theoretical perspectives offer guidance to inform a range
of practice innovations that will help to solve the presenting problems
while holding firm to the overriding goal of social justice.
This article examines the social environment by building on social systems and
ecological theories (not reviewed here) in order to focus on the political economy,
vertical and horizontal linkages, organization-environment relations, and inter-
organizational collaboration. These are selected for illustrative purposes to dem-
onstrate how they can inform macro-level practice. The goal of helping students
understand the social environment is related to the following four points:
1. The social environment and the physical environment are tightly linked
and intertwined.
2. Factors and relationships external to an organization are important.
3. Public policies and societal factors are continuous forces of change not
only for organizations but also for the communities in which organizations
are located.
4. A commitment to social justice is a core principle that frames management
and community practice.
A MODEL OF ORGANIZATION-IN-ENVIRONMENT
Social Justice
Social justice, a core value of social work (Reamer, 2000), drives the model
(see Figure 1). Social justice has historically guided reformers and social workers
to re-frame the pressing social issues of the times and to engage in the complex
work of finding solutions to vexing societal problems (Addams, 1910; Wald,
1915; Schorr, 1964; Schorr, 1997; Patti, 2000). Today this means confronting the
rearrangement of institutional barriers that emerged in our urban areas during the
past 30 years–barriers that helped to create and sustain neighborhood poverty that
continue to affect the health and well-being of residents and prevent the advance-
ment of many very low-income people, especially minorities.
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 79
The starting point for most discussions of social justice is the theory of justice
developed by philosopher John Rawls (1972) who proposed three guiding prin-
ciples: equality in basic liberties, equality of opportunity for advancement, and
positive discrimination for the underprivileged in order to ensure equity. Rawls
derived these principles of justice on what he believed reasonable people, with
no prior knowledge or stake in the outcome, would apply to a society in which
they were to live (Ife, 1996).
Ife (1996) moves the analysis of social justice from the individual to the commu-
nity level. Following Ife’s thinking, social justice at the macro level is based on six
80 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
Social Justice
Level 3
Societal/Policy Forces
Level 2
Locality-Based Community
IMPACTS SOLUTIONS
AgencyLevel 1
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Equity
Job, Housing,
Education, Services
Economic Globalization
Market Economy
Mulroy, E. 2003
FIGURE 1. Organization-in-Environment: A Conceptual Framework
principles: structural disadvantage, empowerment, needs, rights, peace and non-vio-
lence, and participatory democracy. He argues that unless changes are made to the
basic structures of oppression, which create and perpetuate an unequal and inequita-
ble society, any social justice strategy has limited value. “. . . all programmes that
claim a social justice label need to be evaluated in terms of their relationship with the
dominant forms of structural oppression, specifically class, gender, and race/ethnic-
ity” (1996, p. 55). He believes that a specific commitment to addressing the inequal-
ities of class, gender and race/ethnicity must be a core element of any social justice
strategy, and the guiding principle of community practice (p. 56).
Harvey (1973), writing from an economic and urban perspective states, “The
evidence suggests that the forces of urbanization are emerging strongly and
moving to dominate the centre stage of world history . . . We have the opportu-
nity to create space, to harness creatively the forces making for urban differenti-
ation. But in order to seize these opportunities we have to confront the forces that
create cities as alien environments, that push urbanization in directions alien to
our individual or collective purpose. To confront these forces we first have to
understand them” (pp. 313-314). That is, social workers must first understand
how the forces of oppression operate across a metropolitan landscape in order to
devise strategies capable of bringing about lasting change.
Levels of Influence
Figure 1 depicts a social environment in which communities and agencies are
part of larger systems. The first set of arrows suggests that macro level factors Im-
pact communities and the organizations in them. The second set of arrows sug-
gests that organizations and communities work to find Solutions to help break
down or change oppressive institutional barriers in the larger society. The circular
pattern emphasizes the interconnectedness of the ideas presented (Ife, 1996).
