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Strategic Planning in the Work SettingBryson explains a variety of approaches to help leaders and managers of public and nonprofit organizations fulfill their missions and satisfy their constituents through strategic planning. He incorporates the best private sector methods into a strategic planning process for the public and nonprofit sector. Discuss how you would implement a strategic planning strategy in your work setting. Give some examples of both successful and unsuccessful strategic planning efforts, and provide practical advice on how to overcome obstacles in the strategic planning process.Post #2: Describe one theoretical approach discussed in Chapter 3 of the Hasenfeld text, and how it might be applied to a specific human services organization of your choice.
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HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: AN EXPLORATION OF THEIR SERVICES,
THEIR PROFESSIONAL SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND THEIR MANAGEMENT
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Louis van Kessel
HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: AN EXPLORATION OF THEIR SERVICES, THEIR PROFESSIONAL
SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND THEIR MANAGEMENT.
Published in (pp. 14-34):
ДЕПАРТАМЕНТ ТРУДА И СОЦИАЛЬНОЙ ЗАЩИТЫ НАСЕЛЕНИЯ ГОРОДА МОСКВЫ ГБУ
«МОСКОВСКАЯ СЛУЖБА ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКОЙ ПОМОЩИ НАСЕЛЕНИЮ» Сборник материалов
Ежегодной научно-практической конференции «Психологическая помощь в период
пандемии: от кризиса к развитию» 22 ноября 2021 г. Москва, 2021 г.
Abstract
In this lecture, I sketch some salient characteristics of human service organizations: the character
of the service they deliver; the impact of realizing this service on the (semi-)professionals themselves and their cooperation with colleagues; the strain between professional autonomy and organizational demands, and the implications this all has for its management and leadership.
Keywords: Human Service Organisations (HSO); professional human services; management of
human service organizations; professional human service providers.
1. INTRODUCTION
It is a great honor to be invited by your organization to lecture on Psychologist Day. Congratulations on the celebration of this event, this year already for over two decades, a period in which
psychology in Russia has made ‘a miraculous transformation from a rather exotic – if not marginal
-academic discipline to almost a mass occupation’ as Yuri Zinchenko and Victor Petrenko (2011,
p. 6) did formulate in their introduction to the Scientific Yearbook, Volume 4.
In trying to get some information about the nowadays state of psychology and its practice in
Russia, I discovered a dissertation (Karepova 2010), defenced in 2010 in Great Britain. It sketched
the following global image of the rapid rise of psychology as a practice and the expansion of
therapy service since the perestroika in 1989:
– This new profession immediately became trendy, relatively well-paid, and female-dominated
(p. 2);
– Psychologists are currently required everywhere from kindergartens to beauty salons (p. 8);
– After their university graduation, psychologists in Russia continue to undergo a colossal amount
of Continuing Professional Development (p. 131).
– The entry of professionals into psychological services in Russia is not a path paved with roses
(p. 141).
© Louis van Kessel/ Psychology Day / Moscow Psychology Service /2021-11-12.
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– The psychological profession’s development and services are situated in contemporary Russia’s
specific cultural, ideological, historical, and economic context, being in the after wave of a process of change from a state-controlled to a market-driven economy, or a mixture of these both.
– The few known research publications concerning the present problems of psychological counseling in Russia problematize the under-development of professional legislation, the overlytheoretical nature of professional knowledge, and emphasize the need to adapt the profession
to the needs of the market and the changes in Russian society (e.g., Manichev, Mileshkina 2006;
Mileshkina 2007; Yurevich 2006). Although these problematic aspects are highlighted, they are
yet underresearched. (Karepova 2010, p. 29).
So much for this description, which dates from 2010. The current situation, eleven years later,
perhaps shows differences
Instead of a lecture on psychology, psychological aid, or clients’ psychological problems, I will
present you with some thoughts about the type of organization in which you are conducting your
work with clients and the implications your professional work has for shaping and managing the
organization.
