When the Paradoxical is Ideal: Employees' Perceptions of Their Organizations, Work Units, and Ideal Workplaces

O'Connor M.K., Netting F.E., Fabelo H.

Human service agency cultures are often difficult to understand. Competing values and paradoxical assumptions add to that difficulty. In this study, we use a well-established framework for organizational analysis to establish a tool to assess differing values and assumptions in diverse field agencies. A total of 200 MSW field instructors responded to a mailed survey at a 50% response rate. Comparisons of responses by participants in private and public agencies revealed that public agencies tended to have more traditional cultures than nonprofit agencies. Younger agencies were more likely to score higher than older agencies on items representing alternative perspectives. Participants perceived their organizations as straddling multiple perspectives. Knowing what values and assumptions are dominant within an organization may allow the professional to assess his or her fit within that organization and how to approach change within respective cultures.

McMurtry S.L., Netting F.E., Kettner P.M.

Walk M., Cart-Turner L., Peterson E., Klippel A.

This scoping review takes stock of the landscape of organizational change research in the nonprofit context. Focusing on research published in leading peer-reviewed journals in nonprofit and civil society studies, we extracted 111 published articles from 1973 to 2019. Our findings provide a comprehensive overview of the field capturing how organizations plan for or react to environmental changes in either incremental or comprehensive ways. Findings indicate that most of the research focuses on social service nonprofits with a heavy focus on large-scale comprehensive changes. Based on the identified gaps in the literature, this study discusses implications for future research and implications for practice.