Level 3–Societal/Policy Factors
Macro level factors include, but are not limited to the market economy,
globalization, immigration, poverty, and a range of public policies. Institu-
tional arrangements are formulated at Level 3. These may include, for exam-
ple, international real estate investment and financial lending decisions and
supportive public policies related to housing and urban development; na-
tional or regional labor market needs and supportive federal policies and reg-
ulations related to immigration; medical, managed care, and health facilities
decisions driven by insurance companies; or shifting national political prior-
ities toward privatization of public services generally and the adoption of a
contracting and purchase of services culture.
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 81
Political Economy. The political economy concerns the intersection of events
and decisions in a community and the wider polity that have economic implica-
tions and political considerations. For example, the political economy involves
powerful elite forces that own and control economic capital, use economic re-
sources to promote industrial growth, and compete for control over modes of pro-
duction and resources. Land, for example, is considered an economic resource to
be brought to its highest and best use. The urban political economy creates the
physical environment through real estate development and the highly politicized
processes of land use planning and zoning with their manifestations in state and
local-level land use plans, governance, and control (Feagin, 1998; Gottdiener,
1994; Lefebrvre, 1991). In The Political Economy of the Black Ghetto, Tabb
(1970) asserted that racism is perpetuated by elements of oppression within an
economic and political system that must be understood as a system (p. vii).
The political economy can also be applied to organizations and their environ-
ments (Hasenfeld, 1983; 1992). The capacity of a human service organization to
survive and to deliver services in the 21st century is based on its ability to mobi-
lize power, legitimacy, and economic resources (Hasenfeld, 1992, p. 96). For
nonprofit organizations this is reflected in the increased degree of dependency
on resources external to their own organizations from federal and state grants
and contracts, and private philanthropic grants from foundations (Gibelman,
2000; Martin, 2000). Functions of management include the acquisition of a wide
range of external funding, financial control through management of multiple
grants and contracts, impacts on program implementation, competition among
internal programs for scarce resources, and effects on organization-wide fiscal
stability (Gummer, 1990). Implications of resource dependency include the po-
litical effects on nonprofit and public human service agencies when national and
state budget priorities shift, and newly elected legislative bodies fail to
reauthorize allocated funds for existing demonstration and other programs
mid-stream in their implementation cycles (Mulroy & Lauber, 2002). The con-
cept of privatization is used in the following example to illustrate the ways in
which macro level factors can operate in the social environment, in this case on
agencies directly. (A range of diverse macro level factors can be introduced in
Level 3 for purposes of analysis.)
Example: Privatization. Privatization is the shifting of service delivery from
the public sector to the private for-profit and nonprofit sectors through contracts
and the purchase of services. It is a market-oriented approach in which individ-
ual nonprofit human service organizations compete for public funds on an un-
even playing field. It increased competition first within the nonprofit sector as
large and small nonprofits vied with each other for public sector contracts in a
period of overall reduced federal expenditures for domestic social services.
Competition then increased outside the sector as nonprofits had to compete with
82 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
private firms. Hard hit were community-based nonprofit organizations with so-
cial change missions (Fabricant & Fisher, 2002).
The for-profit sector has benefited from privatization, particularly after pas-
sage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. Highly
resourced, large corporations with no ties to local communities offered large
state and county agencies the chance to purchase packages of diverse services
that included management information systems, welfare-to-work job training
programs, Medicaid billing, case management, and direct services to recipients
(Frumkin & Andre-Clark, 2000).
Many smaller nonprofit human service organizations faced serious dilemmas
such as being priced out of existence, scaling back services to the poorest or
sickest, and proving in the short term that their interventions get results. When
viewed from a social justice perspective, implications of privatization can be
drawn for service equity, access, cost, continuity, and quality of care (see
Gibelman & Demone, 2002).
Level 2–The Geographic Community
Institutional arrangements developed in Level 3 are absorbed and imple-
mented in Level 2. The locality-based community can be a neighborhood, city,
county, or other jurisdiction with boundaries and an interactional field (Warren,
1978) of subunits that serve collective needs. The locality-based definition of
community for Level 2 was selected because it has a geographic boundary, be it
a neighborhood, city, or county that students in field placement internships can
readily identify. Other definitions of community can be woven in as needed (see
Fellin, 2001).
