Chapter Thirteen – Organizational Effectiveness

 Be able to define organizational effectiveness  Understand the issues underpinning measuring organizational effectiveness  Discuss the difficulties of the goal model  Be able to briefly discuss the three significant elements of the process approach  Understand variable analysis  Understand why ethical problems arise out of attempts to measure effectiveness

 Effectiveness – the degree of congruence between organizational goals and some observed outcome.  Alternative views of organizational effectiveness, is it: o Organizational survival, o Environmental adaptability, o Based on multiple indicators, or o Based on multiple perspectives?

 Cameron (1981) Reasons for confusion o There are important differences in the way scholars conceptualize organizations. o Goals are often complex, multiple, and conflicting. o Researchers often use multiple and overlapping measurement criteria.  Effectiveness cannot be measured as a single phenomenon.

 Why assess organizational effectiveness? o Scholars Account for the growth or decline of an organization Investigate interactions between organizations and their environments Seek to understand the antecedents of effectiveness o Practitioners Effectiveness influences how organizations are managed. Accountability Can lead to the redistribution of resources within the agency

 Effectiveness studies (evaluation research) occur in a political context. o The organization, program, and offices are creatures of a political process. o The results of the study feed into the political processes that sustain or change the organization o The studies themselves are political because they involve implicit statements about the legitimacy of goals and interests within the organization (Lovell, 2004).  Effectiveness studies reflect the perspective of the organization’s dominant coalition.

 Some theoretical perspective must underlie any discussion of effectiveness (Hannan and Freeman, 1977).  Even the question of whether an organization is regarded as succeeding or failing will depend on theory.  There are seven commonly used models for assessing organizational effectiveness.

 The most common assessment model  Defines effectiveness by the extent to which the organization achieved its goals  Difficulties o There are limitations to the rationality of organizations. o Cannot differentiate between official and operative goals o Activities not related to goals are not measured. o The relationship between goal attainment and consequences is not straight forward.

 Internal process – effective organizations work efficiently  Participant-satisfaction or strategic-constituency – effective organizations serve the interests of the key constituencies.  Process approach – effectiveness is a process, not an result  Systems view – incorporates concern for change in the environment  Behavioral emphasis – focuses on attentiveness to the contributions of individual employees  Systems resource model – extent to which the organization can attain the resources it needs

 Variable analysis o Highly related to the goal model o Studies involve the identification and measurement of some goal or goals o Most common method used to assess organizational effectiveness o Attempts to examine causal links in the attainment of some goal

 Gross-malfunctioning analysis o The target of inquiry is failed of failing organizations. o The analysis examines the reasons behind the failure o Usually done following a major event (e.g. prison riot)  Revelatory analysis o Asks who is getting what from an organization o How organizations are used by internal and external groups.

 What domain or activity is the target of assessment? o Using a single dimension is difficult because criminal justice agencies do so many different things.  Differentiate between; o Performance appraisal – processes central to the evaluation of an individual’s performance o Performance measurement – the relationship between performance and actual goal accomplishment  Effective studies incorporate multiple dimensions.

 After settling on the domain to focus on, the next stop is to identify the variables that will be used to measure performance. o Validity in variables is the key consideration – does the variable measure what it purports to measure?  How the variables are measured is the next consideration. o Levels of measurement o Other measurement rules and procedures (e.g. recidivism)

 Alternatives to outcome measures o Process measures – measure the activities assumed to cause effectiveness within organizations o Structure measures – measure the organizational features or participant characteristics that are presumed to have an impact on effectiveness

 Multiple measures o Overcome the difficulties associated with single measures of effectiveness  Multigoal/multimeasure designs give a more comprehensive view of organizational effectiveness that single measures.  Skogan’s (1996) logic model of the program o Intervention – level of effort involved o Mechanism – how the program is to affect the outcome o Outcomes – anticipated outcomes of the program

 Data can be produced to make it appear that the organization is effective.  The motivation to manipulate the data o Fear of reprisal o Competition for resources (internal and external)  Avoiding ethical problems o The assessment must make sense o The goals (evaluative criteria) are realistic o Reduce fear of reprisal o Judge managers within their domain

 Organizational effectiveness is the degree of congruence between organizational goals and some observed outcomes.  Organizations are complex and have complex and conflicting goals.  The goal model assumes that o organizational goals can be identified, o members work toward goals, o and that goal attainment can be achieved.

 The three significant elements of the process approach are: o Multiple goal attainment must be optimized o Changes in the organization’s environment and goals will change, o Considers the contribution of employees.

 Variable analysis is: o Selecting separate domains, o Finding variables that provide measures of success within each domain, and o Finding variables that are specific to effectiveness within each domain.  Ethical problems in organizational effectiveness occur because it is relatively easy to produce numbers that make an individual or group look good, like the goals have been attained.

 In cooperation with area agencies your department recently created a Fusion Center designed to collect and disseminate information relating to potential terroristic activities.  The Fusion Center is staffed with numerous intelligence analysts.  Using the goal model approach, develop a method for assessing the Fusion Center’s organizational effectiveness.