دانلود رایگان مقاله درسهایی از سازمان ترکیبی برای حفظ ماموریت اجتماعی قوی

A specialized therapeutic boarding school in Montana, Cocoon (a pseudonym), founded by two psychologists, was devoted to the rehabilitation of teenage girls who were rebellious beyond what parents could control. The girls were afflicted with various problems, such as acting out in unhealthy ways by running away, and engaging in drug and alcohol abuse or promiscuous sexual activities. Cocoon experienced considerable success. Applications increased as its reputation grew. Its successful social mission was based in large part on its narrow focus on a specific set of problems experienced by teenage girls. When they were approached by a private equity firm that wanted to take over the school, there came a point in which the founding psychologists grew tired of the school’s management demands on issues such as solving personnel issues, marketing to educational consultants, and conducting financial accounting. A deal was reached, and the new manager visited the school and spoke to employees. He told them, ‘‘I am a therapist. My company is a for-profit business and we want to make money, but we also want to help families and we don’t believe these two goals are mutually exclusive.’’ He reassured employees that things would continue in pretty much the same way as before. Within a few weeks however, new pressures were felt. To increase the top line income, more girls needed to be admitted. To increase admissions in the short term, girls with disorders that the school wasn’t prepared to handle, such as eating disorders or self-harming behaviors, were admitted. The added diversity and severity ofthe disordersstretched the model on which therapy was based and seemed to dilute its effectiveness. New demands were also placed on the education function of the school because newly admitted girls’ parents wanted different courses to meet different needs, some of which were outside the teachers’ training. There was no budget for additional employees. Adding more girls to the bedrooms reduced privacy, which brought up additional challenges for rehabilitation. The length of time to rehabilitate the girls increased, but that was compatible with the profit goal ofthe private equity firm. Employees uncomfortable with the new profit mission left over the next two years and were replaced with people unfamiliar with the previous rehabilitation focus. The school’s distinctive therapeutic competence was compromised in order to increase the business numbers. The social mission of helping teenage girls was diminished by the business mission of making money

CONCLUSION

The hybridization movement of combining social and profit missions has filled a new niche in society with organizations that can sustain themselves like a business while meeting a social or environmental need. The dual missions in a single organization offer many benefits and one distinct challenge–—balancing dual missions that are based on opposite principles and logics. These logics are represented in employee beliefs about the importance of financial discipline and profit versus fulfilling a larger social service mission. People on each side see their own mission as a duty paramount to the other. Traditional means of goal conflict were not designed to handle the depth of these opposing principles, and the social mission is likely to whither in the face of a strong belief system that favors financial discipline and profit. Organization leaders who can gain employee buy-in for balancing the two missions, who can keep the dual missions alive in the minds of stakeholders, who select like-minded companies with which to do business, and who can place a few key balanced-minded employees will find it easier to maintain equal emphasis on the dual missions. Legal incorporation as a benefit corporation is probably a stronger and more permanent way to support a social mission. Otherwise, a social service mission can be kept alive and robust by leaders who are committed to dual missions despite the all too often preference for profit missions in the business community.