Vertical Links as “Windows on the World.” The pioneering work of Roland
Warren (1971; 1977; 1978) provides a powerful and provocative concept for an-
alyzing communities in terms of their horizontal and vertical patterns. The hori-
zontal pattern is understood to be an “interactional field” that viewed
community as the aggregate of people and organizations occupying a geo-
graphic area whose interactions represent systemic interconnections (1978). He
explicitly stated that the interactional arena was of social rather than physical
space. The importance of vertical ties was that they linked community units to
units outside the community, or to the macro system and thus to the larger soci-
ety and culture. Such ties could have a number of aspects that were economic,
thought systems or ideologies, economic roles or occupations, technologies,
public behavior, common values and norms, patterns of land use, social stratifi-
cation, power structures, organizational linkages, and social problems (Warren,
1978, pp. 432-437).
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 83
The concept of a vertical pattern of ties is an intriguing idea to me because it
introduces this question: To what extent does the strength of a community’s ver-
tical ties determine the resources and support it gets from national, state, city, or
county sources in an increasingly global economy? My interest in this question
launched the trajectory of my own research based on the macro system ap-
proach. I have attempted to systematically analyze relationships between as-
pects of the macro system and community subunits (see for example, Mulroy,
2000; 1997; 1995a; 1988; Mulroy & Shay, 1997; Mulroy & Shay, 1998; Mulroy &
Lauber, 2002). The reported findings suggest that a community’s physical envi-
ronment is tightly linked with the social environment; patterns of land use such
as urban sprawl can determine the status of a community’s health and the
well-being of its residents; and in the global economy economic decisions made
by multi-national firms with no national or local community affiliation or loy-
alty profoundly affect both. The gentrification of a community will serve to il-
lustrate these concepts.
Example: Gentrification. Staying with the theme of neighborhood and con-
centrated poverty introduced at the beginning of the paper, the concept of gentri-
fication is used to illustrate two main points; namely the decline of urban
neighborhoods and urban sprawl.
First, the decline of many urban neighborhoods was part of a larger pattern of
urbanization and sprawl that occurred over decades. Federal and state housing
and urban policies, for example, are examples of vertical links that attempted to
respond to urban blight in inner city neighborhoods and central business districts
by targeting deteriorating commercial districts and residential neighborhoods
for revitalization. Housing is a connector between the physical and social envi-
ronments in all neighborhoods, including those targeted for gentrification.
Housing concerns affordability, security, safety, health, neighbor and social re-
lations, and confers status. The location of housing determines a household’s ac-
cess to facilities, services, jobs, transportation systems, safety, and quality
schools (Mulroy, 1995a; 1988). It affects the formation of social networks, and
thus the ability of residents to build social and human capital (Coleman, 1988;
Wilson, 1996). Federal and state housing policies require cities and counties to
have land use plans, and housing is a core element.
The increasingly high cost of suburban housing made the revitalized districts
attractive to many people who worked in the central business district and they
were enticed to move back into the urban core. The return of upper- and mid-
dle-income people to the central city was an explicit public policy and an eco-
nomic development goal of gentrification. New mixed-income communities
were created that stabilized entire city blocks. Gentrified neighborhoods, how-
ever, tended to displace and disperse many local very-low income residents and
furthered their downward mobility in search of rental housing they could afford
84 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
(Mulroy, 1988). Most urban neighborhoods, however, did not receive public and
private investments for gentrification.
From the political economy perspective, the processes of urbanization such
as real estate and financial lending decisions made by national and multi-na-
tional firms with vertical ties to a neighborhood–and bolstered by help from sup-
portive federal housing and urban development policies–changed the spatial
organization of communities with serious impacts on poor neighborhoods
(Feagin, 1998). For example, our understanding of where people live in a city
and why they live there has traditionally been guided by concentric zone theory
developed in the 1920s. Simply put, ecological processes result in city growth
and development that evolve outward in five zones of concentric rings: (1) the
central business district, (2) transitional manufacturing zone, (3) worker housing
close to low-wage manufacturing jobs, (4) higher income housing, and (5) the
suburbs. (See Fellin, 2001 for a more complete discussion.) The theory of hous-
ing filtration postulates that as low-wage households in worker housing save
money they would seek better housing and move out to the next residential zone,
freeing up their multi-family housing for the next group of low-wage workers,
typically new immigrant groups. Housing “filtered” down in this pattern of sup-
ply and demand. Over time, this “filtering” of the housing market was the basis
for private builders to construct new housing in the suburbs. Housing has always
been a private market function in America, and therefore private developers ra-
tionally build where the demand for expensive housing and therefore greater
profits will be highest–the suburbs. It was assumed that there would always be
an adequate supply of housing stock for the poor in older inner-neighborhoods
(Mulroy, 1995b).
