Agency Goals Research Articles

The Development of Interagency Cooperation

Successful interagency coordination in the health and social services area is an infrequent event, and documentation of successful efforts is even rarer. This paper describes and analyzes a successful planning effort involving twenty local agencies which attempted to coordinate their services to the aged in a public housing project. The study examines the questions: What factors were significant in the origin of the cooperative activity? What were the aspects or factors in the planning process that contributed to the progress of the group? Analysis of interviews with persons involved in the planning suggests an initial "convergence of interests" as the initiating process for cooperation. In addition, a clear leadership structure in the group is inferred from interview comments, and individuals perceived as key persons were found to see their agency goals as more immediate, more recent, and more numerous than others. Finally, results pertaining to agency leadership are also presented. The main conclusions of the study indicate the dynamic quality of social processes involved in institutional change.

A ghetto medicine program

90 Since the inception of social work in tire United States about 1905, delivery of social services in hospitals has been geared almost exclusively to the inpatient. Phillips notes that medical social work has taken the hospital and pattern for its role model. This imposes on social work practitioners the responsibility for a dual identification; they must relate both to the aims and goals of the health agency of which they are a part and to their own profession. 1 That outpatients have been a long neglected group in the American care system is a fact of history. A 1946 study by the American Hospital Associa tion showed that only about 44 percent of hospitals had outpatient departments, most of them in nonrural areas. 2 Ambulatory services in hospitals were held in low re gard. Notkin describes the slow change:

Recurring Litigants: Federal Agencies Before the Supreme Court

CONTEMPORARY analysis of the United States Supreme Court has largely ignored the possible impact of the litigants per se on the Court's decision making. In part this is because for most parties, an appearance before the Supreme Court is a singular or relatively rare event. And in part, it is because those few parties who do appear frequently before the Court, e.g., the Department of Justice, do so in a whole spectrum of cases arising in very different circumstances and treated by a variety of procedures. Some federal administrative agencies do, however, appear before the Court several times each term; moreover, the problems presented in such cases are normally encompassed in a relatively narrow scope of procedural and substantive issues. One might anticipate that such extended interaction between the agencies and the Court would introduce a new dimension into decision making in these cases. Past experiences with cases involving a particular agency might affect the Court's or at least some justices' perceptions of cases brought in the future. That is, the justices are likely to form general attitudes about the goals of a particular agency's policies or the fairness of its procedures on the basis of such continued exposure and reflect these attitudes in their voting behavior. Some thirty-five years ago, Chief Justice Hughes broadly hinted that this was indeed what happened. In St. Joseph Stockyards Co. v. United States, he stated: 1

Bureaucrats in Collision: Case Studies in Area Transportation Planning

A national poll undoubtedly would show that most people favor coordinated transportation planning. Certainly the officials who deal with metropolitan areas in any capacity speak highly of the need to get away from the narrow, single-purpose plans for highways, public transportation, land use, and other key elements of the metropolitan landscape. But to develop an acceptable comprehensive plan turns out to be an illusive and often shattering experience. In this book Melvin R. Levin and Norman A. Abend, relying in part on their personal experience, comment upon the problems of planners, engineers, and public administrators who were faced with the knotty issues involved in the massive regional transportation studies that were launched in the early 1960s.Using the case study approach, the authors examine the planning experiences of five metropolitan areas--Boston; Philadelphia; Buffalo; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Portland, Maine. The book examines the often harrowing difficulties encountered in meshing federal, state, and regional bureaucracies in which most decisions and virtually all accomplishments involve functioning agreements by a network of wary agencies and touchy personalities. Comprehensive planning is shown to be highly sensitive to conflicting agency goals, outmoded practices, and clashing interests, while it is confusing and generally boring to the general public. Not the least of the obstacles confronting the area studies was an almost mystical belief in the promise of computer technology as the key to human understanding and painless decision making.This is not a planner's book nor are many executives in transportation agencies likely to be pleased with it. In fact, some may find it irritating. Rather, it attempts to illustrate, for the benefit of public administrators and others engaged in designing and implementing public policy, the pitfalls and pratfalls involved in mounting and carrying forward interagency programs.

LIMITS ON THE INSTITUTIONAL FRAME OF REFERENCE IN WATER RESOURCE DECISION‐MAKING1

ABSTRACTStudy of water resource decision‐making in Massachusetts demonstrates the existence of many institutional constraints such as the established fee system for consulting engineers, the funding of certain agencies, the institutionalization of equity concerns, overrepresentation of interests, and incompatibility of agency goals. These institutional constraints are attributable in part to certain broadly‐based value‐orientations such as the American pragmatic tradition. However, various lines of evidence indicate that these constraints are less important than other factors in the etiology of decisional outcomes. The outcomes of the decision processes were found to be at variance with the decisions studied, a fact leading to the conclusion that choice of decisions for study should be given more attention. The authors conclude that institutional constraints are important if one is interested in studying how decisions are made, but that what actually happens in the long run cannot be easily ascertained by studying either institutions or the decision‐making process. They suggest the need for more research utilizing the incremental theories of Carl Lindblom and the side‐effect theories of Albert O. Hirschman.

The Coming Failure of Mission-Oriented Social Research

There is a new fashion in social research among those who dispense the funds and those who guard the public treasure. The fashion is mission-orientation, a view that research should have a product and that this product should be closely related to the goals of the funding agency. By this approach, the spenders can be relieved of anxiety when congressional investigators question the utility of their research support. It is a pragmatic approach, an approach in terms of immediate problems and issues. All the research is relevant. This set of enterprises is going to spend several hundreds of millions of dollars in the next few years and it is likely to prove an excellent public-relations ploy and a large-scale failure. If the task is to satisfy the public and their representatives, mission-orientation will be successful for a while. Even that success is likely to be tem porary. Eventually, there will be questions about the improvement of social conditions which is expected to be the immediate outgrowth of the new applied knowledge available to our decision-makers. For the development of the social sciences, the hundreds of millions which will have been expended will be adding little to our knowledge base and much to public expectations. We'll be worse off when the high hopes of today will have been transmuted to deep disappoint ments. The lack of protest among social scientists as Government agen cies turn their research funds into rather than R & D is worthy of note. Unfortunately, social scientists are as unwilling as most humans to attack those who can sanction them. Social scientists may grumble, but they will be willing to accept tasks defined by persons

Agency Structure Related to the Use of Staff

Agency goals, service priorities, and staff development programs influence the productivity of staff and affect the meeting of clients’ needs

Aspirations of Power People and Agency Goals

Journal Article Aspirations of Power People and Agency Goals Get access Arnold J. Auerbach, Ph.D. Arnold J. Auerbach, Ph.D. executive director YM & WHA, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Work, Volume 6, Issue 1, January 1961, Pages 66–73, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/6.1.66 Published: 01 January 1961