Jillian Simmons ~ Commented on Group #1 & #3 ~ My role was to write the Organizational Paper.
Brent Baumer ~ Commented on Group #1, #2 & #3 ~ My role was to coordinate with the community partners.
Kelly Neal ~ Commented on Group #1, #2 & #3 ~ My role was to determine management structure of partnership team, as well as 1/2 page reflection paper and posting to the blog.
Organization Paper
Jillian Simmons, Kelly
Neal, and Brent Baumer
Ball State University
Organization Paper
Introduction
The
Big Read is a program that “was introduced by the National Endowment of the
Arts with ten communities in 2006, and a nationwide roll-out the following year.”
(Big Read, 2015) Our goal was to
introduce the Big Read to our local community; Muncie, IN through this year’s
book Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury in 1953. The possible programs, located in Muncie,
Indiana, that were selected to promote the Big Read programs are as follows: Morrison
Woods Health Campus, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Delaware County, Ball Memorial
Hospital, Muncie Central High School, and Westminster Village of Muncie. These facilities were chosen because their
organizational management theory of “shared values and beliefs provide the
glue that binds the organization’s members together in a common cause.”
(Tompkins, 2005, pg.360) By finding
partners that share a common goal, a more valuable experience can be achieved
for both parties.
Morrison Woods Health Campus is a
retirement and assisted-living, nursing home facility owned and operated by
Trilogy Health Services. Trilogy
operates multiple locations throughout Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky.
(Trilogy, 2015) This organization was
relevant to adult and community education as well as the Big Read program,
because the residents of the facility are the appropriate age to read the book
as well as their families and friends. There are also adult themes in the book
that the residents, their families and friends, and the employers and employees
can relate to and possibly learn from.
Big
Brothers Big Sisters of Delaware County is a local not-for-profit organization
affiliated with the national organization, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America.
This organization is relevant to adult and community education and the Big Read
program, because it aims is to improve the lives of local kids in high school
and are age appropriate to read Fahrenheit 451. The aim of Big Read is to
enhance literacy in Muncie, which is something that the organization and Big
Read have in common.
Ball
Memorial Hospital is the only hospital in Muncie that serves local citizens of
all ages on a daily basis. Ball Memorial also has many educational programs for
students in medical programs as well as other medical classes that promote
reading and adult literacy. Ball Memorial Hospital is relevant to adult and
community education, because it supports opportunities to members of the
community.
Westminster
Village of Muncie is a retirement, assisted-living, and nursing facility. It
has relevance to adult and community due to the fact that it houses adults, who
are of age to participate in the Big Read program. Big Read would also support
this facility by providing activities for people with plenty of free time and
by stimulating the minds of the residents by reading and participating in the
activities.
Muncie
Central High School is one of Muncie’s two public high schools. The school
corporations mission is to “provide a quality educational environment
that allows every student to maximize his or her potential and, upon
graduation, possess the basic skills necessary to be a positive, productive, contributing
member of society.” (Muncie Schools, 2015) This organization
has relevance to adult and community education due to the fact that they are
teaching students in the community that are already adults or will soon be
adults seeking a higher education.
Organizational Structure
and Management Features
The organizational structure and
management feature of Morris Woods Health Campus is that it is a for-profit
L.L.C. and it is corporate-owned by Trilogy Health Services, L.L.C. The
Westminster Village of Muncie organizational structure and management feature
is that it is a not-for-profit retirement community. Morris Woods Health Campus and Westminster
Village of Muncie both follow the Organization Theory, which is defined as “the
study of formal structures, internal processes, external constraints, and the
ways organizations affect and are affected by members.” (Tompkins, 2005 pg.1)
Morris Woods Health Campus and Westminster Village of Muncie exhibit this
theory by the fact that they are formal structures that have to follow rules
and regulations in order to ensure the safety and wellness of their residents.
The internal processes are the procedures that employers and employees must
follow within the facility. It is also their routines, which nursing homes
often have to keep order within their facilities.
The external constraints are the
constraints imposed on the nursing homes by the residents’ families, such as a
Do Not Resuscitate Order, which does not allow any nurse in the nursing home to
perform CPR on a patient who has flat-lined or has no pulse. The ways of the
organization affect the members and the organizations itself can be exhibited
by looking at the structures of nursing homes if procedures are not followed.
