Building Organizational Capacity

Every university or college president envisions bold initiatives—big projects intended to change the nature of an institution with significant implications across all sectors. How can leaders and senior managers charged with implementing reforms effectively frame their work and anticipate potential pitfalls? No organization can maximize its capacity, defined as the administrative foundation essential for establishing and sustaining initiatives, without considering its core elements individually and in concert, according to J. Douglas Toma. This book examines eight essential organizational elements—purposes, structure, governance, policies, processes, information, infrastructure, and culture—and illuminates their influence in strategic management through case studies at eight institutions. Building Organizational Capacity situates strategic management within the context of higher education, providing practitioners with the tools to better understand institutional challenges in accomplishing its missions and realizing its aspirations. Toma's clear and well-integrated review of the latest research, as well as his advice for decision makers applying the book's lessons in practice, ensures this volume's place in the growing literature on strategy and management in higher education.

This book offers an alternative to the traditional approach by focusing on building the change capacity of the entire organization in anticipation of future pressures to change. Based on systematic research of more than 5,000 respondents working within more than 200 organization or organizational units conducted during the previous decade, this book offers a clear and proven method for diagnosing your organizational change capacity. While building organizational change capacity is not fast or easy, it is essential for effective leadership and organizational survival in the 21st century.

Among the issues confronting America is long-term care for frail, older persons and others with chronic conditions and functional limitations that limit their ability to care for themselves. Improving the Quality of Long-Term Care takes a comprehensive look at the quality of care and quality of life in long-term care, including nursing homes, home health agencies, residential care facilities, family members and a variety of others. This book describes the current state of long-term care, identifying problem areas and offering recommendations for federal and state policymakers. Who uses long-term care? How have the characteristics of this population changed over time? What paths do people follow in long term care? The committee provides the latest information on these and other key questions. This book explores strengths and limitations of available data and research literature especially for settings other than nursing homes, on methods to measure, oversee, and improve the quality of long-term care. The committee makes recommendations on setting and enforcing standards of care, strengthening the caregiving workforce, reimbursement issues, and expanding the knowledge base to guide organizational and individual caregivers in improving the quality of care.

The perspective that informs this important book is that every evaluation of a capacity development effort should itself contribute to the capacity development effort and ultimately to the organization’s performance. This is a revolutionary idea in evaluation. With the idea have come the questions: Can it be done? And, if it is done, what will be the consequences? This book elucidates and deepens the idea, shows it can be done, and examines the consequences, both intended and unintended, of engaging in capacity development evaluation

This book considers specific and practical ways in which NGO's can contribute to enabling people to build on the capacities they already possess. It reviews the types of social organisation with which NGO's might consider working and the provision of training in a variety of relevant skills and activities.

Praise for Building Nonprofit Capacity "A central question for leadership is to identify where, and when, to focus organizational energy, and that is where Brothers and Sherman's book comes in. Changing organizations is never easy, which is why managers need the right set of maps and tools—like this one." Jon Pratt, executive director, Minnesota Council of Nonprofits "Anyone running a nonprofit organization, no matter how large or small, would benefit from reading this book. It's chock-full of useful information about managing change." Eric Nee, managing editor, Stanford Social Innovation Review "Nonprofit leaders need tools to help them manage better, engage communities, collaborate, and have greater impact. Building Nonprofit Capacity is a great tool and a useful reference for organizations that are seeking to make a greater and more sustainable difference." Paul Schmitz, CEO, Public Allies "Brothers and Sherman expertly braid together complementary organizational lifecycle frameworks—and add their own wide-ranging expertise and experience—to bring practitioners and executives this comprehensive, relevant, and honest book about the organizational quest to become ever better." Jeanne Bell, CEO, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services "Whether you are building a start-up, bringing an organization to scale, managing an established group toward excellence, or shepherding a nonprofit at risk of decline, this book should be required reading for every nonprofit executive director." Richard R. Buery, Jr., president and CEO, The Children's Aid Society "There are a lot of nonprofit management books out there. What makes Brothers and Sherman's book different and so important and worthwhile is that they have combined a number of models, theories, and practices and shaped them into a few essential processes that can be used by organizations both large and small." Doug Bauer, executive director, The Clark Foundation

Capacity building - which focuses on understanding the obstacles that prevent organisations from realising their goals, while promoting those features that help them to achieve measurable and sustainable results - is vital to improve the delivery of health care in both developed and developing countries. Organisations are important structural building blocks of health systems because they provide platforms for delivery of curative and preventive health services, and facilitate health workforce financing and functions. Organisational capacity building involves more than training and equipment and this book discusses management capacity to restructure systems, structures and roles strategically to optimise organisational performance in healthcare. Examining the topic in a practical and comprehensive way, Organisational Capacity Building in Health Systems is divided into five parts, looking at: What health organisations are and do Management and leadership in health organisations How to build capacity in health systems Building capacity in a range of health system contexts Dealing with challenges in building capacity and evaluating work Looking at how to effectively design, implement and evaluate organisational capacity building initiatives, this book is ideal for public health, health promotion and health management researchers, students and practitioners.

Institutional Assessment: A framework for strengthening organizational capacity for IDRCs research partners