Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Organizations as Human and Collegial paper

For those interested here is my paper that we got back yesterday. As you can tell I changed my organizational problem. Sorry it's kind of long and lost some of the formatting when I cut and pasted it.

Organizations as Human and Collegial
Organizations in the human resources perspective focus on people and their relationship to organizations. The first assumption of this structure is that organizations exist for the people. In this framework an environment is created that benefits both people and the organization. The people are exploited for their talents and the organizations are exploited for the human needs they provide, for example salary and career opportunities. In a human resource organization if the fit between the people and the organization is good it creates an environment of flexibility, autonomy and teamwork. When the fit is poor it causes a breakdown with one or both entities. The challenge of this structure is that it works better in smaller organizations and it includes a strong reliance on a good fit between people and the organization. As stated above, a poor fit will result in a breakdown in one or both components. Similarly, a collegial organization is a type of human resource organization. A collegial organization includes a culture of norms that is not written down but shared by all and relies heavily on creating an environment that is a good fit between the people and the organization. This framework works better for smaller organizations and the fit between the people and the organization determines how well each responds to new ideas and challenges.
Applying the Human Resource perspective to a law allowing illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition in the state of California has numerous effects. In the following paragraphs the immigration law will be analyzed through the human resource perspective.
According to the human resources perspective organizations exist to serve human needs. In the case of this particular immigration law the organization sets a policy to help undocumented immigrants get an education and provides opportunities for affordable education. This law serves a human need for education and increased career possibilities.
The human resources framework includes the premise that people and organizations need each other. In this situation, the immigration law provides people with an education and organizations get more money and students. This law would also empower illegal immigrants to seek an education which is also a benefit to the organization because it invests in the people, exploits their talents and promotes diversity
The next human resource assumption deals with the fit between and organization and its people. When the fit is poor, one or both suffer from that breakdown. An influx of students into an overburdened public school system, an increase in illegal immigrant families trying to find jobs and possibly an increased need for social services is an example of the poor fit between the organization and the people that this law has caused. There are several other examples of a poor fit from a human resource perspective. This law would have an effect on the universities because students would need more academic support services, especially for students that are the first in their family to go to college. Finally, the real breakdown would occur when these students graduate from college and they cannot get a job because they are undocumented.
On the other hand when the fit between people and the organization is good, from a human resource perspective, this immigration law would provides new opportunities for a whole new population of people.

1 comment:

Nancy Conwell said...

Kathy - this was really good! Thank you for sharing. I will refer back to it when I write my "big paper!" Your analysis is really good. Its been hard to go from my "reporting/summarizing" writing to analysis style writing.