Firstly, I clarify what kind of organizations and services the term ‘human service organization’
refers to (section 2). Then, in section 3, I sketch its salient characteristics, focusing on the character of the delivered service and the professional human service provider in the context of the
organization. Special attention is given to aspects of its organizational dynamics (section 4), and
the management desired in human service organizations, especially the managing of professional
staff and the service delivery (section 5). The last part, section 6, outlines the role of professional
staff and designated management as active contributors to governing and developing the organization. The conclusion (section 7) focuses on balancing the service, the management, and the
policy domain.
The information I present is from my position as an outsider and based on scholarly publications
and practice experiences. I do not know the way your organization is functioning, nor what its
services in reality are and how they are delivered. I hope you can recognize this information and
that it helps you improve your functioning as a professional within this organization and the overall functioning of your organization.
2. THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE TERM ‘HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS’
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The term ‘Human service organizations’ (HSO) refers to a specific type of organization, which has
been named ‘human service delivery systems’ (Egan 1985, p. 9) and described as ‘organizations
or institutions that offer various services aimed at members of human society’. They are also
called ‘service organizations’ (Blau, Scott 1962, pp. 51-54) and are titled ‘people-molding organizations’ to distinguish them from ‘object-molding organizations’ (Katz, Kahn 1966, p. 115). They
work with and on people whom they assist in shaping their attributes and are mandated to protect and promote the welfare of the people they serve (Hasenfeld 1983). Moreover, they are
viewed as ‘complex organizations’ (Hasenfeld 2010) with unique attributes and dynamics.
Human Service Organizations explicitly aim at people-oriented services.1 Human interaction is
a crucial part of their service provision: client-worker relationships are at their core as the primary
vehicle. Their principal function is to protect, maintain, or enhance human well-being, both individually and collectively, by assisting clients individually or as a group to alter or (re)shape their
attributes and competencies. They aim at improving the quality of life and the humanization of
society. They represent places that offer either advice, help, and welfare services in the social
sector or help, advice, consultation, and care in the health sector, or education and training in
the school system and services for adult education.
It is a category of organizational systems that include, for example, general hospitals, psychiatric
clinics, schools, psychological and counseling services, welfare institutions, children’s homes,
community work organizations, churches, and public (social) administration. They can be public
or independent services, that as not-for-profit organizations, offer professional services only for
the benefit of third parties, the clients, and society. Human service organizations can be small or
big and are financed by state or local government or the private sector. The people who use their
services are expected to conform to an organizationally prescribed role of ‘patient’ or ‘client’.
Moreover, mainly women work in human services, except in management positions where usually men are in the majority (Hasenfeld 2010).
The services of this type of organization are delivered by professional practitioners: doctors,
nurses, lawyers, social workers, probation officers, counselors, psychotherapists, adult educators, teachers, priests, pastoral workers, et cetera. These all represent the great variety of ‘human
service professions’ we as human beings encounter in our societies in different situations if we
have some need for our well-being or development. The recognition of their professional status
in society is different. Many of these professions tend to be viewed as ‘semi-professionals’
(Etzioni 1969), characterized by relatively short, semi-academic training, low social status, low
income, and an organization’s employment.
© Louis van Kessel/ Psychology Day / Moscow Psychology Service /2021-11-12.
1
For a detailed analysis of what to define as ‘human services’ see Zins (2001) and Hasenfeld (2010).
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3. CHARACTERISTICS OF HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS: A SKETCH
HSO’s have some specific features. I now will present a sketch of these.
3.1 Characteristics of the service providing
As frontline workers, professional practitioners perform the services that an HSO wants to offer
based on its objective. Their service should lead to the client’s improvement, or at least not to
his/her deterioration. In principle, human services aim to increase a self-generation process for
the client.
Dependency of client’s participation and contribution: the client as ‘prosumer’
The realization of service goals, the result of the offered service, can only be achieved with the
client’s active participation and contribution, which requires intensive cooperation in a professional-client relationship. In that sense, the client could be viewed as a ‘prosumer’ (Toffler 1980).
The work’s ‘product’ – a word that in this context, of course, has to be placed in quotes – directly
affects the client’s well-being or one or more of his/her aspects to enable him/her to participate
as an as much as possible full participant in society.
