Rugby House-ARP - Case Study Example

Management, structure and objectives Rugby House-ARP is a not-for-profit organisation which provides non-medical (holistic) treatment for people in London who are suffering with alcoholism or homelessness as a result of alcohol involvement. This organisation works to provide temporary housing for people who fit in this category as well as resettle ex-servicemen and women who become homeless due to an inability to procure adequate work or alcohol abuse. This organisation has been serving the UK for over 40 years and provides alcohol and housing support services to over 4,000 people each year (Arp-uk.org, 2009). Structurally, ARP consists of a senior group of directors which govern the activities of mid-level managers. It is typically a top-down hierarchy where decisions about how to provide community support and the internal activities of workers and volunteers are created. ARP consists of a centralised business structure where decision-making is generated in middle-layers and higher levels of management. The senior leadership coordinates the different programmes in use to provide alcohol treatment and housing services and these decisions outline the generic activities of lower-level support employees on a daily basis. Middle level managers generally gather insight from the lower level support groups for any internal changes to programmes which are of concern, making the organisation more efficient internally. ARP also provides training to its workers in the areas of alcohol prevention so that they are equipped with the social and psychological skills necessary to assist what are considered to be at risk groups. In the process of providing alcohol treatment and housing support services, generic community counselling is necessary which suggests the importance of having a positive view on racial, age and gender diversity as well. These support workers also provide the majority of the prevention literature when those in need of treatment need statistics or encouragement. The aims and objectives of the organisation are relatively simple, as is spelled out by ARP’s organisational mission statement: “Rugby House-ARP works creatively with individuals, communities and policy makers to reduce the harm caused by problem alcohol and drug use. Our integrated care, support and housing services help people achieve positive change and freedom from the harmful effects of alcohol and other drugs. We…pioneer innovative service solutions and push the boundaries of best practice” (Rugbyhouse.org.uk, 2009, p.1). What does all of this spell out? ARP seeks to be creative in its efforts to provide treatment to those in need by creating an environment where care is an organisation-wide initiative in order to assist people in becoming independent of reliance on alcohol. This is done through innovation, a company which appears to be focused on surpassing excellence in this area, and efforts to enhance community relationships. The clients of ARP include certain at risk groups and groups which are currently seeking alcohol treatment or support housing, including ex-military citizens. In many ways, the community itself is a stakeholders as the prevention of alcohol abuse is a community problem, thus they have a stake in how this organisation is managed and coordinated. ARP also partners with other, similar agencies which gives the company more resources to provide quality services. They work with “over 15 Primary Care Trust and local authority partners” as well as other agencies coordinated by the city of London (Arp-uk.org, 2009, p.2). In the charitable sector, ARP works with the NSPCC for family support services and the Royal British Legion which works with the ex-servicepersons. These relationships provide the physical and financial support to ensure that ARP can remain vital to those in need of alcohol and housing support. The managers of ARP also must work with these partners on a regular basis so that support workers and volunteers have the tools necessary to provide excellence in treatment and support. Internal dynamics and design One researcher likens the organisation to that of a “political arena”, describing these arenas as a series of games where players are not known and rules are unclear (Conner, 2006, p.16). What Conner is essentially offering is that politics, the struggle between gaining control and authority, creates an environment where people have their own social and professional agendas and work, alongside with company policy, to advance their agendas which creates ambiguity and conflict. With this in mind, there is some evidence of political situations within ARP, which is most visible between senior leadership and middle leadership. It consistently appears that middle-level managers are competing in order to remain in control by using authority in ways that are mildly inappropriate while mid-level managers sometimes act too authoritarian in an effort to impress, which impacts motivation for lower-level workers and volunteers. This political struggle creates a transparency in behaviours which are obviously pushing toward a motive which can impact the quality of service and care. Arnott (1999) offers that many organisations become cultish, where employees in certain sectors of the business, such as those with senior-level authority, create an exclusive work environment for anyone who does not fit their desired demographic profile. Basically, Arnott offers that these restrictive environments can significantly impact the motivation for workers of an organisation to perform effectively. There are many motivational theories which discuss the human need for belonging, and if a cultish environment creates exclusion, this would impact the desire to have purpose and social importance in the organisation. This was mentioned because there is evidence of this at ARP where certain groups have in-group discussions and tend to exclude certain volunteers because they do not necessarily fit their desired demographic profile. This is not intentional and it generally does not impact the quality of service and care, however in terms of having a more motivated internal staff these are counter-productive behaviours which can damage the quality of relationships between many