An insightful volume that demonstrates how human service managers and administrators can innovatively and successfully make their agencies more effective using the principles of organizational behavior management. Improving Staff Effectiveness in Human Service Settings demonstrates the potential of OBM for identifying, tracking, targeting, and evaluating problems. Researchers, academicians, and practitioners examine interventions with OBM that took place in actual human service settings in response to severe organizational and staff problems. This important volume is an excellent resource brimming with well-evaluated, cost-effective staff management strategies..
Human service programming has been the focus of much public scrutiny, legislative action, and applied research in recent years. As a result, human service providers have learned to exhibit greater respect for the needs and legal rights of their consumers, the appropriateness and cost effectiveness of treatment procedures and service programs, and the per sonnel and facilities involved in providing services to consumers. Despite this encouraging trend, many human service agencies are still trying unsuccessfully to meet the two fundamental criteria of effec tive programming: (1) providing services that are effective in meeting the needs of the consumer and (2) equipping consumers to function indepen dently of the human service system to the extent possible. For example, there appears to be a general acceptance of the notion that custodial institutional service programs are needed, despite the fact that they are ineffective in rehabilitating and transitioning clients to the community and that they are difficult to change. In addition, although community based service programs have been developed as alternatives to institu tional placement, there is rarely sufficient transitional planning and pro gramming to facilitate the client's progress from the institution to the community. Although these problems generally are acknowledged, most human service managers and practitioners are ill equipped to deal with them. Specifically, the technology of human service management is in need of improvement. It is more theoretical than practical, and it lacks sufficient field testing and empirical validation.
It is widely acknowledged that many healthcare, behavioral health, and social service organizations provide less-than-optimal services and that the challenge of improving services depends on successfully changing organizational culture and climate. However, there are almost no organizational-level strategies that have been tested with randomized controlled trials. Building Cultures and Climates for Effective Human Services addresses the need for evidence-based organizational strategies for improving human service quality and outcomes by uniquely describing the authors' own case examples, nationwide studies, and randomized controlled trials to explain how organizational culture and climate can be assessed and changed. The two authors use their decades of research and practice experience in assessing and changing human service organizations to explain how organizations can improve the services they provide using the authors' ARC model, which effectively removes service barriers and supports the implementation of evidence-based practices and other innovations. The book also blends case examples with research from nationwide studies, regional experiments, and randomized controlled trials to explain the ARC model of organizational effectiveness and how it works to improve services. It provides a balance between theory, empirical research, and actual case examples to help researchers, organizational consultants, administrators, and service providers gain a practical understanding of how culture and climate affect services and how they can be improved. Furthermore, the text describes the three ARC strategies, each composed of multiple elements, to: (1) embed key organizational principles, (2) implement core organizational component tools, and (3) apply mental models to alter shared reasoning and beliefs that affect success. No other organizational-level strategies for improving services have been so well documented and tested.