Inherently it is moral work
Moreover, it is inherently moral work. The service delivery is driven and guided by moral values
the human service organization, its professional service providers, and their professional associations aim to uphold, which frames the concrete service delivery. Every action taken on behalf of
the clients represents a moral judgment and a statement of their social worth (Hasenfeld 2010,
pp. 12-14), and what is considered an acceptable way of serving people today may rapidly become unacceptable tomorrow. Also, measures of the effectiveness of the service delivery and
their interpretation involve moral choices that emanate from the moral systems embraced by
the organization and the professional communities, and from methodological approaches or
schools, their practitioners adhere to. (Hasenfeld 2010, pp. 17-20).
Determining the concrete service quality and success is difficult
Because the service user has an unpredicted influence on the outcomes, is the determination of
success and the quality of the concrete service difficult to measure. Moreover, determining its
criteria is not easy. That often leads to the formulation of vague or conflicting goals and sometimes inflexibility in defining effective performance.
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The concrete conducting of the service can hardly be standardized, routinized, and controlled
Conducting human service is ‘frontline work’ (Smith 1965): the service is performed in the largely
unpredictable interaction between service providers and service users, and each situation and
moment of service delivery has singular and fluid features. For the practitioners, that requires
engagement, situational awareness, flexibility, and creative coping with unexpectedness. Moreover, they must be capable of making decisions in a flexible, creative, and context-driven manner,
not necessarily according to prescribed protocols or models. Consequently, professional human
service can only flourish in an appropriate amount of free space and, above all, with an allowed
responsibility for carrying out the expected duties.
The concrete conducting of the service can hardly be standardized or routinized. That resembles
the situation of a ‘play’: the rules and what they mean for the participants get their definition
only in realizing the concrete interaction and are established only in the long run. That results in
features of a ‘game’ where the rules are adjusted along the way (Mead 2015, p. 149 ff.).
Nevertheless, the professional cannot work entirely autonomously or independently within an
organization without being accountable to the organization. However, the just outlined characteristics inherent to conducting professional services have consequences for the extent to which
the organization can manage and control the actions of the professional practitioner. The responsible leadership must understand that professional service delivery only to a limited extent can
be directed by normative requirements and never should be controlled in detail. Nor is this necessary if the practitioner behaves adequately as a representative of the organization’s service
policy and values of the profession and regularly evaluates this with direct colleagues and management. To this end, responsible leadership should support frontline workers if necessary.
3.2 The professional human service provider in the context of the organization
As frontline service providers, the professionals form the core of the organization. They show
specific characteristics that I will highlight now.
The personal dimension of the human service provide plays an essential role
In performing human services in the frontline, and allied tasks in the organizational context, the
personal dimension of the human service provider, with all his/her qualities and characteristics,
plays an essential role. It is the linchpin of professional competence and professional acting in
concrete situations with their particular tasks and challenges.
Also, conversely, the interactions the practitioner has with clients, and not infrequently also the
relations s/he has with colleagues, profoundly influence her/him as a person and her/his
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professional performance. Experiences in these interactions can even lead to a professional identity crisis because, in addition to conscious personal parts, many unconscious ones flow into the
professional role performance.
Uncertainties and doubts regarding one’s own performances
The professional has an inner drive to meet the professional demands and experience the meaningfulness of the professional acting, which often has characteristics of ‘calling’ (Duffy et al. 2018;
Schmidbauer 1992, p. 44 ff). However, at the same time, the previously mentioned influence of
the client on the process and outcomes, unexpectedness in the process, and unclear criteria for
success, cause the professional practitioners uncertainties and doubts. On the one hand, this kind
of work requires great engagement and commitment, and, on the other hand, it brings uncertainties regarding one’s own performance and doubts to the interventions the professional has
chosen in implementing the intended processes.
Often human service practitioners move in a field of tension between high aspirations, demands, and goals on one side, and low results on the other, between hope and disappointment,
between personal and professional norms on the one hand and the conditions and requirements
of the organization on the other.
This role ambiguity and uncertainty about task performance and goal attainment are characteristical for human service work. Implications for the practitioners, more specifically its extent, depend on the kind of service they deliver, clients and situations they encounter, and individual
personality traits. An insufficient capacity in coping with role ambiguity and uncertainty about
task performance and goal attainment, combined with assigning too much meaning to the organizational expectations and demands, can contribute to stress. (Landy et al. 1994).
