The primary purpose of this study is to explore financial management strategies among administrators of small nonprofit social services organizations. This study addresses the gap in empirical literature with a specific focus on small nonprofit organizations. This study avers that the available literature on social service organizations is fundamentally flawed. It argues for a reevaluation of the available literature based on apparent errors in methodology and research design. The literature reveals that nonprofit organizational empirical research excludes small nonprofit organizations and disproportionately presents a representation of large- and medium-sized nonprofit organizations as the norm for social service organizational financial operations. Previous studies that explore nonprofit organizational sustainability select organizations with annual revenues or assets at a minimum of $100,000. Furthermore, the empirical research excludes small non-profit organizations by design and offers findings that include generalizations that are erroneously attributable to all nonprofit organizations. This dissertation outlines the aforementioned errors in the first two chapters. In order to appropriately investigate the aforementioned, this study draws upon the Afrocentric Perspective to supplement the dominate focus of the available literature on small nonprofit financial management. In chapter three, this study explains the study’s design rationale and presents this study’s significance to the field of social work administration. Additionally, chapter three elucidates this study’s contributions to nonprofit social service organizational research and knowledge. The research questions consider possible correlations between small nonprofit organizations’ sustainability strategies and social work mangers’ education and experience. The study’s research questions also consider how financial management strategies affect organizational sustainability. The research design notation O occurs through the developed questionnaire titled “Nonprofit Organization Sustainability Survey.” Statistical procedures examined grouped questions by themed content and computed the group variables scales: financial management, business experience, educational influence, organization sustainability strategies, entrepreneur activities, and budget planning. More than two-thirds of respondents reported that they had experiences with establishing a nonprofit organization; however, they are more comfortable working with clients than conducting financial management tasks. Additionally, while nearly all of the respondents believed that they can secure funding for the organization, 60% reported that their organization had challenges with securing funding.

This research project examines resources and services to prevent families and children from entering the child welfare system in a rural town in Southern California. There is constant struggle to get the adequate services, resources and trained staff in this rural area because it is isolated and it takes about two hours’ travel time to get to the metropolitan cities. The literature review discusses child welfare services challenges, strengths and social capital to support families and children as well as the child welfare system itself in rural areas. Constructivism is the appropriate framework for this research project, because the goal of this study will be based on an exchange of understanding and ideas; therefore, the nature of the study is subjective. The engagement stage was an important stage for the constructivist approach. The researcher analyzed transcripts from the interviews and group meetings using thematic analysis to examine participants’ concerns and their perceptions of the community’s resources. Further, the participants, guided by the researcher, worked together to develop a strategic action plan to address child abuse and neglect in this community. This project encouraged community leaders to discuss the community’s strengths and main concerns related to child abuse and neglect. Interestingly, these strengths and concerns often mirror one another. Participants’ perceptions and recommendation are about safety, connectedness, human services access and child welfare of the focused rural town.

