One challenge of this study is to show the deep intrinsic interest and complexity of the YMCA. As it happens, in many cities that YMCA is directly linked with urban change and ferment; thus its study appeals also partly by the knowledge it contributes to our understanding of agency adaptation to pressing social problems.
Part I: The YMCA in an Urbanizing Society: Finding a Niche
The modern YMCA presents a rather bland front to the outsider...The niche occupied by most YMCAs in the organizational life of their communities can be characterized as that of a general service organization designed to facilitate the social, physical, and not-too-intellectual interests of community members...It's designed to assist members in the constructive use of their spare time. Its major services are activity-rather than product-oriented. Activities are interstitial to the central concerns of modern life, which revolve around school, family, and work.
...precisely the organization's history and the broader commitment of staff and boards that give the organization its internal dynamic and result in a changing niche for the organization. That history has developed a set of goals and organizational commitments which affect boards and staff. These commitments influence perceptions and reactions to the changing environment, continuously reshaping the organization.
Background(p.5): A 1954 Gallup survey indicated that of American males over the age of twenty-five, 25 percent reported a past membership in the Young Men's Christian Association. Among cities with more than fifty thousand people in 1959, 96 percent had chartered YMCAs...The smell of the locker room, the arrangement of chairs in the lobby, and the log fire of camp are part of the embroideries and backgrounds of a large segment of the American population.
YMCA well exemplifies the adapted service organization, an organization which has changed with its environment. From its beginnings as an evangelical, proselytizing organization iin the draper's shops of London, it has become a worldwide association offering a wide variety of programs and services. In the process of change, it has all but dropped its evangelical revivalism and its overtly religious program. How does one account for the growth and spread of the YMCA controlled, and how can it adapt to the new consciousness of inner city problems which has emerged during the second half of the twentieth century?
As a large-scale organization, the YMCA presents a curious blend of characteristics. First, its contemporary goals of Christian character development are not clearly linked to any one kind of program or measureable outcome. Most organizations have more clearly defined goals and a more direct and observable link between goals and operating programs (Some other organizations, of course, have diffuse and multiple goals--universities, for example).
Second, the Association in America includes within itself an occupational group characterized by many of the attributes of a profession--educational requirements for certification, an ethic of service to members and the community, a claimed base of knowledge and skill, training schools, and a monopoly over certain occupational positions. A profession and its professional organization are not usually coterminous with a particular bureaucratic structure; the professional community generally cuts across many organizations. In YMCA, however, the secretary is considered a professional person and the Association of Secretaries (A.O.S.) is a standard-setting professional group totally within the YMCA movement.
Third, the American YMCA is composed of bureaucratic elements while yet embodying aspects of a social movement. Owing to its Christian evangelistic origins (A missionary zeal and spirit are part of the organization's basic mandate), highly involved and committed staff and lay members are likely perceive themselves as part of a Christian movement for a better world. The symbol and rhetoric of legitimation include reference to this missionary spirit; nevertheless, the routinization of charisma and the development of career lines, accounting systems, and division of labor have proceeded rapidly.
This study is partially intended as an organizations and organizational characteristics. For YMCA, the central analytic problem is twofold. First, what are the forces-external and internal-that hold the YMCA within its particular niche in American communities? Second, what are the pressures for change and for moving into a redefined niche within the network of organizations and groups? In even more abstract terms, I shall examine those elements of the interchange between an organization's environment and its internal structure that determine which interchanges are selected and developed.
The framework here used is what I call the "political economy of organizations." ...Its framework easily encompasses both social-movement and formal organizations.
Second, the YMCA represents magnificent case of organizational change and adaptation. As it adapted to the American scene, internal political conflicts emerged both nationally and locally over whether the YMCA was to be a general evangelical agency or an agency for young men only; whether it was to be overtly and simply a religious organization or whether it was to meet all acceptable needs, including those (such as physical recreation) that were foreign to fundamentalist and puritanical conceptions of the moral life...These "choice"situations were created by the urbanization, industrialization, and growth processes of the larger society...each goal and policy choice was intimately tied to underlying economic choices and dilemmas (for instance, scarcity of resources, compatibility of program directions with personnel and facilities). Each goal and policy choice had to be shaped through interlinked national and local polities constituting power systems of various shapes, with contending groups holding different values and conceptions of the YMCA.
Finally, the breadth and pervasiveness of the YMCA in America deserves explanation. The YMCA has carved a niche for itself in most urban communities. It has a network of users and founders, competitors and critics, that sustain its contemporary position. During some periods in American history the YMCAs have been highly valued, and the community has sustained their operation well. At other times Associations have been threatened with extinction. And at still others they have existed in a state of stable transaction with their environments. The growth, change, and variety of American communities present a range of alternatives of YMCAs. The political-economy approach can facilitate explanations of transformations land differences of niche.
