Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome to CJ520.
This to CJ Administration and Management, and I am going to
be your facilitator for this class.
One of the things I wanted to point out to you is that we
are going to have four lectures during this class.
We will have lectures for week one, week two.
We will skip week three, and then we will have lectures for
week four and five.
This, of course, does not mean that week
three is not important.
In fact, week three is particularly important because
we are discussing issues related to leadership, but I
figured that what we could do is probably try to subsume
those into other discussions.
So let's get started.
One of the first things that I wanted to talk to you about,
since this is a class on administration and management,
what are we administering and what are we managing?
Well, we are administering and managing organizations.
So first thing we need to talk about is what is an
organization?
There are criminal justice organizations, there are
health care organizations, there are educational
organizations, there are all kinds of organizations.
Some are public, some are private.
One of the things that this class will focus on, or try to
hone in on, or get you to think about, anyway, are if
there are any differences between public and private
organizations.
And if there are, how those impact the way in which, in
this case, criminal justice organizations function.
So what is an organization?
Well first, it must have structure, it must have
purpose, and it must do something.
Well certainly, criminal justice
organizations have a structure.
They're usually, almost exclusively
hierarchically organized.
So they have a specific structure.
They also have a specific purpose.
We have policing organizations, we have courts,
we have corrections, certainly.
We have ancillary organizations in terms of
social service organizations that work in the
business, et cetera.
So every organization in criminal justice
certainly has a purpose.
And then, of course, it has an activity, or does something.
It provides a service of some sort.
So criminal justice organizations certainly meet
those three criteria.
What else is an organization?
Well, it is a collection of individuals and it is a
collective.
What does that mean?
Well, that means that people make up organizations and
organizations make up entities.
So you may have people, police officers, who make up police
departments, and then police departments that make up
jurisdictions.
So you have to think of an organization as both comprised
of individuals, and then also as a collective.
Organizations have culture and they have an identity and a
personality.
There is no question about this.
Put any two policing organizations together, any
two courtrooms together, any two probation authorities
together, and you will see that there
are differing cultures.
There are certainly some similarities between these
organizations in terms of how they operate and how they
think, but from one jurisdiction or from one
department to the other, you will find differences in their
organizational culture.
And they have a specific identity and personality which
in large part will drive how these organizations operate.
So the question at the end of the day, well maybe not at the
end of the day, but certainly one that I started off this
lecture talking about, is are CJ organizations similar to or
different from other types of organizations?
And I'm not going to answer that question for you.
That's something that you need to spend the bulk of the class
trying to figure out.
So let's talk about management and leadership, because you
need managers and you need leaders to run organizations.
Well, what is the difference between managing and leading?
There are very specific and very distinct differences.
If you manage something, or if you are engaged in the
management of something, it is the process by which
organizational members are directed toward
organizational goals.
So it could be that you, as a manager, move the people that
work for you toward a goal.
They are members of your organization and you are
moving them toward some ultimate goal that you are
seeking to achieve.
Leaders, on the other hand, or people who are in the practice
of leadership, their primary purpose, anyway, is to
motivate organizational members and to enable them to
act by creating a shared vision.
So leaders are the people with the big picture.
They're the people that set the vision statements and come
up with the ideas about where they want to see the
organization going.
Basically, we know where we are today.
Where do we want to be tomorrow?
They motivate.
They are the motivators.
They're the cheerleaders that stand on the sideline and clap
their hands and try to get people to the finish line.
The managers are the people that are involved in the day
to day operations that actually get things done.
Of course, one of the things that you have to think about
when you talk about management and leadership as it applies
to criminal justice are issues of civil service, issues of
accountability, efficiency, fiscal integrity, and equity.
And I'm not going to go into all of those things in depth.
The chapter certainly does that.
But you've really got to take into consideration the role
that civil service plays in the ability of organizations
to get their job done and the ability of leaders to move
criminal justice organizations forward.
Civil service plays a huge role in that.
The fact that criminal justice organizations have to be held
accountable in some way.
Certainly, I think all organizations are held
accountable in some way, but from a criminal justice
standpoint, or in this context, what role does
accountability play in the ability of CJ
organizations to operate?
And then, of course, efficiency.
Well, we all might chuckle and say, well, there is not a
single criminal justice organization that you can
think of that is efficient, and that may well be the case.
So if that is the case, then what we do to change that?
And then, of course, fiscal integrity and equity are very
important things to consider.
When we are looking at organizations and how they
operate, specifically as they relate to the criminal justice
system, one of the things we have to take into
consideration is the literature out there on
organizational types.
There's closed systems and open systems, and there are
distinct differences between these two systems that,
depending on how an organization is created or how
it is set up will, of course, impact how that
organization operates.
If you have a closed system, it is an organization that's
self contained.
Basically, think of it as circling the wagons.
