Book Description
Open System Management Volume 2: Samuel's Story: Creating a Community Safety Net for Families is a narrative based on real community dialogues that have used Nelson's model to create productive coalitions of citizens and organizations. Together, the participants in the dialogues identify high-priority problems, agree on desired outcomes, plan how to obtain them, assign tasks, and begin work.
Open System Management Volume 3: The Agency's Story: Fostering Collaboration Within uses a narrative to describe how a public human services agency can employ Nelson's model to change its own culture to become more responsive to its clients and to other organizations in its environment. Using the assessment of organizational culture described in Volume 1 to determine how to change, the agency takes steps to improve its performace and model collaboration for the community it serves.
Open System Management Volume 4: Shifting the Organization's Culture: A Self-Assessment Guide is a workbook that organizations can use to prepare for the in-house dialogue described in Volume 3.
These four volumes examine how Nelson's method can be applied in various settings. While together they describe how to redesign the provision of public human services, they can be used productively in other settings. Individually, they can help managers focus on areas of particular concern -- organizational culture, community change, and organizational change -- and design strategies for enhancing responsiveness and performance.
About the author
Mary Anne P. Salmon, PhD, is the Aging Research Specialist with the Center for Aging Research and Educational Services at the Jordan Institute for Families. A member of a small interdisciplinary team, she collaborates to do research, training, and technical consultation primarily on issues involving the needs of older adults in North Carolina. She conducts survey research from instrument design to analysis and report writing.
Lane G. Cooke, MSW, is the project coordinator of the Family and Children's Resource Program (DCRP) at the Jordan Institute for Families. Formerly a social worker, supervisor, and programs representative in both children's and adult services in North Carolina's social services system, she directs FCRP's development of training and work on grants to better the status of children in the state. She also has facilitated many community dialogues held as part of the Families for Kids initiative.
Christine Howell, MPA, is a private consultant who works regularly with the Family and Children's Resource Program at the Jordan Institute for Families. She has facilitated many community dialogues focused on child welfare issues, and she has worked with the Leadership Roundtable of Directors of North Carolina County Departments of Social Services.
