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Metaphors Of The Nonprofit Agency Bill Wilson Center

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Organizational metaphors help researchers to shape concepts of behaviors, management, and structure in a simple and easy for the perception image. Organizational theorists broadly utilize this tool to classify different types of companies in the contemporary world and to reflect their evolution throughout the history of organizational development. The metaphors of machine and organism have been used most frequently to facilitate understanding and communication about the complex phenomenon of organization (Smircich, p. 340). Roughly, these two metaphors reflect the most common theories of the organizational development – classical theory and humanistic perspective. Morgan (2012) builds theoretical fundaments for his Organization as Organism …show more content…

Some scholars even compare organization with genitalia emphasizing gender aspect of companies (Linstead, Marechal 2015). To illustrate one of the Morgan’s (2012) metaphors of organizations, I would like to provide brief description and analyzes of the nonprofit agency Bill Wilson Center. Bill Wilson Center is one of the leading service providers to at-risk children and families in Santa Clara County. The organization provides direct services to more than 3,500 children, youth, young adults, and families in the County. It provides employment to 300 professionals. One of the introductory statements on the organization’s website emphasizes: ‘Our agency - from our executive team to our line staff - is committed to improving the lives and conditions of the people we serve.' The organization implements more than twenty different programs for children youth and adults. They include housing programs for homeless, runaway and foster youth: group homes, shelter, drop-in housing program, transitional housing program, etc. It also provides family counseling, outreach school counseling, family therapy, parental classes, grief counseling in the center for leaving with dying and many others It trains, creates and supports foster families and host homes. This variety of programs and services makes …show more content…

Workers, who took part in the experiment were divided into two groups – test and control. The test group experienced to work in 3 different levels of the light intensively while the condition of the control group was not different from usual. Surprisingly production increased in both – test and control - groups. In other experiments, the light was decreased or left the same while participants believed that there was a change. This empirical studies resulted in an increase of productivity. It started to occur to the researchers that results have something to do with human motivation rather than with the illumination.

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