1. The direction of organizational change is a function of many factors. External sources of change include market demands; competition with other organizations; the value, attitudes, and knowledge of potential members; the requirements set by the law of the larger society; and the like. Internal factors include shifts in the authority structure, the relative differentiation of tasks and responsibility, and the value and perception of key executives and factions. The difficulty in explaining change is not the identification of factors causing or associated with change but rather the development of a framework for classifying, ordering, and relating these factors.
2.(p.9)Current Organizational Theory...The type of economic analysis used here is more akin to the older school of institutional economics than to modern analytic economics. Price theory and the theory of the firm in analytic microeconomics primarily relate the variables of price, demand, and cost to supply schedules and the variables of fixed and variable costs to production decisions and profits, respectively. They are essentially bodiless theories, ignoring the internal processes, problems, and structures of organizations that bring about different kinds of organizational choices...not only are many studies unconcerned with organization as organization; several emerge from such a value-laden perspective that it is difficult to separate fact from wishful thinking.
When political scientists have made empirical studies of large-scale organizations, they have usually turned to psychology or sociology for their conceptual apparatus ("coalition" signifies mainly the willingness of an individual to join a firm by Herbert, there is little analysis of coalition process, composition, or change...)(Selznick select from the universe of organizations, those whose goals usually have social values apart from providing economic gain to their staff or owners, his studies show an overarching concern for the analysis of goal attainment, the pressure to goal displacement, and the autonomy of elites to preserve goals...Perrow's analysis indicates that each succeeding ascendant group brings a different set of decision criteria to bear on the operating problems of the organization and refines its goals.
...The theoretical framework of such works is characterized by a focus on goals and goal displacement, external and internal dependencies, power or authority structure, and intraorganizational conflict. ...to studies assuming the Weberian model of bureaucracy. Their emphasis on power, dominating elite, and group conflict represent a sometimes explicit, though more often implicit, concern with the political process in a large scale organization.
3. (p.17)The Concept of Political Economy
In its most generic sense, political economy studies that interplay of power (oriented toward goals) and productive exchange systems...In its more general sense, it refers only to the form of the relation between political and economic structures and processes.
....As this capsule summary of Hurst indicates, political economy encompasses more than study of a power structure as it affect economic structure. Also involved its study of the ends valued by polity actors as they affect the political and economic process. In these terms laissez-faire economics was a normative system of political economy which strove to maximize overall production of material goods (regardless of the apportionment of those goods within society). By allowing market forces to determine profit and production, society would capitalize on the benefits of the division of labor.
...Beyond study of an organization's goals and power, the political-economy approach requires an analysis that focuses on the interaction of values and goals of power and control groups with (1) external supply of money and other incentives and the demand for services of clients and founders and (2) the internal allocation of men, money, and facilities to accomplish tasks...Organizational economies, however, unlike those of societies, do not proceed by market processes; instead, the mechanisms for allocating men, facilities, and money are carried out either by inter-group bargaining or by hierarchical assignments...
The term economy should not be conceived narrowly as limited to the exchange of money for goods and services. Rather what is exchanged in a number of goods, or incentives, that bind men to each other (Men are bound to organizations by promises of values fulfilled and of friendship and prestige, as well as y monetary contracts for the exchange of goods and services)
The term "economy"doesn't rule out attention to many traditional concerns of the sociology of organization; professions and professional socialization, role relations and role conflict and even the "fit" between personality and role can be included.
...for me the attitudes and values of professional staff are not important as indicators of satisfaction or morale morale or even as a reflection of organizational ideology: they are important only as they articulate with the process of goal and direction formation. In a sense, then, the political-economy approach abstracts for analysis two key sectors of a social system. Processes of socialization and pattern maintenance are not dismissed but are treated only as they affect the political economy.
Although the general thrust of this approach has been stated, its major components have not been indicated. Because the political concepts applied to nation-states are more closely analogous to internal organizational analysis than are economic concepts.
1. Economy
Analysis of an organization's economy divides neatly into the relations with the economic environment (demands for service, prices of labor and other input factors, structure of supply, ect.) and internal economy (internal division of labor relative to technology, product, and geographic market, rules governing the allocation of resources, etc.). Analysis of the economic environment for an organization such as the YMCA is more complicated than similar analysis for either a business corporation or an out-and out welfare organization. The YMCA's economy combines elements of both. First, like a business, it offers for sale services on which it hopes to make a profit (albeit a discreet one). Second, some programs are expected at minimum to carry their own weight. Third, some programs are subsidized with profits from other programs and with contributions from board members, the Community Funds and public fund-raising drives. Even a subsidized program is not a straight charitable or welfare financial arrangement since the direct consumer is normally expected to pay part of the cost. Thus the organization's ability to fiance itself is conditioned not only by its ability to sell services but also by its ability to convince contributors that its services are worthwhile...Furthermore, its ability to sell one kind of program many directly affect some other program. (e.g. if the organization appeals to philanthropic foundations and contributors on the basis of service to delinquent gangs in the neighborhood of one of its branches, the offering of that service may affect income from residents and health clubs, for "normal" may prefer to avoid contact with delinquents.