"Widely regarded as the authoritative work on the principles and practice of applied behavior analysis (ABA), this indispensable volume is now in a revised and expanded second edition. Leading experts present evidence-based procedures for supporting positive behaviors and reducing problem behaviors with children and adults in diverse contexts. Chapters delve into applications in education, autism treatment, addictions, behavioral pediatrics, and other areas. Covering everything from behavioral assessment and measurement to the design and implementation of individualized interventions, the Handbook is a complete reference and training tool for ABA practitioners and students. Key Words/Subject Areas: ABA therapy, behavior analysts, developmental disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, autism treatments, behavior management, functional behavioral assessments, texts, textbooks, research handbooks, positive reinforcement, behavioral pediatrics, behavioural, behaviorism, children, adults, principles and procedures, graduate courses, classes, BCBA certification, training, reducing problem behaviors, treating autistic kids, behavioral treatments, early interventions, positive behavior supports, comprehensive guide, special education Audience: Behavior analysts and trainees working with children and adults, including special educators, school and clinical psychologists, autism specialists, and behavioral medicine professionals"--
Examine the behind-the-wheel behavior of delivery people and discover proven interventions to improve driver safety! This thorough treatise provides empirical evidence, case studies, and effective models designed to help you develop reliable programs for promoting safety among high-risk drivers. Intervening to Improve the Safety of Occupational Driving: A Behavior-Change Model and Review of Empirical Evidence is plentifully illustrated with charts and tables for easy comprehension. Researchers and practitioners in the field of organizational behavior will find valuable data about the driving behaviors of fast-food deliverers and receive tested intervention methods for improved driver safety. Intervening to Improve the Safety of Occupational Driving discusses the specific roles of various factors in safety programs, including: community agents of change static versus dynamic goal setting using competition to encourage change cost per individual community feedback effects of multiple interventions
Now in its Third Edition, Effectively Managing Human Service Organizations continues to provide invaluable advice for achieving managerial success. Ralph Brody dissects and diagnoses common workplace dilemmas, arming practicing managers with the skills to implement positive changes in their organizations. While retaining much of the valuable information from the previous editions, the Third Edition adds up-to-date information and ideas to chapters on developing leadership, planning strategically, solving organizational problems, addressing challenging employee situations, monitoring financial statements, improving internal and external communications, and obtaining funding from private foundations. Easy to read, the book contains hundreds of real-life examples and specific guidance in developing skills necessary to manage large and small organizations.
Organizational Behavior Management and Developmental Disabilities Services: Accomplishments and Future Directions examines the advances of Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) in human service agencies for individuals with developmental disabilities. Management researchers, working managers, and supervisors will learn strategies for effectively
This book is a valuable, comprehensive and unique reference text on Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC), a new work stress theory. It proposes a new PSC theory concerning the corporate climate for workers’ psychological health, its origins and implications for work stress, and provides a critique of current research and theories. It provides a comprehensive review of all PSC studies to date. The chapters discuss state-of-the-art empirical evidence testing PSC theory in relation to management roles, organisational resilience, corruption, organisational status, cultural perspectives, illegitimate tasks, high PSC work groups, PSC variability in work groups, etc. They investigate outcomes such as psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, depression, worry, engagement, health, cognitive decline, personal initiative, boredom, cynicism, sickness absence, and productivity loss, in various workplace settings across many countries. This unique book allows practitioners to rapidly update practical measures, benchmarks and processes, and provides students and trainees with an introduction to PSC and important concepts and methods, quantitative and qualitative, in occupational health with leads to further sources. Students as well as experts on occupational health and safety, human resource management, occupational health psychology, organisational psychology and practitioners, unions and policy makers will find this book highly informative. It covers relevant materials for undergraduate and postgraduate education, drawing upon the concepts, topics and methods (diary, multilevel, longitudinal, qualitative, data linkage) within the multidisciplinary occupational health area.
This book is among the best on stress and its organizational consequences. It is based on papers presented at the Seventh Annual Applied Behavioral Science Symposium. The editors and most of the contributors are academic specialists on stress. The major theme of the book is that stress has negative, and sometimes positive, personal and organizational consequences. On the positive side, stress--perceived as challenge--may arouse performance-enhancing responses; but stress may also induce withdrawal, absenteeism, and poor performance. . . . An excellent preface and introductory chapter by the editors lay the groundwork for the essays that follow in this clearly written and perceptively argued anthology. The volume is valuable to practitioners and to students and teachers of industrial sociology or psychology as well as business administration. Choice Occupational Stress and Organizational Effectiveness is one of the first books to view stress in the context of a systems orientation. This new book integrates major theoretical approaches towards occupational stress with specific applications of stress management techniques. Taking the position that stress need not be a disadvantage to an organization, the editors explore various stress management systems and how such systems can be used to the benefit of both employer and employees. Timely and comprehensive, this volume is ideal for the industrial-organizational psychologist involved in human resources management. Health professionals and human resources directors will also find this book to be an excellent resource for indentifying and measuring stress in the workplace.
