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Understanding Your Social Agency
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Understanding Your Social Agency

Third Edition


November 2010 | 392 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc

Provides readers with an array of lenses for looking at a social agency from the outside in, and from the inside out

This highly accessible text takes into account the organizational dynamics that readers are likely to have experienced and provides them with the conceptual tools for reassessing their understanding and considering how to act on their new insights. Renowned scholar Armand Lauffer shows readers how to apply organizational theories to challenges they confront at work, and to uncover other challenges they may not yet be aware of.


 
Prologue
 
Introduction
 
PART I: CONTEXT, CONCEPTS, AND CHALLENGES
 
1. Where Your Agency Came From and Where It's Going
 
Prequel to Chapter 2
 
2. Concepts, Theories, and Classifications
 
PART II: UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE AT WORK
 
3. Role Playing and Group Membership
 
4. Motivation and Satisfaction at Work
 
5. Agencies, Jobs, and Careers
 
6. Professionalism and Volunteerism
 
PART III: UNDERSTANDING PROCESSES, PROGRAMS, AND OPERATIONS
 
7. Organizational Culture
 
8. Leadership, Management, and Governance
 
9. Fundraising and Development
 
10. Agency Structure and Change
 
About the Author

1) I am no longer teaching this course
2) Lauffer's focus is on social service organizations and our program is integrated (SW & Community Health)... so emphasis was a bit too narrow. (This textbook would have been perfect if there were additional public health examples.)

Ms Joy Rubey
Dep't of Health, Human Services & Public Policy, California State University- Monterey Bay
July 23, 2013
Key features

New to the Third Edition:

  • Vignettes of agency-related issues that illustrate the kinds of challenges social workers face are described using the composite examples of two agencies throughout Chapters 3-10.
  • Brief definitions are presented at the start of every chapter and added to throughout.
  • End-of-chapter exercises are designed for completion by either individuals or groups, at home, in the classroom or in the agency.

Key Features:

  • Introduces readers to the historic and social contexts within when American social agencies became what they are today
  • Covers the practice theories and scientific concepts that can be used to better understand agencies
  • Addresses specific concerns ranging from improving performance and satisfaction at work
  • Demystifies organizational and managerial practice theories by presenting them in such a way as to make them immediately applicable
  • Strong pedagogy includes chapter concluding-observations and parallel presentations of positions supporting or critiquing the information presented intended to provoke thought about the material presented

For instructors

Select a Purchasing Option


Rent or Buy eBook
ISBN: 9781452239460

Hardcover
ISBN: 9781412926522
$151.00

Paperback
ISBN: 9781412926539
$95.00

This title is also available on SAGE Knowledge, the ultimate social sciences online library. If your library doesn’t have access, ask your librarian to start a trial.