It's an organization.
It doesn't include anybody from the outside, it doesn't
care about anybody from the outside, doesn't care what
people think.
It operates sort of as an entity unto itself.
It is very unresponsive to the environment, even though that
environment is always changing.
The environment is changing around them, but in that
organization, the environment remains static, or
it remains the same.
And of course, if you're operating in a closed system,
the variables or the issues that you run up against are
variables that are controllable.
Because if you think about it, if you're not involving or not
coming into contact with anyone on the outside or not
engaging with anyone from the outside, then everything that
happens to you, or anything that happens, you are in a
position to control.
Of course, that's very different than an open system,
or organizations that are set up in that way, because
organizations that are open interact with each other.
Think of it more as a symbiotic relationship where
not only information, but resources are often shared,
and there's a willingness and a need, really, to engage in
an ongoing, mutually beneficial relationship
between usually more than one other organization.
An organization that is open, obviously, then responds, or
is able to respond, to the needs of their environment.
As things change in the environment around them, they
are more able to respond accordingly.
Certainly, change is based, then, on environmental
factors, and change is possible because you are
always reacting.
You are not static.
You are not fixed in your approach to
how you manage things.
And then, of course, adaptation is a good thing.
Organizational change is a good thing.
And this is something that we'll talk about later in one
of the other lectures in the class, but change is good.
Change is not bad.
Change is not a four letter word, both literally or
figuratively, and so it's something that we need to
always be thinking about.
So if we're looking at the world of organizations through
a closed or open systems lens, obviously, an open system is
the much better way to go.
It's an organization that lives and breathes, and is
more apt to respond to change in better ways.
So organizations have complex goals, they exist in complex
environments, and they are what we call complex internal
constituencies.
What are internal constituencies?
Well, those are usually groups of people, groups of
resources, group entities that work inside of an
organization, and that work can be for good or evil.
People who are working toward the same goal are more likely
to move that organization forward, versus people who,
for instance, are looking to circumvent what the
organization is doing.
That's working for evil, right?
So these internal constituencies are groups,
usually of people, that work, and the question is to what
extent do they work together?
To what extent do they work at cross purposes?
Finally, I want to take this opportunity to put forth my
proposition that it isn't just Apple Computer, or it isn't
just IBM, or it isn't just the widget company that makes a
product, that criminal justice organizations
indeed do have a product.
And if we begin to think about those organizations in the way
that we think about, say, Apple Computer and the iPad,
then we would have a very different way of not only
managing our criminal justice organizations, but also making
them work more effectively and
efficiently with fewer resources.
At the end of the day, the police have a product.
That product is a safe society.
That is a place where we can all move about and co-exist
together without worrying about being hit over the head
with an iron skillet.
In the courts, they have a product.
What is their product?
Their product is adjudicating a case correctly within the
confines of the law, and doing so effectively and
efficiently.
In the corrections system, what is their job?
Well, their job is to essentially carry out the rule
of law as determined by judges and the court system.
So if somebody's on probation, the product that a probating
authority has is an offender who completes probation gets a
job, pays their fines, fees, and restitution, and is an
upstanding member of society.
If prisons are what you're looking at, their product is
somebody who leaves and doesn't come back.
If you're looking at parole and looking at them as having
a product, then they have people on supervision.
The idea is to get them off and get them off in a way that
they get jobs, they have families, they come back
together, they work, they pay taxes, they
become upstanding citizens.
So I submit to you that we are remiss if we do not consider
the idea that criminal justice organizations do very well and
very much have products, and it is the extent to which we
are successful in generating or developing our product that
really should be determining how successful we are as
organizations.
Finally, for this quick lecture, the CJ organizational
environment is influenced by a number of different things.
Technology, certainly, access to
technology is very important.
Law, of course, laws are what drive the
criminal justice system.
So the laws that are created, the laws that are developed,
when they are put into effect, how they are written,
definitely influence the organizational environment.
Economics.
How much money do we have?
How much money do we have to spend?
I'm sure you've all heard it, it's time to
do less with more.
And so this notion that we have less money to spend but
more people that we need to deal with definitely impacts
criminal justice organizations.
Demographics, who works for us and who we work for.
Criminal justice organizations not only work for the public,
but they work for the clients they serve, so don't let
anybody tell you different there.
Culture, a huge issue when you think about the organizational
culture and how that impacts the ability of organizations
to function.
Then, of course, you've got the ecology, where CJ
organizations are located.
And then, of course, the politics associated with
working in and managing that kind of organization.
It is how an organization responds to each of those
things that's key, and that is really what the bulk of this
course is about as we move through the chapters and move
through this course.
It is really how the criminal justice organization is able
to dodge the slings and arrows that come at them in a way
that not only maintains or improves public safety, but
also the bottom line, which again, I'm going to suggest is
that product that we're generating.