Alice Sady case

1. What is the primary issue facing MacLellan? (list the other issues as well)

The main issue is confusion of the structure and creates potential risks. Currently, with more managers, people supported and support workers; the cross-reporting coordination was more challenging.

Slow decision making because she provided the most flexibility ensuring individualize services.

Support-workers felts burnout might account lower motivation.

1. How does the philosophy of Alice Saddy affect its organizational structure?  (think about values) :

The philosophy of Alice Saddy is to teach daily living skills by assisting adults with disabilities.

She wants to provide the most flexibly ensuring individualize services. She considered her clients as people supported. A new person in the association needs assessments.

There is a strong cultural value in the association.

20% have high needs, that means than they have to be supported everyday by the employees.

That’s affected its organizational structure because it’s really complicated to evaluate the needs of each person. So there are some managerial issues to fix.

1. How has the environment changed at Alice Saddy? How have these changes influenced Alice Saddy’s ability to deliver support to the people supported?

The mainly changes are expanding the structure and facing the needs of an aging population.

Expanding the structure will account to some problems. For example, how to distribute the new positions in the new structure? How to persuade the employees? Because generally, people are afraid of changes like suddenly they have a new superior. Which is the most effective structure?

Facing the needs of aging population will increase the cost of time and money. And there will be more urgent care decisions. Overall facing the needs of aging population will takes much more risks that Alice Saddy will faced.

1. Evaluate the decision-making process at Alice Saddy

The current organizational structure caused confusion, slowed decision-making and created potential risk for the people served by Alice Saddy, because of the decision-making process.

Due to the needs of an aging population in the 1970s and 1980s the association were starting to experience health issues associated with aging, these concerns increased the amount of time that was spent on each case and the number of urgent care decisions.

There are also different feedback by case managers that makes more risks because of communication and decision-making issues

Alice Sady decided to increase the complement of managers. That decision meant that support workers might end up working on the case of up to six managers, creating even more inconsistency, confusion and frustration.

There is a lot of flexibility in the evaluation process.

Support workers started to approach two or three support service managers individually in order to speed up the process.

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