Burnout – compassion fatigue – secondary traumatic stress- vicarious traumatization
Conducting intensive relationships with clients, attempting to understand their social and psychic
needs, and successfully coping with them can be stressful. That can become especially overwhelming when the human service provider becomes the target of anger, hatred, and even violence due to negative transference. That can cause the human service professional into ‘compassion fatigue’, also called ‘secondary traumatic stress’, ‘vicarious traumatization’, or ‘burnout’.2 It
manifests itself in increased cynicism at work, loss of enjoyment in carrying out the profession,
and a decreased sense of personal accomplishment (Figley 2002). It can also include intense physical and emotional exhaustion along with an evident distortion in the human service professionals’ ability to feel empathy for their clients and colleagues (Mathieu, 2014) and to build rapport
or respond appropriately to their clients’ experiences, which can cause serious harm to the
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2
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Studies that have shown that various human service practitioners are at risk for developing burnout due to the
demanding nature of their work: Cherniss 1980; Cole et al. 2014; Schaufeli, Bakker 2004; Schaufeli, Buunk 2003.
client (Simpson, Starkey 2006). Burnout is, therefore, a serious problem that managers and colleagues should recognize, and its avoidance should be fostered through peer support and selfcare. (cf. Maslach, Leiter 2017).
Tensions between professional autonomy and the requirements of the organization
A professional tends to organize and perform his/her work autonomously, driven by a clientoriented attitude and viewing the client as the ‘commissioner’. On the other hand, the organization strives to have realized her established policy because she must account for these to the
financier, e. g. the state or local government, which the organization views as commissioner, in
being conscious of the adage ‘who pays decides.’
The just mentioned differences in position and corresponding perspectives create tensions between the professional autonomy the practitioners tend to and the organization’s demands,
which can be the source of possible conflicts, although mostly these stay hidden. This issue concerns the relationship of the professional to the organization, which several authors discuss, and
the following descriptions clarify. (Van Kessel, 1995).
– The organization expects the professional practitioner should orientate him-/herself towards
the intentions (the mission) and logics the organization has set. However, on the other hand,
the professional practitioner has normative ties to the profession and professional association
s/he is a part of (Blau, Scott 1962, p. 246) and is oriented to professional logics (Freidson 2001).
– Another area of tension is the professional’s commitment to the client on the one hand and
the organization’s requirements about the respective execution of the service – for example,
in the sense of time and cost savings – on the other (Francis, Stone 1956 ).
– There are differences between the organization-transcending orientation of the professional
and the organization’s requirements that demand a local orientation and a solid connection
to the organization (Gouldner 1957; Blau, Scott 1962, p. 66; Realin 1985).
– Many professionals show low loyalty to their organization. They are more likely to be committed to their professional work and own professional development, and they often see the organization as peripheral. Dealing with issues of the organization usually means extra work that
they perceive as annoying and hindering their professional activities.
– In the actual performance of the service, professionals in human service systems usually have
extensive autonomy. Their work is often entirely or largely withdrawn from colleagues’ and
superiors’ overseeing and control. For this reason, the administration-oriented management
of these organizations often runs the risk of reacting with ‘office pathological patterns’
(Thompson 1961). Because of the uncertainty resulting from not being able to control the
organization’s
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members, the administration often tries to introduce strict bureaucratic measures. To the
practitioners, as members of the organization, these measures create a paradox between organizational ties and organizational distancing. A phenomenon that usually will manifest in
the employee-client relationship too.
Nevertheless, although they experience all these kinds of tensions, employees of HSOs find their
organizations more flexible and less fixed than for-profit organizations. They generally hope that
they can exert more influence on the design of their organization than people in other organizational systems. This is where we encounter the basis for an attitude that often negates or denies
the formal aspects of the organization, although these are necessary too.
4. ASPECTS OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS
In an HSO, there are to identify particular aspects that influence its dynamics. These aspects I
describe now.
Balancing a formal organizational and human sphere
HSO’s want to operate as examples of humanized organizations (cf. Petriglieri 2020) in society.