The YMCA must also compete in labor markets for professional, clerical, and service personnel (maids, cafeteria workers, maintenance people). None professionals are recruited from the local labor market. Professional personnel are recruited from a complex arena consisting of the professional staff of other cities, college, graduates interested in "service" and agencies of the physical education type, and those specifically motivated by the religious and social appeals of the YMCA. The organization also must compete with other service organizations for the time of volunteers and board members. Sources of income and personnel, and their distribution, represent some of the organization's historic commitments to specific types of programs and groups. To understand the directions of change is to understand these commitments and how they are changing.
The internal economy is concerned with accounting for and allocating funds, peronnel, and facilities within the organization. And it is concerned with the coordination and distribution of program skills and services to meet the requirements of technology and task definition as well as the demands of the market. The internal economy processes money received from consummers and contributors and presents to employees models of right behavior (meriting a reward from the organization). Who gets what, how, and when are political, as well as economic, questions.
There is also an internal labor market...
2. Polity
I have suggested that the economy interacts with the polity in shaping organizational direction.
The polity is the total system of an organization's influence or power; it includes both the institutionalized and authoritative patterns of decision control as well as the less regular (and even "illegitimate") but systematic, influence process...
The examination of polities requires two essential: "constitution" is the organization's fundamental normative structure...a set of agreements and understandings which define the limits and goals of the collectivity as well as the responsibilities and rights of participants standing in different relations to the organization. The term constitution is often used both in a narrower and in a broader sense than I am using it here. Narrowly, it refers to a more specific, usually written, set of agreements on the structure and rights of parties. More broadly, it sometimes refers to a total pattern of organization and the relationship among its parts.
p.157
There are four main criteria for evaluating theory:
its precision of prediction,
its internal coherence,
the breadth or range of its application,
and its ability to explore new facets of the real world.
In other words,
does the theoretical scheme or conceptual stance lead to precise prediction?
does it solve problems or explain previous theories?
Does it open up new areas of investigation?
Does it point to new interpretations of phenomena that have hitherto seemed trivial and so remained unanalyzed?
According to there four criteria, I assume, if we use economic polity theory as conceptual framework tor CI's research, maybe we are trying to understand why certain phenomena happened (and what else will happen)
I'm thinking if we can write the paper like "what lessons we can ltake from YMCA: using economic polity theory to understand CI)"
P.209
three aspects of change which reflected major shifts in niche and structure.
First, a more centralized as well as more hierarchical organization continued to develop. This trend issued from continued growth, an ethic of efficiency, and continuing emphasis on maximum mobilization to meet community need.
Second, important changes occurred in expansion and funding policies. These changes reflected the Association's new relationship to its environment.
Finally, the changes in polity and niche significantly affected the role definition of executives as well as basic commitments and loyalties to the organization.
P.49
To understand the YMCA's gradual transformation into a general service organization, as well as the process by which some demands were rejected while others were embraced, we must examine some of the crucial aspects of its polity. By understanding polity as it evolved we can better understand the constraints on the directions of transformation. NOTEs: This kind of YMCA's transformation reminds me of CI-MSU, in one of Yong Zhao's presentations, he mentioned they shifted the focus to teachers professional training and this is not his original plan, because he has been doing online Chinese teaching, virtue study, games (I think because his technology is his research area by then), so I assume it was because his online teaching project got trouble from teacher union regarding teacher certificate and teachers' quality
Three aspects of polity were of particular importance in this regard. They can be stated in terms of organizational choices.
The first choice concerned the basic definition of organization goals: Was the YMCA to be an association for evangelism, or was it to be an organization for Christian service to young men? The choice of the latter goal shaped the Association's development throughout the latter part of the nineteenth century. (We saw the goals variation between different CIs, and I need to read more about what the details in this book.)
The second choice involved the relation of local YMCAs to one another and to the national organization: Were the Associations to be essentially autonomous but cooperative, or was the national organization to be a rule-making, governing body? (again, what's the Hanban's role)
The third choice delineated the professional staff member's relationship to the lay board member: Was control of the organization to remain in the hands of laymen or was the professional staff to dominate as they began to operate a large and diverse enterprise? ( So now, YongZhao left MSU, Eric is leaving director's position, we know each director has two years' term and then it could be renewed...Both Yongzhao and Eric don't continue, so who is going to control maybe would be the issues in the future?)
I just saw your mail. For some reason, my tablet email AP won't send mail to gmail addresses! Anyhow, a couple things. The Y and the CI are likely to be different sorts of "species." Zald is looking at reasons for Y's survival and how it adapted to its environment. CI experience may be different. It might be helpful to think about what we mean by "success" and "survival." What do we mean when we suggest that CI is successfully surviving? And note that while the Y became more centralized, CI seems to be more decentralized in terms of focus and activities. Again, a rich description of CI variation and change over past10 years would be useful!
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