Human Services as Complex Organizations

By Yeheskel Hasenfeld

Book Overview

If you′re teaching a course in human service management and administration, look no further than Human Services as Complex Organizations. Hasenfeld and an all star cast of contributors including Glisson, Grusky, Handler, Kirk, Schmid, and Tucker offer you a comprehensive, state-of-the-art view of human services as complex organizations. They incorporate recent theoretical and empirical work in the growing area of human service administration. Using examples from hospitals, schools, social service agencies, mental health centers, and public welfare agencies, the contributors address and examine common structural features. They offer illuminating insights into the morally charged nature of the work, women′s predominance in the work force, staff stress and burnout, empowerment of clients, client-organization relationships, and evaluating organizational effectiveness. Human Services as Complex Organizations is the ideal text for courses in social work, nursing, public health, public administration, and education. "The book is well conceived and the chapters are well executed. . . . Yeheskel Hasenfeld has a fine theoretical sense and, to my mind anyway, excellent sociological taste. He gets the emphases just right as he turns sociological concepts to practical uses. He also has a fine sense of the architecture of organizational theory." --Contemporary Sociology "Yeheskel Hasenfeld′s volume is a milestone along the road of developing a distinctive body of theory on the structure and functioning of HSOs. The interplay of the three theoretical perspectives is balanced by empirical work from a wide range of agencies. Issues of gender, empowerment of clients, racial and ethnic diversity all receive attention. . . . Indeed, the final section of the book on evaluation of HSOs should be compulsory reading for all who feel imbued with a mission to bring market values into the human sector." --Stan Lees, The Management School, Lancaster University "The opening papers by Hasenfeld on ′The Nature of Human Service Organizations′ and ′Theoretical Approaches to Human Services Organizations′ provide a superb introduction to a series of papers of equal and outstanding quality." --Journal of the Institute of Health Education "Hasenfeld′s volume is a milestone along the road of developing a distinctive body of theory on the structure and functioning of HSOs. The interplay of the three theoretical perspectives is balanced with insightful empirical work from a wide range of agencies. . . . Indeed, the final section of the book on evaluation of HSOs should be compulsory reading." --The Occupational Psychologist "The conceptual framework for this reader is excellent. It provides a coherent perspective on the field of study. . . . No one in Social Welfare has a better analytic grasp of this field than Zeke Hasenfeld. His work is intelligent and of high quality." --Neil Gilbert, University of California, Berkeley "Twenty years ago it would have been hard to imagine a collection of this quality with so many fine contributors from academics in professional schools. The resulting volume represents the best scholarship in the service of social change." --From the Foreword by Rino Patti, University of Southern California

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0803940653
• ISBN13: 9780803940659
• Release Date: March 1992
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.8" x 6.3"