諸多業界與管會研究者深深感覺因為經營及製造環境產生重大丕變，使得傳統成本管理系統已無法滿足企業經理人為提昇企業本身競爭力所需的資訊。因此，學者針對資訊的產生要素（原始資料及制度方法）加以探討及研究，結果發現以作業為基礎所建立的成本管理系統能明確指出企業資源耗用情況，此即近年來廣受重視的作業基礎成本及管理制度（Activity-Based Costing and Activity-Based Management，簡稱ABC及ABM）。 　　ABC及ABM已廣為討論及運用，惟大多以國外企業為主，我國企業正面臨轉型期，也逐漸重視此等成本管理新技術，但運用此等技術者多為外商企業，本土產業仍停留在觀念導入及模擬階段，故基於他山之石，可以攻錯之理念，本論文以個案研究的方式探討ABC及ABM於國內本土產業規劃、設計及實施之情況，俾供未來國內之學術及實務界人士推動ABC及ABM之參考。 　　本論文以五個構面為探討主題： 　　構面一、作業基礎成本及管理制度之發展（此屬理論部份）； 　　構面二、如何規劃及設計作業基礎成本及管理制度，並與實務相互比較； 　　構面三、實務上實施作業基礎成本及管理制度之步驟及程序； 　　構面四、組織文化、組織變革、及實施作業基礎成本及管理制度之相互關係； 　　構面五、活用作業基礎成本資訊。 　　經由實地個案研究所獲得之結論為： 　　一、實務上基於行業特性及企業本身需求之緣故，於規劃、設計、及實施作業基礎成本及管理制度時宜作適度的修正。 　　二、因目前個案公司之實際需求，故以作業時間為代理動因，俾計算作業或產品之真實成本。 　　三、作業基礎成本資訊與傳統制度成本資訊比較的結果顯示，相對而言，產品成本的高低估範圍從高估64%到低估616%，其中以低估的程度較大，然而，促使產品成本高低估的影響因素眾多，如印刷紙質、紙張磅數、印量、著墨量、印刷開式、印刷色數等，且各因素間亦相互影響，導致目前不易解釋根本原因。 　　四、運用資訊系統將作業基礎成本資訊加以整合並依所需表格化，可明確提供有關產品成本、作業成本、附加價值活動與無附加價值活動、及生產績效等有用之資訊，協助個案公司不同層級之主管了解公司資源使用的情況，俾於進行作業管理、企業策咯等活動時作為參考之依據。 　　五、由於個案公司的組織文化較能接受新觀念及管理技術，使得在沒有外部支援的情況下，由公司自行規劃、設計、及實施作業基礎成本及管理制度，筆者於研究末期親訪相關人員後，發現個案公司的企業文化稍有改變（如生產現場人員逐漸認為填寫工作報表為本身責任），而高階主管也愈趨重視攸關的管理技術之重要性，引發個案公司從事改善企業的活動等。

This thesis explores barriers to the establishment of trust needed for high performing teams due to inequality in the context of a global economy. Postcolonial Theory is introduced to illustrate how inequality is a key aspect of diversity in the current context of the global workplace. Different philosophies underlying the values and norms in organizations are examined to make sense of contemporary approaches to diversity management in terms of how power, difference, and identity are addressed. This provides an understanding of the context of current team development praxis in working with diversity. Using autoethnography, the author tells personal stories of working in diverse teams to convey the complex ways in which power, difference, and identity coalesce in real-life experience. Some theoretical foundations are developed for facilitating the building of team trust in contexts with different philosophical approaches to diversity. Addressing social justice in Organization Development work is considered.

This thesis describes the researcher’s journey as an online facilitator and reflective organization development (OD) practitioner as she explores how to nurture and cultivate space for learning and collaboration in an online community of practice. The research setting is a small group of mostly volunteers in a national health charity. The researcher adopts a reflective practitioner research approach engaging in a continuous process of story-telling throughout the thesis. She struggles with questions such as her own dynamic role as an outside facilitator, the role of technology, dilemmas of emergence versus design and discovery of purpose. Rather than arriving at a to-do-list for potential online facilitators, she discovers that hosting café style conversations, setting the online tables and enabling space for learning, collaboration and aliveness is more a matter of the facilitator’s capacity to listen, to be authentically present and to relinquish control.

This thesis explores barriers to the establishment of trust needed for high performing teams due to inequality in the context of a global economy. Postcolonial Theory is introduced to illustrate how inequality is a key aspect of diversity in the current context of the global workplace. Different philosophies underlying the values and norms in organizations are examined to make sense of contemporary approaches to diversity management in terms of how power, difference, and identity are addressed. This provides an understanding of the context of current team development praxis in working with diversity. Using autoethnography, the author tells personal stories of working in diverse teams to convey the complex ways in which power, difference, and identity coalesce in real-life experience. Some theoretical foundations are developed for facilitating the building of team trust in contexts with different philosophical approaches to diversity. Addressing social justice in Organization Development work is considered.