Moreover, they have features of what has been called ‘professional bureaucracies’ (Mintzberg
1993). Because of limitations to the available budget and to save unnecessary expenses, they
must mirror a balancing of a formal administrative organizational and human sphere (see, for
example, Haigh 2005; Thompson 1998). The former is characterized by efficiency, formality, rationality, decisiveness, standardization, a described task division, monitoring of benefit and outcomes, overseeing and control; the latter – the human sphere – by such qualities as cooperativity
and togetherness, informality, passion, freedom, uniqueness, exception and experimentation,
and the holistic nature of praxis. In case the HSO disregards these aspects of the human sphere,
it has not only negative consequences to the frontline staff and the way they can perform their
service but also, and that is worse, to the effectivity of the organization, because the clients do
not receive the quality of service they need.
The collegial cooperation
The tensions experienced by the professional practitioner in working with clients can easily subliminally be mirrored in relationships with colleagues, turning into conflicting behaviors or avoiding interactions. However, it also can work the other way around: tensions or conflicts amongst
colleagues, or avoidance of collegial collaboration, can be re-enacted in work with clients
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and have counterproductive effects in providing the service to clients. (cf. Caudill 1958, pp. 87127; Stanton, Schwarz 1954, pp. 342-365; Blau, Scott 1962, pp. 51-54).
Conflicts in and avoidance of collegial collaboration also often mirror real or fantasized status
tensions between colleagues, mostly connected with the level and kind of received education or
the methodical approach they adhere to. In interprofessional cooperation, often differences in
the attributed status of the disciplines play a role in that. Dealing adequately with these different
areas of tension is a task for the practitioner him/herself, the collegial cooperation, and the appointed leadership.
The communication
The ideal of communication between the members of the human services organization is generally seen as openness and freedom from domination. That is all the more so because communication is a central means of the organization’s human service work. With this definition of communication, however, there is a risk that informal acts of communication in these organizations
have a perspective of excessive weight and that it is, therefore, difficult to enforce the binding
nature of decisions in the sense of formal acts of communication.
Another characteristic of communication in HSO’s – in connection with the tendency to negate
formal organizational aspects – is that there are often many unwritten rules, which are not easy
to discuss because of their nature. This phenomenon can be conceived as a ‘defensive routine’
(Argyris 1986, 1990), a pattern of interpersonal interactions to ensure the status quo retention,
and often an effective counterproductive defensive strategy to necessary change.
Furthermore, we usually find a central taboo: colleagues are not allowed to criticize the other
colleague’s work seriously. Critical statements are then ousted to the informal area and can develop into intrigues and bullying processes (Cassie, Crank 2018). These dynamics in the staff’s
internal relationships can result in establishing cultures of informal surveillance, which has a
highly destructive effect because those who enact this do not distinguish between person and
function.
The majority of frontline workers are women
A particular aspect that needs attention is that the majority of frontline workers are women. That
has a profound influence on the organization’s internal dynamics because of the inherent conflict
between values women bring to their work environment and the norms the bureaucracy of the
organization represents. Women uphold caregiving, empathy, nurturing, and cooperation; the
organization’s bureaucracy is colored by male-dominated values as reward competition, individualism, and instrumentalism while devaluating feminine characteristics. (Ferguson 1984;
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Acker 1990). Incorporating the woman values in the inner-organizational life and the organizational support systems requires participatory decision-making, rotating leadership, and interpersonal accountability. That results in a ‘merger of hierarchical and egalitarian modes of power’
(Aschraft 2001, p. 1303, cited in Hasenfeld 2010, p. 28).
5. MANAGEMENT OF HUMAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS
Management of an organization is about shaping and monitoring its operations. How the HSO
organization is managed must serve the smooth functioning of the organization’s frontline work
to its clients as its primary function. (Van Kessel, 1995). Such management finds its expression in
shaping an appropriate organizational structure, safeguarding and providing conditions for the
service delivery, conducting goal-directing efforts of the available means, promoting coordinating activities, furthering cooperation and information sharing of the employees where necessary
or desired, and must afford inspiration and support to the employees. The safeguarding and
providing of conditions concern the finances, sufficient staff occupancy, working conditions, a
healthy organizational culture, adherence to ethical norms, and the staff’s professional competency development, which must stay aligned with the clients’ ever-changing needs.
