Integrated planning and organizational conflict

Article Abstract:

This paper examines the introduction and operation of integrated resource planning management in the Department of Energy and Natural Resources, Government of Alberta, during the period 1976-86. In government planning, systems are introduced to increase task interdependencies, create common purposes and establish performance monitoring. Such a system forces the organizational units concerned to confront their differences. This is because planning systems change task interdependence from pooled to reciprocal. This change means that the differences between organizational units in terms of value, status, organizational processes and power are brought into the open. As a result conflict occurs, not so much because planning in this context represented an organizational change, but because reciprocal interdependence is inherently conflictual. This case shows that the planning systems are about both policy-making and organizational structure and processes. Changes in ways of making policy are changes in organizational operation. Outcomes such as incrementalism and political behavior are derived from the pre-existing pattern of organizational differentiation and the way in which an innovative technical system, in this case integrated resource planning, interacts with that differentiation by changing task interdependence between resource agencies. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Laws, regulations and rules, Alberta, Planning, Conflict (Psychology), Psychological conflict

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Administering child protection: a feminist analysis of the conceptual practices of organizational power

Article Abstract:

This article explores textually-mediated administrative technology such as that being implemented by Ontario's Ministry of Community and Social Services to organize more effective control over the delivery of contracted services to children and families under child welfare legislation. A case study of the development and testing of a related technology, case-weighting, initiated by the Metro Toronto Children's Aid Society, offers the opportunity for an in-depth analysis of "conceptual practices" for exercising organizational power. It is argued that the use of conceptual practices, made practicable by improvements in computer facilities, represents a major development in managerial method with restructures organizational meanings, outcomes, and relations among participants in human service organizations. Feminist scholarship contributes both a critical stance on the approach being taken to child protection services and appropriate methodology for the analysis. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Child welfare, Social work administration, Social services administration

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A wink and a nod: a conceptual map of responsibility and accountability in bureaucratic organizations

Article Abstract:

The article provides a conceptual analysis of the ideals of responsibility and accountability. It asks and tries to answer such questions as: When is it legitimate to blame top officials of an organization for mistakes made by personnel below them in the bureaucratic hierarchy? When things go wrong in a large complex organization, such as the Canadian Armed Forces, who is responsible? When, if ever, is a plea of ignorance - "I just didn't know about the coverup" - a good excuse? The multiple ambiguities of the term "responsibility" are explored, and it is shown how a failure to appreciate this ambiguity can easily result in confusion and misunderstanding. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Public Finance Activities, Public Administration, Investigations, Scandals, Responsibility

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