This thesis describes the researcher’s journey as an online facilitator and reflective organization development (OD) practitioner as she explores how to nurture and cultivate space for learning and collaboration in an online community of practice. The research setting is a small group of mostly volunteers in a national health charity. The researcher adopts a reflective practitioner research approach engaging in a continuous process of story-telling throughout the thesis. She struggles with questions such as her own dynamic role as an outside facilitator, the role of technology, dilemmas of emergence versus design and discovery of purpose. Rather than arriving at a to-do-list for potential online facilitators, she discovers that hosting café style conversations, setting the online tables and enabling space for learning, collaboration and aliveness is more a matter of the facilitator’s capacity to listen, to be authentically present and to relinquish control.

Industrialization of construction is a business strategy to significantly improve competitiveness. However, the organization structure of the construction firms needs to support the new production system. The knowledge on why and how this business development can be accomplished is scarce, both within academia and in business practice. This research seeks to fill this knowledge gap. The purpose of organization structure and the production system have is to coordinate the firm’s processes and control the work performing resources. Information is one of the most fundamental dimensions for steering and controlling the work. The different information types are determined by the firm’s product customization strategy and the production system flexibility. Further, diverse information types are managed in different extent by the organizational steering mechanisms. Consequently, firms with dissimilar customization strategy or production flexibility should organizationally be designed differently in order to be efficient. The developed model identifies four generic production topologies: “engineer-to-order” (ETO), “manufacture-to-order” (MTO), “assembly-to-order” (ATO), and “make-standard-products” (MSP). The differences between the topologies can be related to the location of the “customer-order-decoupling-point” (CODP) in the product realization process; and to what extent the upstream and downstream processes continuously use stored information or process information to accomplish the work of each product order. The model predicts which organization structure mechanisms that should be used for which processes for each production topology. It is the specific configuration of the mechanisms that gives each production topology their organizational capability. The model has been validated by case studies in four organizations, each representing one of the four generic production topologies. Three cases considered housing and one studied truck manufacturing. It has been shown that the conventional housing firms have an ETO-production topology, while industrialized housing firms belonging to one of the others, i.e. MTO, ATO or MSP. The reason is that ETO-firms rely on crafts-based production to manage the work, while the other topologies base their steering mechanisms on industrial principles. These two types of production are fundamentally different, which also explain the need for different organization structures. The research complements previous knowledge and significantly increases the ability to predict, analyze and explain an organization’s design and behavior. The model can be used in practice to guide business development work and performance improvement programs. / <p>Research funder: SBUF (The development fund of the Swedish construction industry). QC 20131113</p>

This senior thesis is an examination of the major complexities and considerations encountered in developing an e-learning program. In light of the changing landscape of higher education resulting from technological advancement, combined with changing pedagogies and financial pressures, traditional institutions are under heightened scrutiny and most in need of innovation. Online learning as been proposed as a solution to many of these issues, but creating a successful program is no small feat. Furthermore, experimental research on specific course designs and delivery often fails upon real-world implementation. Looking through the lens of Design-Base-Implementation Research (DBIR), an emerging research model that seeks to rectify this inefficiency, this thesis will first affirm the crucial need for active leadership throughout the development and implementation process. Analysis will then turn to the most pertinent elements administrators must address, including the motivations and catalysts for innovation, funding, faculty engagement, IT support, course design and project evaluation; in keeping with DBIR methodology, each of these considerations will take different forms and require alternative courses of action based on the unique institutional attributes and circumstances. Finally, the exploration will culminate in reasserting the urgency for innovation in higher education, and concluding that a uniform “solution” will not only be pragmatically impossible but also detrimental to both institutional legacy and student education: a quality and sustainable program necessitates due diligence in acknowledging and working with the distinct characteristics of each institution.

Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN), a collaborative initiative in Multnomah County, Oregon, combines the increasingly popular community school model with an innovative organizational structure to further two key goals: sustainability as an initiative and furthering racial equity. This thesis situates SUN within the context of American public education reform and existing literature on the positive outcomes, organizational structures, and leadership components of community schools. Building on past reviews of SUN and its outcomes, I use results from qualitative interviews with key stakeholders to provide insight into how its organizational structure contributes to the goals of sustainability and racial equity. I discuss the current state of SUN, future directions, and the relevancy of findings to other community schools initiatives and more generally, public education reform efforts.