A case study of barriers and opportunities for organizational effectiveness
Creators: name: La Rochelle, Bernard
Publisher: name: University of British Columbia
Year: 2009

description: This thesis addresses the subject of organizational effectiveness in municipal governance. It specifically examines the possibility that urban planning agencies may resolve complex social problems more effectively when using a management approach characterized by "transformational leadership," teamwork, flexibility, and creativity; an approach that fosters the development of innovative planning policies, procedures and/or designs. Successful, innovative, and creative business enterprises that endorse such a holistic management approach have been called "learning" and "well-performing" organizations. The management and transformational leadership attributes that encourage an organization to "learn" relies on a combination of techniques, including non-hierarchical communications, enhancement of job satisfaction, continuous learning, emotive and motivational psychology, and team approaches to creativity and problem solving. A popular term has been coined that captures the essence of successful implementation of these attributes in combination: Excellence. The rationale for examining the concept of Excellence in the context of urban planning agencies' organizational effectiveness derives from assertions made in the planning and governance literature suggesting that such a business management approach may significantly improve government operations. Some writers argue that a new approach to governance is sorely needed. The concept of encouraging attributes of Excellence in local government planning practices has been extolled as a cure for economic and political inequalities, restricted avenues of communication, outmoded operating procedures, "turf wars, and various motivational barriers to innovative practices that limit the effectiveness of governments (and urban planners). Many of the innovative practices lauded in the business management literature as attributes of Excellence appear similar to the community development concepts of individual empowerment, citizen participation in local planning and decision making, collective effort to resolve local issues, consensus building, and visionary leadership. This thesis studies the case of the City of Vancouver's Department of Social Planning and Community Development from 1968 to 1976. The two primary research methods used are: analysis of archival documents concerning Vancouver's social planning department; and, open ended interviews conducted with sixteen key informants familiar with the history, practices, and planning approaches used by department personnel during the study period. The findings of this thesis are that: 1) the social planning department originally exhibited elements of innovation, flexibility, teamwork, transformational leadership, and other attributes associated with the concept of Excellence; 2) in some cases, these attributes may have temporarily overcome various barriers to effective planning and problem solving by developing innovative solutions to minor urban social problems; 3) those innovative elements were not unanimously supported nor encouraged in other municipal departments or community agencies, thus indicating that diffuse innovative practices throughout other organizations was a difficult endeavor; 4) over time, attributes of Excellence faded from the social planning department as the early excitement and energy of planners wore off and new planners were hired to replace the original social planners who had decided to move on to other projects. The important lesson learned is that these supposedly "new" management practices, introduced into business enterprises to help overcome barriers to productivity, efficiency, or effectiveness, are themselves vulnerable to similar organizational, political, or behavioral barriers over time. Constant vigilance, monitoring and evaluation of values, goals, communications strategies and structures, and organizational results are required to sustain Excellence. Greater promotion of Excellence concepts that explain business success may legitimize the expansion of participation of individuals in goverment institutions and result in improvements to their effectiveness. Urban planners, and social planners in particular, should therefore be interested in concepts like Excellence and Learning Organizations as heuristic usable in their search for effective planning, organizing, and management practices toward intentional interventions in social welfare. Without a systematic approach and understanding of the complex variables and dimensions involved, concepts like Excellence may be treated simply as catch-words and trendy marketing ploys. However, as the thesis will show, planners may discover that further research into the qualities and attributes of individuals working in a collective organizational environment, may yield positive strategies for furthering institutional reforms that view workers as factors of human development rather than as units of productivity and efficiency.