Second, the effects of urban sprawl have restructured communities and nei-
ther concentric zone theory nor housing filtration may work as theorized.
When a neighborhood was gentrified “reverse” housing filtration took place.
Neighborhoods had vertical ties to aspects of the macro system, particularly
through political, economic, and organizational linkages (Warren, 1978). For
example, as manufacturing wound down and firms relocated to cheaper points
of production in the suburbs, rural “exurbs,” or to international locations with
cheaper labor costs, inner-city plants were closed and often abandoned. Neigh-
borhoods around them began to decline. Many insurance companies and banks
not horizontally linked in the neighborhood’s interactional field habitually de-
nied loans to home buyers and small entrepreneurs in many of these deteriorat-
ing inner-city neighborhoods. Red lines were drawn on maps to identify
communities in which investment was considered a bad risk. The Community
Reinvestment Act of 1977 made this practice of redlining neighborhoods ille-
gal, but it still persists, resulting in large pockets of urban decline.
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 85
Low-income residents who lived there had limited access to jobs that paid a
living wage and thus no ability to save and move out to zones with better housing
and living conditions. Absentee landlords, not horizontally linked in the com-
munity’s interactional field, owned most multi-family housing and apartment
buildings in declining inner-city neighborhoods as investments to make money.
Rather than make needed repairs, they often let buildings run down and aban-
doned them. Residents had no access to capital to purchase or improve the hous-
ing in which they lived, or to start or improve a business. The impacts of the flow
of capital out of these neighborhoods and the absence of vertical links for posi-
tive community building purposes can be seen today in urban neighborhoods
rife with rising poverty, failing schools, abandoned buildings, poor public ser-
vices, and increased levels of crime (Richmond, 2000).
At the time these neighborhoods were in decline, highway construction pro-
liferated from central business districts out to the sprawling new suburbs. Less
expensive housing was built in rural areas far from central cities but near new
super highways. This made it easier for commuters to get to work in the central
cities but the highways cut through and divided the old working class inner-city
neighborhoods in the process. Traffic congestion and air pollution increased as
these new patterns of land use development were repeated across America.
The point of the gentrification example is to highlight how dynamic
changes in a specific geographic community are driven by external forces that
may work to decrease the strength of local horizontal ties as vertical ties to dis-
tant but influential and powerful sources increase. Such vertical ties, however,
may have negative or positive impacts on a target community as the gentrifica-
tion example illustrates. While some vertical ties served to extract capital, oth-
ers were used to infuse capital and improve neighborhood conditions.
This conceptualization helps the practitioner to monitor local community
conditions in terms of the patterns of horizontal and vertical links. That analysis
can then be related to: (1) the structure of the housing market relative to the
availability of safe, habitable, and affordable housing, (2) location of public
transit lines relative to employment for low-wage workers, (3) access to finan-
cial capital (banks, credit unions), basic needs (groceries, pharmacy, clothing
stores, health clinics, public schools), social capital (outreach offices for social
services, family support centers), (4) physically safe and environmentally
healthy places for children to play, and (5) culturally appropriate services for
new immigrant groups.
Level 1–The Organization
Both macro level forces in Level 3 and the ways they are executed and imple-
mented in Level 2, in turn, influence individual agencies. It is understood that
many agencies are not community-oriented, but because their client groups may
86 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
live in unhealthy and unsafe neighborhood environments, civic infrastructure is
a matter for agency concern.
The model of Organization-in-Environment (Figure 1) makes the following
three assumptions. First, the organization’s internal/external boundary is porous,
so environmental surveillance and solution-finding are continuous and therefore
strategic. Second, social workers need to be active community leaders at the deci-
sion making table when complex coalitions are formed, issued framed and de-
bated, tough political decisions made, and Solutions created (see arrows in Figure 1).