For example, if a nurse is not following procedures by checking up on her
patients and keeping them clean and one patient happens to suffer from bed
sores, the nursing home would be liable to damages implied on the patient.
“Theoretical knowledge places managers in a better position to understand how
organizational realities both facilitate and constrain their efforts.”
(Tompkins, 2005, pg.2)
Other aspects of the organizational
theory are the micro perspective and the macro perspective. The micro
perspective is exhibited in how the procedures of the facility and the
requirement of the employers and employees is to “focus on the people and
groups seeking to understand behavior and interrelationships.” (Tompkins, 2005,
pg.3) Nurses and other employers or employees must understand and gain the
trust of their patients by focusing on each individual and their needs. The
macro perspectives “typically investigate structural arrangements.”(Tompkins, 2005,
pg.2)
The macro perspective is exhibited
when looking at the hierarchy of the facility. For example, the supervisors are
at the top of the hierarchy, the registered nurses are in the middle, and the
CNAs are beneath the nurses, and the maintenance and food workers are at the
bottom. This can also be seen when looking at the corporate hierarchy of the
Morris Woods Health Campus organization. In this case, supervisors would be
towards the bottom of the hierarchy while corporate managers would be at the
top.
The organizational structure and
management features of the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Delaware County
organization is that it is a one-on-one mentoring organization aimed at
positively impacting the lives of local youth. This organization is another
example of organization theory by exhibiting organizational behavior from a
micro perspective in the way that it offers one-on-one mentoring to students.
This proves that the organization is “focusing on individuals and groups as the
basic units of analysis seeking to understand behavior and interrelationships.”
(Tompkins, 2005, pg.3) This organization also uses the organizational culture
and leadership theory of the 1980’s and 1990’s by proving that they are
“creating a culture committed to high performance through visionary leadership
and symbolic management” (Tompkins, 2005, pg.5) by having a goal in order to
mentor students and bring them to a certain level of success. The goal of the Big Brother Big Sisters
national is utilized by “Our local agencies working with their colleagues
across the nation to design and develop programs that are tailored to the needs
of their community” (BBBS, 2015)
The
organizational structures and management features of Muncie Central High School
are organizational theory and the organizational culture and leadership theory
of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Organizational theory is exhibited in this
organization by the fact that there is a hierarchy from the top, where the
principal is located to the bottom, where the students are located. This also
proves that there is a macro perspective. There are formal structures and
internal processes, which is how there is a routine in how a school is ran
everyday by the principals and teachers. This can also be seen in how children
are taught. There are external constraints, such as the parents. For example,
if a student misbehaves and the procedure is to paddle the student, but the
parent does not allow the principal to carry out the punishment, the parent
would be acting as the external constraint. The organizational culture and
leadership theory of the 1980’s and 1990’s is displayed by the school when it
creates “a culture committed to high performance through visionary leadership
and symbolic management.” (Tompkins, 2005, pg.5) The school displays this by
setting goals, setting examples, and exhibiting leadership skills by teaching
and mentoring students.
The
organizational structures and management features of Ball Memorial Hospital are
promoting good health and practices, having classes that assist in promoting
those practices, and providing information about programs that enhance the
local citizens of Muncie. Ball Memorial Hospital is a complex organization,
which is “an organization so large and structurally differentiated that it
cannot be managed effectively by a single individual.” (Tompkins, 2005, pg.1)
The hospital also follows the organizational theory in that there is a
hierarchy that goes up from the doctors then down to the nurses. The
administrative management theory of the 1920’s and 1930’s, which identifies
“the administrative principles that allow organizations to accomplish complex
tasks,” is exhibited by the hospital when it comes to following the hierarchy
from doctors to nurses when deciding and carrying out procedures to help a patient.
(Tompkins, 2005, pg.4)
Actions
The
residents of Morris Woods Health Campus have a lot of free time to read the
book and they have family and friends that often come for visits at the home
that may want to participate in the Big Read activities along with their
relatives living at the facility. The employees and employers at the facility
are also of the appropriate age to read the book and might also like to
participate in the Big Read activities with the residents. The employees and employers might also want
to promote the Big Read program to their families and friends. The fact that
the organization has other locations around Indiana and other states means that
there is potential for people, who are not Muncie locals, to come and
participate in the Big Read activities as well as spread the word about Big
Read to others. Management for Morris Woods Health Campus supports the cause of
Big Read, which is to get more people interested in reading, especially those
of adult or elderly ages. Big Read can also help aging minds stay active, which
leads to maintaining a good mental health, which makes it a great support
program for Morris Woods Health Campus.