lower-ranking members of ARP. Since motivation is so important in creating quality, it would serve the mission best if these problems were identified and resolved. There is a great deal of energy put into human resources (HR) at ARP as it is the basic foundation on which the organisation was built. Muna and Mansour (2009) offer that HR professionals must combine creativity with the ability to design flexible and supportive work systems in order to provide excellence in leadership. This is a superior strength with the design structure at ARP because the majority of members who support ARP already have a people-focused, motivation-focused attitude which is part of the organisational culture. The leaders at ARP recognise the needs of employees and provide flexible systems which create a more balanced work environment. Flex-time and other concepts represent ARP creativity and builds relationships with staff members in the process as part of its HR focus. External pressures impacting efficiency Having trust in an organisation is vital, however one personnel expert offers that “trust must move beyond rational or calculative trust to various forms of social trust” (Tyler, 2003, p.556).What does this mean? Trust is based on the character, personality and perceived motives of others and it would seem that people assess others to witness whether they have all of these traits before they can have full confidence in another. The author is offering that these are calculative trust issues and organisations should examine the psychology of trust from a social viewpoint. ARP works with communities and community citizens regularly. It is the nature of its mission and purpose. ARP has created solid relationships with many individuals in the community and has a developed social trust which was built from community perceptions of positive character, positive motives and the upbeat personalities of support staff member. These internal dynamics should not be over-looked at ARP as social trust is what keeps this not-for-profit a profit for the community. Trust are the majority of the social pressures which impact ARP from the external stakeholder perspective. Two experts in psychology point it out very clearly: “The importance of collaboration and the need to integrate knowledge and expertise suggests that social capital, founded on trusting relationships, will be essential for project success” (Tansley and Newell, 2007, p.350). ARP can consider all of its activities in the pursuit of providing superior service and treatment programmes to be a community project with no well-defined life cycle or end. As an ongoing project, the team-based philosophy requires efficiency, positive social relationships, and a form of group harmony in order to make the business staff appear professional to the stakeholders. ARP builds social capital daily by its ability to gain the trust of community citizens through professional service provision and a trusting team environment where knowledge is exchanged freely and expertise is recognised for their contributions to mission goals. One additional pressure which impacts organisational goal-achievement at ARP is the availability of funding to ensure that programmes continue. These are aspects which likely impact most non-profit support agencies, however they should be acknowledge for causing difficulty in sustaining alcohol treatment and temporary housing services periodically. These budgetary issues impact all workers and can also impact motivational levels if the project or its tools are impacted by external stakeholder activities such as contribution declines. A case study of project involvement A recent project involving training on how to provide budgeting training to those who were impacted by alcohol and over-consumption ran into many roadblocks to meeting its goals. At the time, budgeting training was a relatively new concept, but it was included in the treatment and support services programmes in order to assist people in recognising how the purchase of alcohol was impacting their total income ratios. Budgeting sheets required creation, as well as training staff members on how to perform the calculations and complete the sheets, so that this could be added as a new support service. The project was expected to take only a few weeks, but ended up with a total life cycle of seven weeks prior to the training be signed-off as completed. Prior to accepting the responsibility of tenancy support worker, self-complexity theory was considered when assessing the project team leader which offers that “leaders’ self-constructs are linked to their varied role demands by calling forth cognitions, affects, goals and values, expectancies, and self-regulatory plans that enhance performance” (Hannah, Woolfolk, and Lord, 2009, p.269). This basically offers that leaders continuously assess their environment and create their own agendas based on corporate expectations and their own expectations, which in turn creates their own self-concept. This suggestion of leader agendas was something which was deemed necessary to avoid in this budgeting training programme. The expectation was that the staff would maintain the mathematical aptitudes necessary to complete the training efficiently thus the agenda was for rapid completion of the project. Some staff, however, were socially-resistant to the new budgeting training and openly offered that it was too time-consuming and too much for the organisation to expect. Holtz and Crystal (2008) offer that people in an organisation who feel that their leader is transformational will receive more trust in the leader. This was also considered as the tenancy support worker in the project, creating the expectancy for the staff to embrace the new budgeting training and policy as part of transformational efforts to improve service. The staff resistance to this effort created difficulties in performance and also seemed to impact the quality of relationships. Svensson, Wood and Mathisen (2008) further identify that leaders must realise that it is impossible to predict the future when dealing with project leadership or other internal organisational activities. This means that there is always going to be an element of risk in a project situation, which was something