Performing these management tasks can be designated to a particular focal person who functions as an appointed manager or a group that functions as a management team. They may have
been given the right and duty to represent the organization formally and legally.
5.1 Managing the professional staff of an HSO: some points of attention
Managing the professional staff of human service organizations is more complex than managing
employees in other types of organizations (Jacobson 2001). Let us view more in detail some
points of attention relevant for managing the professional staff.
Participation
The designated manager, or the management team, must allow and stimulate the professional
employees to participate in the management process. Then, the organizational decision-making
will enhance a better quality and acceptance of decisions, and management aspects and service
delivery will get better attuned to each other. Of course, that does not mean that the professional
practitioners must participate in everything, and such participation must avoid making their work
unnecessarily complex and giving an overloaded burden.
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Self-management
The professional staff exercises a great deal of autonomy to the appointed managers since the
concrete conducting of human service in the interaction of service provider and client includes a
considerable complexity and has a confidential nature. Therefore the individual professional,
group, or team needs a great space of self-management (Drucker 1999; Spreitzer et al. 1999; UhlBien, Graen 1998). This includes a form of self-regulation to control and direct their actions, regulate their tasks and cooperation, monitor their action results, and adjust behavior according to
feedback received from clients and colleagues, and self-feedback. That feedback needs a reference framework, including standards related to the particular kind of service delivery, the organization, and the particular profession. In other words, the professional staff needs clarity about
their role and related discretionary space to navigate their professional responsibility.
A supportive organizational climate
Since the core of their work is interactive and people-centered, practitioners have a need for a
supportive, relationship-oriented organizational climate. That must be shaped through peer and
inter-professional collaboration and how the designated managers operate. Such a climate is
characterized by open communication, also when it comes to justified negative feedback or criticism. Although the balance between positive and negative feedback requires special care, avoiding negative feedback has an injurious effect on the communication climate (Argyris 1990).
Peer and inter-professional cooperation for assuring and developing the quality of the service
delivery
Besides their function for support, peer and inter-professional collaboration are also crucial for
collegial division of service tasks. Moreover, they are essential for monitoring the quality of the
service delivery and staff competencies, promoting shared goals around clients’ needs, mutual
adjustment of methodological approaches, and setting quality and ethical standards.
Evaluation procedures
A connection between an individual or a team’s service delivery and the goals the organization
pursues must be safeguarded. The ‘loosely coupled systems’ (Weick 1976) that characterize an
HSO because of the autonomous space that characterizes professional work delivery also need
coordination and connectedness to the organization as a whole. Evaluation procedures can accomplish that. On one side, these must consider the complex environment in which the frontline
work process is performed, including its available resources, and respect fair and humane interaction with clients (Sarri, 1982), and on the other, they must relate to the substantive goals of
the organization. Moreover, it must be clear what role and responsibility the frontline staff, the
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management, the profession, and policymakers have, what contribution the organization expects
from them, and how their mutual relationship is defined.
A policy for maintenance and development of professional competences
An HSO must offer its employees, both the practitioners and those in managerial functions, a
clear policy for professional development. There must be explicit provisions for both novice and
seasoned employees, and it must be transparent when there is a cause for an obligation or a
right.
The difference between supervision as an ‘administrative’ or ‘managerial’ function on one side
and ‘supervision for the maintenance and development of competency and professionalism on
the other must be transparent. Monitoring, directing, and supporting the practitioners’ service
delivery conform to the organization’s service policy characterizes the first-mentioned type of
supervision, which an internal supervisor carries out.
Enhancing the professional competence and the capacity of critical professional self-reflection in
conducting the duties of the current functioning in a self-managing way conform to the requirements of the topical professional standards is the purpose of the second-mentioned type. This
type of supervision can be carried out by either an internal or external supervisor. In the case of
an internal supervisor, double relationships must be avoided, and a safe place with confidentiality
and secrecy must be guaranteed. Supervision conducted competently
