Armand Lauffer - Understanding Your Social Agency

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Understanding Your
Social Agency

Third
Edition

To Tohar and Yoav, and to Advah and Moshe for whom the pursuit of understanding is an ongoing adventure

Understanding Your
Social Agency

Third
Edition

Armand Lauffer

Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel
University of Michigan

Copyright 2011 by SAGE Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

---

For information:

	SAGE Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail:	SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 India
SAGE Publications Ltd. 1 Olivers Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom	SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd. 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lauffer, Armand.

Understanding your social agency / Armand Lauffer.3rd ed.

p. cm.

Rev. ed. of: Understanding your social agency. 2nd ed. 1984.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4129-2653-9 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-4129-2652-2 (cloth)

1. Social serviceHandbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title.

HV35.L38 2011

361.0068dc22 2010026686

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

10 11 12 13 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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Contents

List of Chapter Exercises

Exercise

Prologue

Mary Parker Follett

A SOCIAL WORK AND MANAGEMENT PIONEER

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Ive written this book with Mary Parker Follett in mind. Her insights and wisdom both preceded and complement many of the concepts described in Understanding Your Social Agency.

Mary Parker Follett (18681933), an activist, educator, community developer, and social philosopher, was also the first American woman to author a management text (1924). Her lectures were collected and published posthumously in two volumes (1941 and 1949).

Folletts work put the emphasis on individual contributions to the enterprise and on teamwork for effective decision making. A moralist, she found evil in nonrelationship and indifference. In her management lectures, she challenged the conventional wisdom that emphasized top-down authority and linear thinking, to champion process and interpersonal collaboration. Her insights into the relationship between experience and application anticipated the concept of learning organizations and postmodern theories of management.

She took great pleasure in diversity, and saw difference as contributing to community and organizational wholeness. Enthralled by Americas vibrant voluntary and civic institutions, she was convinced that the growth of democracy, though fragile, is an inevitable force for good. It nurtures the human spirit.

Some representative quotes:

It seems to me that whereas power usually means power-over it is possible to develop the conception of power with, a jointly developed power, a co-active, not coercive power. (1949, p. 213)

By directly interacting with one another to achieve their common goals, the members of a group fulfill themselves through the process of the groups development. (1924, pp. 136137)

Democracy is an infinitely including spirit. We have an instinct for democracy because we have an instinct for wholeness; we get wholeness only through reciprocal relations, through infinitely expanding reciprocal relations. (1918, p. 157)

All polishing is done by friction. (1941, p. 2)

Well revisit her wisdom in several of the chapters that follow.

Books by Mary Parker Follett

Follett, M. P. (1918). The new state: Group organization: The solution for popular government. New York: Longmans, Green. Available online at http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Mary_Parker_Follett/Fins-MPF-01.html.

. (1924). Creative experience. New York: Longmans, Green.

. (1941). Dynamic administration: The collected papers of Mary Parker Follett (H. Metcalf & L. Urwick, Eds.). London: Pittman.

. (1949). Freedom and coordination: Lectures in business organization (L. Urwick, Ed.). London: Management Publications Trust.

Books and Articles About Mary Parker Follett

Davis, A. M. (1997). Liquid leadership: The wisdom of Mary Parker Follett (18681933). A Leadership Journal: Women in LeadershipSharing the Vision, 2(1). Available online at http://sunsite.utk.edu/FINS/Mary_Parker_Follett/Fins-MPF-03.txt.

Graham, P. (1995). Mary Parker Follett: Prophet of management. Boston: Harvard Business School.

Quant, J. B. (1970). Mary Parker Follett: From small town to great community: The social thought of progressive intellectuals. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Tonn, J. C. (2003). Mary P. Follett: Creating democracy, transforming management. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Introduction and Acknowledgments

Being in Control: How to Read and Use This Book

UNDERSTANDING YOUR SOCIAL AGENCY AND OTHER ORGANIZATIONS

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If you are employed as a paid staff member or volunteer in the human services, chances are that most of your work time is spent within an organizational context or shaped by it. The context may be that of a social agency, a hospital, a school, or some other organization that provides, advocates for, or plans human services.

These are all formal organizations and often complex ones. They are bound together by their missions, technologies, formal rules and informal norms, operating procedures, authority structures, and patterns of relating to consumers and other important publics. You are undoubtedly a member, customer, client, and perhaps even a victim of many formal organizations. From birth to death (and some say beyond), you live in an environment in which organizations contribute to who you are and who you can become.

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