occurring at ARP in budget training development. As the tenancy support worker involved, the leader was not creating quality relationships and did not expect the level of resistance which impacted progress. For a short period of time, the resistance to the budgeting programme and its training distribution created a change in the organisational culture where interpersonal relationships had been impacted. Some of the staff members went to higher management levels to discuss their dissatisfaction with both the budget template and with the project leader. This was a social, political effort to ensure that the leader’s reputation was impacted and also to call on staff relationships between supervisor and subordinate to build support for removing the new budget programme from the training curriculum. The staff levels of motivation were decreased significantly during this time period. Muna and Mansour again offer that readiness to complete project tasks and investment toward achieving organisational goals are impacted by whether or not they feel supported by the organisation and its leadership structure. In this case, the problems were all social and political as the motivation to perform, in multiple areas of support provision, were affected due to misconceptions about non-support from their budget training leader. Because ARP provides integrated care systems (Arp-uk.org, 2009), the team-based cohesion was temporarily gone due to social animosity against the project leader and was transparent to the community and groups seeking support. This specific project was identified for its problems in order to illustrate how social factors and political agendas can impact successful organisational goals. As a member involved in the tenancy budgeting project, there were many assumptions about ARP which had been held, specifically surrounding the social trust which was perceived to exist among staff members. There had always been interpersonal success at ARP and trust was simply a construct of professionalism and inter-group courtesy among staff members. It was never considered that new budgeting guidelines, which provided additional workload, would be subject to such resistance. This change was intended to benefit the entire community and those in need of ARP support services and the efforts undertaken to ensure its end (through political agendas) completely changed the assumption of trust and support toward the dedication to fulfill the mission of the organisation. Though there is a very well-developed and trust team of professionals who definitely provide superior services and support, the extent to which an individual will go to gather support against an undesired policy or project concept really added a great deal of support on the literature which describes social and psychological behavioural theories. In the long-run, the political efforts to end the project met with failure and senior-level administration simply made it policy which was expected to be complied with. The staff members found, after resistance to the change had ended, that the budget guideline provided an easier method of teaching this function to struggling community citizens and began to appreciate its design. However, interestingly, no staff apologies for the heavy resistance to the project were offered to the project team leader, as if the political efforts to rally support for its end had gone unnoticed. This also challenged a social assumption which the tenancy support member had maintained about ARP in which accountability was an expectation of group involvement. This would make an interesting research study to measure staff resistance and the degree to which failure accountability exists in today’s socially-motivated organisations. Relevance to different theories Though ARP maintains a very strongly-focused group toward the achievement of providing superior service and housing, as well as designing internal tasks geared toward meeting stakeholder needs, there are social and psychological factors at work which can create internal problems to achieving the boundary pushing described in the organisation’s mission. Middleton (2002) offers that working out issues with organisational culture begins with first identifying what the problem specifically is within the organisation. At this point, it must be determined what needs to be done, strategically and tactically, to solve the problem. Further, the author offers that when “clear consensus” is achieved on what needs to be done, then the culture examined for further scrutiny. The problem has been identified at ARP: Social and political struggles which impede motivation. Strategically, self-complexity theory and certain social trust theories were shattered by the different efforts undertaken to create complications in the new budget training programme. Motivational levels, among many staff members, and not only those involved in the project, were impacted negatively due to the political gaming and social animosity created by the budget expectations. This also impacted, as mentioned previously, stakeholder perceptions and the quality provision of service; temporarily. Karp and Helgo (2009) offer a business leadership guideline for methods to lead an organisation during chaotic change, or periods where change exists at a time when both the internal and external environment create higher levels of complexity and risk. It was previously established that ARP maintains the risk of funding and other budget-related aspects routinely and the nature or extent to which stakeholders require assistance or have dependency on alcohol creates complexity and uncertainty. Therefore, in many ways, this would seem to be a chaotic change environment at work at ARP and requires new leadership methods to make the service provision more efficient and more beneficial to people in need of support and assistance. During the counselling and support sessions of treatment for those with alcohol-related difficulties, there are many different personalities encountered as a support staff member. Different socio-economic backgrounds and personalities, as well as religious values and social lifestyle expectations, are encountered routinely. Though the organisation has the ability to build long-term