Since an environment is dynamic, changes to agency structure, resource base, or
functions can be anticipated not only from the organizational life cycle perspective
(Hasenfeld & Schmid, 1989) but also from an ecological perspective as adapta-
tions to the influences from Levels 3 and 2. Third, organizational behavior is
guided by effectiveness, efficiency, and equity criteria. Effectiveness and effi-
ciency are considered criteria for good internal management generally. Equity re-
flects the social justice criteria and all three criteria need to be in balance as noted
in Figure 1. Two theoretical perspectives are introduced next; namely, organiza-
tional-environment relations and inter-organizational collaboration.
Organizational-Environment Relations. The relationship between formal or-
ganizations and their external environments has interested a number of organi-
zational sociologists and social work theorists for many years (Aldrich, 1979;
Alter & Hague, 1993; Gummer, 1990; Hasenfeld, 1983; Lawrence & Lorsch,
1969; Schmid, 1992; 2000; Zald, 1970). Theorists once differentiated between a
general environment of remote factors in the macro system and a task environ-
ment of more immediate exchanges and negotiations (Hasenfeld, 1983). Schmid
(2000) suggests that technological advances have eliminated the difference be-
tween the two. An organization’s environment can now be characterized by eco-
nomic, cultural, political, social, technological, and socio-demographic factors
that actually or potentially affect the organization (p. 136). We will build on
Schmid’s assessment and examine dimensions of the environment as cast by
Aldrich (1979) in terms of our conceptual framework in Figure 1. Following
Aldrich’s (1979) analysis based on population ecology theory and organiza-
tional change, there are six dimensions in the external environment that exert
pressures for organizational change.
• Environmental capacity refers to the level of resources available to an or-
ganization in its environment. A resource-rich environment has a plethora
of sub-units ready to meet community needs, and also to serve as partners in
inter-organizational plans. A resource-poor environment has few organi-
zations and services, with the attendant implications both for residents in
need of services and for organizations in need of partners to better serve
residents.
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 87
• Environmental homogeneity or heterogeneity involves the degree of simi-
larity or difference between elements in the environment. These can be pop-
ulations, organizations, individuals, and social forces affecting resources.
The more homogenous, or similar, the elements in the environment are, the
simpler organizational activities need to be.
• Environmental stability or instability relates to the degree of turnover of
elements of the environment. The more stable the elements in a commu-
nity the easier it is for organizations to maintain routinized operations and
the same structure. The residential mobility of different demographic
groups in or out of a neighborhood, or the closure and abandonment of
stores pose destabilizing elements in the environment.
• Environmental concentration or dispersion refers to the degree to which
resources are evenly distributed across the environment or concentrated in
particular locations. This refers to the concentration of populations as with
concentrated poverty and the decisions of firms and organizations to re-
main or move from the neighborhood. It also refers to the concentration of
organizations that cluster together to serve a particular population such as
hospitals, medical schools, laboratories, clinics, and related health services
that serve people who are ill.
• Domain consensus-dissensus involves the degree to which an organiza-
tion’s claim to a specific domain is recognized or disputed by other organi-
zations, particularly its public sector and private philanthropic funders.
Hasenfeld (1983) considers this dimension in detail because it is central to
a human service organization’s acquisition of resources, legitimacy, and
negotiating position.
• Environmental turbulence relates to the extent to which environments are
characterized by an increasing interconnection between elements and
trends, and by an increasing rate of interconnection. Community control
and uniqueness seen in locally owned and operated stores, businesses,
nonprofit organizations, and associations of civic groups have given way
to increased linkages to national and global agents, labor forces, cultures,
regulations, and controls.
In reality these six dimensions of an organization’s environment combine to
create the enormous complexity of factors that confront organizations and com-
munities (Aldrich, 1979; Hasenfeld, 1983).
