Example Of Essay On Evaluation Of Apha Through The Seven Schools Of Administration

Introduction of the Organization

The American Public Health Association (APHA) is based in Washington and was founded by Dr. Stephen smith in the year 1872. This is basically a specialized organization for the experts of public health from all over United States. The recent number of its members has been stated above 30,000 worldwide.

Mission

Vision
Build the fittest country in one age group
Values
The APHA’s standards represents the principles of our associates from all fields of community well-being in more than 40 countries .
Different set of activities are conduct by the sections which reflect the primary units of association and is focused to achieve the goals and targets of APHA. Various opportunities are created by the sections to ensure involvement of the members, thereby it enhances the experience of APHA especially for the people who tend to have prospects of interaction with their own primary sections.
There are 31 distinctive primary sections of APHA that signify the foremost community health plans. These sections provide a tremendous opportunity to the members with similar interests to work together as a team in order to create and develop content for scientific programs. Policy papers are provided for the purpose of social and expert networking as well as counselling and most importantly for professional development. These papers address to their field of practice or maybe the field of interest.

Reasons for Selection of APHA

The government of US spends far more than other countries on health department, but there isn’t much for the organization to show .A contemporary study has listed US last on the list with 11 other developed countries. The factors like easy access to doctor and the standards of healthy lives and quality of care were measured. The US mortality rate of infants is very high. Recently the reported cases of measles have increased due the misunderstanding regarding the vaccination importance. Large number of people live in such areas where it is almost impossible to make healthy living a choice.
APHA endeavors to modify that with the help of science-based support and curriculums. The finest procedures and practices are established on the basis of investigation, with evidence that proves what works. The best improvements result from the analysis of new concepts and methods.
Although, the efforts of organization have some very fruitful results and resulted in significant reforms and regulation of product made of tobacco .Now, far less people smoke and rest have easy access to the methods and tools to quit smoking. The members of the organization are striving hard from the grass root level to create awareness and to instill healthy and clean eating habits in school children. The motive is to make this world a safer and a better place to live, play, enjoy and work.
Preventive measure are largely taken to educate public to underpin the importance of clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. Food inspectors are appointed to ensure safe and healthy supply of food products, in order to reduce road accident casualties’ laws have been formed and implemented to wear seat belt. APHA ensures that combined voice of community health is heard very clear and loud.
Organization have a huge domain of activities to ensure national health and improving the wellbeing. Organization promotes and requires great support from general public to realize its goals. The vision of the organization as mentioned before is to make US as the healthiest nation in one age group .

Formalism

Structure: The structure of APHA is pyramid in which the bottom most staff consists of employees performing the actual job. The middle and top management is required to ensure smooth flow of instructions and guide the company towards its objective. The company is divided into several departments including finance, HR, support, and marketing. In formalism, it is better to depict APHA as a pyramid. Workers are divided by their specific professions in pyramid organizations. For instance, advertising professionals generally work together within a same department and same is the case with finance professionals. In this manner, the operations in the organization can be coordinated in an organized way within the organizational structure. The benefit of a product managerial arrangement is that hall efforts stress promises excellent product features. The idea can be understood with a simple example, a head of men’s footwear in a branch store emphasize all efforts and strategies on increasing sales for one product line. Matrix structures entails the advantages of both product as well as functional structure of organization particularly for temporary or ad hoc plans .

Annual Conferences

Program Improvement
Continuing Edification
Specialized Development
Encouraging on behalf of noble State Community Health Plan and Regulation
Characteristics of formal bureaucracy:
Power belongs to individuals by virtue of tenure in workplace and/or skill; graded association of offices.
Model of impersonality; dealings are to be duty-based, divisional and influential
Distinctive remuneration by office; grading justifies disproportion
Highest separation of labor
Line / Staff Conflict: In APHA, conflict between line / staff arise due to the varying nature of health issues faced by the organization’s clients. The company strives to maintain a friendly environment in order to minimize such conflicts.

Managerial Ideology

Managing and motivating employees is an important aspect of management. APHA has put in little efforts in doing so. There are only materialistic benefits offered to employees and employees are not encouraged to do anything other than their prescribed jobs.
APHA’s Management Practice: The management of APHA is quite orthodox in nature and works on the lines of theory X through exercising strong control and putting strict checks on the workers. The organization works in extremely controlled manner in which there is little room for the employees to exercise their powers. The organization offers only materialistic benefits including post-retirement benefits.
Management Practices’ Examples: The best example of theory X can be seen in military in which strict rules are followed in true sense and there are strong check and balances involved with grave consequences. Theory Y is exercised in various multinational organizations in which workers are considered to be motivated to work in order to achieve better career and progression in their lives. Theory Z is exercised in various organizations in which the main system of the organization is dependent on the individuals running it. This means the organization is run with flavors of motivational theories rather than by one theory which totally depends on the managers.
What I prefer: I prefer theory Y for APHA. The main reason that the employees feel relaxed and can work in a more motivated manner rather than feeling stressed all the time. The employees are given non-materialistic benefits which prove that money is not everything but the company values other important things of life.