relationships with existing clients, the presence of new behaviours are introduced which complicate the nature of work. For instance, a more vibrant personality can detract from professional discussions while a somewhat anti-social personality can create disruption through counter-productive activities during counsel or information exchanges. These behavioural dimensions again reflect a chaotic change environment at ARP. In order to provide innovation in the programme, as ARP highlights in its mission, it would seem that the organisation requires a new model of leadership, for project teams and for managers, which can best guarantee healthy motivational levels and growth in interpersonal relationships. Conner again identifies that employees in organisations sometimes create intense personal relationships with peers or subordinates, which adds even more support to the theoretical viewpoint of the cultish work environment. These intense friendships, which are positive for the community in the majority of service and support provision, can also serve to reduce efficiency if the intense friendships are fueled by political objectives at the organisation. This type of rallying can, in the long-term, serve to reduce the efficient provision of information to the clients. To assess ARP as efficient would be accurate, however at the social level, improvements in trust-building and the reduction of the political agenda would create a more rewarding organisational culture and one where diversity is valued: not only in demographics but in change acceptance. The new budget template was an innovative effort at the senior-level to enhance the job functions of the lower-level staff however it was perceived as a very large threat to workload. Complacency in this area is very high at ARP. In order to meet organisational goals and its described mission, change management in this chaotic change environment would seem to be the key to successful completion of the mission and its values. This would seem to be able to be accomplished through the dedicated support staff at ARP, the knowledge which exists there, and the innovative senior administrators who routinely supply new literature and templates to enhance performance and stakeholder needs. Skills development The budget guideline project, which overran its intended life cycle by weeks, served as a significant wake-up call to the tenancy support worker. The approach undertaken, initially, was based on the literature describing the activities and personality that the leader should develop and project in order to ensure efficient project team performance. There were no preconceived thoughts about any predicted social and behavioural problems which would be associated with the project. As far as transferrable skills, the tenancy support worker learned that the project process is a complicated and multi-faceted organisational role which will involve misconceptions, political agendas, resistance to change, lack of motivation, and temporary changes to the organisational structure in a way which creates lack of efficiency and productivity. The tenancy support work identified with a significant amount of research literature on the subject of social and relationship theories once the project had reached its final conclusion. As far as transferrable skills, the project leader has become better-rounded in research gathering efforts as well as adapting the scheme of organisational models as a means to predict or describe certain group behavioural dynamics. These gave the project leader new theory by which to mould learning and comprehension, therefore from a cognitive viewpoint this is an asset to today’s organisations as a leader with understanding in multiple domains of knowledge. The importance of trust in the organisation was represented many times when describing the culture and internal structure of ARP. As another valid transferrable skill, trust seems to be a product of both positive social relationships and leadership ability to project a positive self-concept to lower level staff members. To the tenancy support worker, this would suggest the need to balance culture with authority in a way that is satisfying to all group or project members. For employability purposes, these are skills which can create a more rewarding organisational culture, which will likely impact the external stakeholders as well in virtually every leader decision-making scenario. Meeting an organisation’s mission goals also seems to be a product of whether or not the right motivational tactics can be employed, as well as ensuring some form of innovation in the provision of service. This was supported through group involvement, further research into ARP, and many of the theoretical perspectives identified in this report. The ability to utilise social theories and behavioural theories, including those involved in psychology, can provide any organisation or business a leader or support worker who can be a little bit of everything for everyone as a well-adjusted, self-conceptualised leader with the academic understanding necessary to drive motivation and performance. Additional transferrable skills include a new focus on conducting research to employ different strategies, which is also an innovative and creative methodology for a leader or organisational manager. This is flexibility and reflects an individual who is willing to examine multiple perspectives, determine which seems to have most relevance, and then apply it in a fashion which builds stronger relationships. These would seem to be multi-faceted skillsets which would be highly in demand in any organisation domestic or international. The project leader now has the understanding necessary to provide others with these lessons to make them more like leaders and less like subordinates. This could make a more productive ARP or other organisation. Bibliography Arnott, Dave. (1999). Corporate Cults: The Insidious Lure of the All-consuming Organization. Amacom Books. Arp-uk.org. (2009). Our Services. http://www.arp-uk.org/index.php?id=7. (accessed April 20 2009). Arp-uk.org. (2009). Who we are and what we do. http://arp-uk.org/index.php?id=8 (accessed Apr 22 2009). Conner, Decondra. (2006). 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