Theory of Interorganizational Collaboration. Social workers are exposed to
environmental complexities when they work with other agencies for purposes of
service integration, community conferencing, public-private partnerships, coali-
tions, or interorganizational collaborations. Researchers from a range of disci-
plines are working to develop a theory of collaboration. They are interested in
88 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
interorganizational collaboration because it is a way for practitioners to respond
proactively to multiple environmental constraints and threats, and build coali-
tions and collaborations to advance social justice goals. Barbara Gray (1989)
states, “collaboration is a process through which parties who see different as-
pects of a problem can constructively explore their differences and search for so-
lutions that go beyond their own limited vision of what is possible” (p. 5). The
purpose is to create a richer, more comprehensive appreciation for a problem
among stakeholders than any one of them could envision alone. Her findings
suggest that collaboration is a new negotiated interorganizational order that em-
phasizes the cognitive and expressive character of relations. This perspective
presents a dynamic, process-oriented theory of interorganizational relations and
accounts for the contextual influences on interorganizational dynamics (p. 244).
In a ground-breaking study by Alter and Hague (1993) they contend that the
growing number of partnerships, alliances, joint ventures, consortia, obligational
and systemic networks represent a stunning evolutionary change in institu-
tional forms of governance. They predict that interorganizational networks are
the future institution (p. 13). Such interorganizational forms have four nor-
mative characteristics in common: they are cognitive structures, are non-hierar-
chical, have a division of labor, and interorganizational production networks are
self-regulating. Kanter (1994) found collaborations were future-oriented, living
systems that evolve progressively.
Collaboration gets more difficult to do the closer it gets to the community
(Wiener, 1990). Himmelman (1992) contends that a collaboration has one of
two agendas; it can work toward achieving community betterment or it can work
toward community empowerment, and the processes for each will be different.
In community betterment the collaboration is typically created externally and
brought into a target community. The residents may be participants but are not
relied on as change agents. In community empowerment the venture originates
in the target community and its residents are considered co-producers of the proc-
ess. In a study of community-based collaboration to reduce child abuse and ne-
glect, Mulroy (1997) found that for collaboration to succeed it needs a planned
pace of development to match the readiness and resources of stakeholders. Com-
munity-based collaborating was found to be a learned skill that yielded rewards
and benefits but was difficult to do (Mulroy & Shay, 1998).
Alter (2000) notes that the initial phase of inter-organizational collaboration in-
volves seeking partners and overcoming resistance to change, a political process
that requires strategic thinking and skills in negotiation and conflict resolution.
“To identify likely partners, managers should study the distribution of power and
resources horizontally and vertically throughout the community or region” (Alter,
2000, p. 293). She suggests that a vital and incremental process of sorting ensues
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 89
through an “incredibly large number of interactions both between individuals in
informal settings and among groups in semiformal and formal meetings” (p. 293).
Applying the Organization-in-Environment Framework
The implications of the theories related to Levels 1-3 in Figure 1 for nonprofit
management and leadership are described in this section using the issue of home-
lessness and the creation of a unique organization. It begins with the Housing Assis-
tance Corporation, a regional nonprofit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts
that opened its doors in 1974 in response to seasonal rental shifts in the tourist-de-
pendent economy that helped to create homelessness. The agency’s mission is to
promote and implement the right of all people on Cape Cod and the islands (Mar-
tha’s Vineyard and Nantucket) to occupy safe and affordable housing. The organi-
zation’s publications and web site highlight its position as a prominent advocate for
social and economic justice in the region. The nonprofit has eight program areas in
which it operates at least 23 distinct programs and centers, including six service-in-
tensive shelters located throughout the region for distinct populations of the home-
less such as single persons, parents with children, and persons with addictions.
Agency programs are supported with diversified funding from public and private
sources and from fundraising and donations. There is an active 30-person Board of
Directors with constituent members and a number of community advisory councils
for separate programs. In 2001 more than 5,000 households received help through
the numerous programs it runs.
Housing Assistance Corporation is poised to help find a solution to one of so-
ciety’s most difficult problems–homelessness. It is approaching this in part by
addressing environmental constraints and opportunities, understanding the hori-
zontal and vertical ties, collaborating strategically, and thinking and acting region-
ally. To begin, the agency has domain consensus (Aldrich, 1979; Hasenfeld,
1983) with undisputed legitimacy as the region’s expert in affordable housing. It
became the sole provider on Cape Cod of emergency shelter for families and indi-
viduals experiencing homelessness, and also the creator and administrator of vari-
ous first-time home buyer, housing development, rental assistance, rehabilitation,
and homeless prevention programs. This range of expertise and experience facili-
tated its acquisition of federal and state funds, particularly U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) resources to support its work.