Like the Morrison Woods Health Campus, the
families, friends, employers, and employees at Westminster Village of Muncie
may also have an interest in participating in the Big Read activities along
with the residents.
Big
Brothers Big Sisters can use the Big Read program and its activities to through
their volunteers as learning and bonding activities with the youth they mentor.
Another way that Big Sisters can help to promote the Big Read program is by
spreading the word to the parents of the students and getting them to
participate in learning and boding with their children.
Muncie
Central High School can support the Big Read program by promoting it throughout
the school as well as by sending notices home to parents who may want to join
their children by supporting their education and literacy. The Big Read program
can help students with their reading scores, which can also lead to higher
standardized testing scores.
Ball Memorial Hospital deals with
people of all ages and everyone in Muncie, which means that the hospital would
be able to promote the Big Read program to a myriad number of people. Big Read
would also be able to support the hospital in trying to gain opportunities that
will enhance the quality of the lives of people in community.
Reflection
The highlights of this assignment was
learning different ways to communicate organizations and persuading them to
jump on board with Big Read. Another highlight of this assignment was meeting
with different organization and getting their input on what they thought about
the Big Read program and what they thought would help bring people in the
community to the event. The Morris Woods Health Campus agreed to let us have
the event at their local facility as well as promote the event to residents and
their families and friends. Muncie Central High School and Westminster Village
of Muncie also agreed to promote the event. The biggest highlight was
discussing the event with Larry Strange in his office at the library. He
provided a lot of helpful information about which organizations to reach out to
and how to approach these organizations. He also offered to publish an article
about the events in the newsletter for the city council meetings.
The process of completing this
assignment came with disappointments and more highlights. We sent out emails
and made phone calls to all of the organizations. It took weeks to get good and
bad responses. Some responded that there was just not enough information from
us for them to agree to the event or they just didn’t think it was a good move
for their organization. We had meetings in person with the Morris Woods Health
Campus, which is the reason we believe is why we received the best response
from them. Only three agreed to promote the event and only one agreed to allow
us to have the event at their facility.
Organizations
|
Names of
the
Muncie organizations which
can support the Big Read
|
Organizational
structure
and Management features
of these organizations
|
Main
ideas of the
organization/mana gement theories
which reflect the
features
of Muncie organizations.
|
Action: How
can we utilize
Muncie organizations to
support the Big Read based
on the features of their
organization
structure/their management features?
|
1
|
Morrison Woods
Health Campus
|
For profit LLC, corporate owned. Multiple locations throughout IN, OH, KY
and MI. Owned by Trilogy Health
Services, LLC.
|
Retirement and assisted living and nursing
home facility.
|
Captive audience interested in reading and
participating. Support from the
management for the program. Big Read
can help aging minds stay active helping to maintain mental health.
|
2
|
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Delaware County
|
Local not-for-profit organization
affiliated with the national organization Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
|
|
BBBS can use the Big Read activities
through their volunteers as a learning and bonding activity with the youth
they serve.
|
3
|
Westminster Village of Muncie
|
Not-for-profit retirement community
|
Retirement and assisted living and nursing
home facility.
|
Westminster Village declined our request
for assistance in promoting Big Read citing disruption from current construction
activities
|
References
BBBS. (2015). Big Brothers Big Sisters. Retrieved September 19, 2015, from
http://www.bbbs.org/site/c.9iILI3NGKhK6F/b.5968193/k.5031/Our_programs_get_things_started.htm
Big Read. (2015). In The Big Read. Retrieved September 19, 2015, from
http://neabigread.org/
Muncie. (2015). Muncie Community Schools. Retrieved September 19, 2015, from
http://www.muncie.k12.in.us/Home/AboutUs
Tompkins, J. (2005). Organization theory and public management (p. 1,2,3,4,5,360). Australia: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Trilogy. (2015). Trilogy Health Services. Retrieved September 19, 2015, from
http://trilogyhs.com/our-culture/trilogy-difference