Social Systems

Social system is an informal form of bureaucracy. Since APHA is a formal public organization therefore social systems are not much prevalent in APHA. Despite discouraging factors induced by top and middle management, the employees of the company manage to develop social systems within their circles.
Small Town: APHA has a very strong social system having its own cultural values. The organization’s employees not only work together in a friendly manner but they also have values regarding caring for each other. Similar to a town in which there are houses on a street which are closer to each other than ones on other street, APHA’s employees have clustered social system. A department’s staff goes to picnic and other events whereas another one’s may or may not.

Political

Political Imperialism: APHA works on the pattern of bureaucratic imperialism. The employees of the company are treated with theory X and they are required to strictly follow the organization’s rules.
Political Institution: There is always a system of ladder through which the organization’s employees progress and climb to the top. Similar is the case with the organization’s relationship with other organizations. APHA’s has good opportunities and a competitive environment for its employees. The organization’s political activities within itself includes staff and managers getting involved in the social system as mentioned in previous section. Its external political institutionalization includes its PR campaigns.

Decision Making

A-rational Decision Making: The decision making power lies with the top management and low level management does not participate in decision making process. The standard operating procedures are obeyed strictly and employees are bound to work accordingly. All set of critical decisions are made by the higher level management and factors that could possible interfere with the final decision are studied and considered in detail. In line with the theory ‘X’ practices, the top management of the company has decided to give no autonomy to the line / staff managers through implementing set of SOPs for each process involved in the organizational functions.

Policy Studies

Stages of Policy making
Agenda building: It involves defining the problem. In this step an example is to define a certain level of risks of casualties involved in car accidents. It also involves defining the root cause of the problem. In this case the root cause was identified to be not wearing seat belts.
Formulation and adoption: In this step a policy is formulated and adopted that addresses the problem and aims to eliminate it. In the example already stated, APHA formulated the strict policy of always wearing of seat belts while driving and got it approved from the congress. Now all the states have strict rules regarding wearing of seat belts that has resulted in low casualty rate in the US.
Implementation: Implementation phase involves execution of the plan to overcome the problem. In this case APHA started to educate public about the importance of wearing seat belt and how effective it can be to reduce the number of casualties. APHA also made fruitful efforts to enforce strict laws on wearing seat belt while driving. Police departments are now implementing this solution to ensure safety and security of general public.
Evaluation and termination: In this step, the implemented policy is evaluated through analyzing the statistics. For instance, in this case the instances of road accidents resulting in casualty before and after implementation of the policy were studied. The results were found to be satisfactory in order to continue the policy.
Handling Policies: The internal policies are handled in a strict manner in APHA; however, the external policies are given due flexibility in their implementation. For instance if an employee of the company breaks a rule then he may get dismissed from service whereas on the other hand an external person breaking a rule is normally fined.
Negative Externalities: In APHA, unforeseen issues are handled by the top level management and even small issues are given due importance. The organization’s staff is constantly trained and reminded regarding the organization’s mission. The organization follows strict set of policies and procedures in order to ensure that everybody within the organization is on the same page.

Comparative / Contextual / Environmental School

Unique Culture: APHA is quite unique organization as compared to other public organizations of U.S. since it offers highly competitive environment to its employees. The company has a distinctive set of cultural values. The organization sticks to its defined ways of running its political as well as social systems.
Administrative Environmental Variables: There are various variables that effect the performance of APHA in both negative and positive manner. Economy plays a pivotal role, boost in economy will result in higher budget and likewise downturn in economy will tighten the allotted budget. International affairs is also very critical, as the members of APHA are present worldwide therefore it is highly imperative to keep friendly and cooperative relation with other countries. The political situation of US and the cultural values are highly influential in determining the effective functioning of the organization.

References

APHA. (n.d.). About APHA. Retrieved from www.apha.org: https://www.apha.org/about-apha
APHA. (n.d.). Member Sections. Retrieved from https://www.apha.org: https://www.apha.org/apha-communities/member-sections
APHA. (n.d.). Our Vision. Retrieved from https://www.apha.org: https://www.apha.org/about-apha/our-vision
APHA. (n.d.). State and Regional Affiliates. Retrieved from https://www.apha.org: https://www.apha.org/apha-communities/affiliates
Grant, J. W. (2002). The governance of women's organisations towards better practice . CIS Commentary, 4-8.
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