Its environment can be characterized by heterogeneity and instability
(Aldrich, 1979; Hasenfeld, 1983). The population of low-income and disadvan-
taged persons needing affordable housing is extremely diverse. There are elders
who need fuel assistance; landlords with apartments seeking tenants, and tenants
with Section 8 certificates seeking apartments; young families seeking afford-
able home ownership; homeless shelter residents in need of a car to get to work,
90 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
or vocational training, or health and mental health services. The environment is
unstable relative to the population because of seasonal migration. The wealthy
arrive in summer to enjoy their beach houses. Tourists flock to the seashore and
resorts. Retirees relocate for the quality of life. The seasonal tourist economy
brings in low-wage workers who cannot afford a place to live.
Using social justice as its core principle of practice the organization
re-framed the problem of homelessness from an individual one to a community
and societal one (Ife, 1996; Patti, 2000). To begin, it considers community build-
ing (Mulroy & Lauber, 2002) to be the means through which it can best achieve
its mission. Since 1974, it brought more than $200 million into the economy in
the Cape and islands region to provide more than “housing assistance”–support-
ing people to take or retain control over their lives. Since 1993 the organization
has helped more than 3000 families keep their homes.
Environmental surveillance has been a component of its strategic management
(Level 1). Staff six years ago came to believe that shelters that create dependency
are not the solution to homelessness. The agency set about finding a better re-
sponse. One program manager (an MSW Licensed Social Work Manager) sug-
gested the need for a peaceful, pleasant setting where disadvantaged people could
come together as members of a real community–a place to belong–with apart-
ments for which they pay rent, educational and vocational training, and work.
Basing her model on a working farm for homeless people in Denmark where she
had lived and worked, from the very beginning, the project would be done in a
way that would have lasting benefits for the local community. The concept, called
Dana’s Fields, was based on the belief that we all need a stable foundation on
which to build our lives, and we are all healthier when we are part of a strong and
loving community, rather than excluded and isolated from it.
Environmental surveillance included monitoring the effects of federal and state
housing policy on the structure of the housing market in the nation, their state
(Level 3) and region (Level 2). For example, federal and state funds for affordable
housing had been drastically cut back in recent years. Local housing prices soared.
Many persons locked out of the state’s urban and suburban housing markets mi-
grated to the Cape, increasing demand for affordable units. Affordable rental units
were not available in summer months. Persons with substance abuse and mental
illness and no homes were more visible among the homeless. Organizational lead-
ership carefully analyzed horizontal and vertical ties (Warren, 1978). The pro-
gram manager used resources from Level 3–the Homeless Assistance division of
the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)–to secure a
planning grant so she could systematically develop her idea. Innovative homeless
organizations in other parts of the country were studied.
Support for the project was gathered through community outreach, which in
this context meant intensive involvement in external relationship building with
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 91
local organizations horizontally linked and with those vertically tied to the larger
society (Warren, 1978). The process of plan development increased environ-
mental turbulence (Aldrich, 19979) as interconnections between elements in the
organization’s external environment increased. The organization’s leaders en-
gaged in face-to-face meetings with members of regional public boards, land use
commissions, town Zoning Board of Appeals, civic and economic development
groups, resistive NIMBY (not in my back yard) groups and their attorneys, as
well as local, state, and national print and television media. They engaged in
marketing, negotiation, and conflict resolution to interpret the program’s philos-
ophy to diverse stakeholders; namely, to overcome homelessness clients need
stable and decent housing, relevant and appropriate paying jobs, respectability,
accountability, and a belief in their own potential. This phase of their work was a
process through which “parties who see different aspects of a problem can con-
structively explore their differences, and search for solutions that go beyond
their own limited vision of what is possible” as Gray (1989, p. 5) predicted.
Over the next few years, organizational leadership, driven by the belief
that housing is a basic right, actively sought out collaborative partners for
support, in-kind services, programming, and financing. They reached a myr-
iad of public, private, and nonprofit institutions, local citizens groups, and in-
dividuals in their region and beyond; a step Alter (2000) found necessary in
the formation and start-up of an interorganizational collaboration. As Gray’s
(1989) theory of collaboration suggests, the process did create a more com-
prehensive appreciation of the problem of homelessness among diverse
stakeholders than any one of them could envision alone. The intensity and
time commitment required to build external relationships meant that person-
nel at the office attended to internal operations, especially the financial man-
agement of numerous grants and contracts, so that organizational efficiency
and program effectiveness criteria were met.
The organization raised the needed financial capital (half funded by HUD)
and purchased 46 acres in a Cape Cod town to build and develop Dana’s Fields.
An industrial park, residential areas, and open space surround the site. The phys-
ical plan will include sixty units of affordable housing constructed as six build-
ings of ten units each; three market-rate staff residences; a community building
with guest rooms, culinary arts program, and a chapel; a paddock, barn, stable,
and riding trails; greenhouse; farm stand; and chicken coop. Six training pro-
grams will operate on site. The industrial park is seen as an opportunity for resi-
dent employment. The project has strong local roots. Local citizens participated
in planning and guiding development. They will be able to use the facilities and
serve on Dana’s Fields tenant selection committee (www.danasfields.org).
Dana’s Fields is a relationship-based program not a treatment-based pro-
gram. Housing Assistance Corporation hopes that Dana’s Fields will turn
92 ADMINISTRATION IN SOCIAL WORK
around individual lives (fulfilling its mission in Level 1), create a community
built on acceptance and compassion (Level 2), and challenge institutional bar-
riers in the housing market that have accelerated the slide into homelessness
for vulnerable people (Level 3).
THEORY FOR PRACTICE
WITHIN A SOCIAL JUSTICE CONTEXT
This paper has presented a conceptual framework of how theories about the
social environment can inform practice using principles of social justice.
The Organization-in-Environment approach seeks to capture the dynamic na-
ture of complex events and relationships, external to an organization’s bound-
aries, as they continuously emerge, intertwine, and evolve. The model depicts a
social environment in which communities and organizations are part of larger
systems or levels of influence. Societal forces–particularly those driven by eco-
nomic globalization and its supportive public policies– impact communities and
organizations, as illustrated in the privatization and gentrification examples.
When organizations use social justice goals to help guide behavior in their social
environments, they are capable of creating meaningful solutions to social prob-
lems, as demonstrated in the example of an agency addressing homelessness.
The theoretical concepts selected for illustrating the organization-in-environ-
ment framework (e.g., political economy, vertical and horizontal linkages, orga-
nization-environmental relations, and interorganizational collaboration) can be
used to guide and inform a more comprehensive understanding of communities
as they exist today and the role of social organizations within them. Using War-
ren’s (1978) framework, a community can be understood as a node in the current
macro system, and organizations as institutional actors within multiple nodes.
The restructured community in the global economy makes Warren’s form of
community analysis– horizontal and vertical ties–more timely than ever.
There is a compelling need to build civil society and social work leadership is
needed. One way is through organizational leadership committed to strengthen-
ing people and communities at the same time. This compelling need raises the
following challenges for social work practitioners and educators:
• How do we engage the imperative for social justice when so many non-
profit organizations are struggling to survive?
• How do we create a caring society?
• How do we prepare future [practitioners] social workers for organizational
leadership in a political environment in which privatization and corporate
accountability are so highly valued?
Elizabeth A. Mulroy 93
• How do we teach theory for practice in a way that inspires commitment to
the nonprofit and public sectors?
If interorganizational networks are the future institution as Alter and Hague
(1993) suggest, and nonprofit leaders play key roles in them as conveners, negoti-
ators and brokers as Kanter (2000) suggests, then an emphasis on external rela-
tions–the Organization-In-Environment approach–is an important starting point.
I am reminded of the words of Michael Harrington (1984) who wrote, “The
structures of misery were created by men and women; they can be changed by
men and women. That we shall see is easier said than done-but it can be done”
(p. 12). If we educate our students to keep the vision of social justice at the center
of their practice and prepare them with the knowledge, values, and attitudes to
make a difference in the social environment, they will be better prepared to cre-
ate the new structures of opportunity that Harrington envisions, and the goals of
social work will be advanced.
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