Social Work Administration

Author: Zhang Shu Compiler/Nationality:
Publisher:
Publishing Time: 2003-02-01
Features:
2. Reform of Government Institutions
With the development of society, the demand for social welfare from the public continues to increase. Government functions expand, institutional settings also inflate, leading to higher administrative costs, heavier financial burdens on the government, reduced administrative efficiency, and a tendency to produce corruption. Therefore, all countries face the task of administrative system reform to streamline institutions. The Chinese government is also actively promoting a new round of institutional reform. Specific measures include:
reducing and merging specialized administrative departments, reorganizing them into economic entities; strengthening and enhancing government comprehensive coordination departments; establishing and improving macro-administrative regulation and supervision departments. This actually means, on one hand, relaxing government administrative control over economic entities, and on the other hand, strengthening the government's macro-control over society.
3. Adjustment of Government Administrative Power
The transformation of government functions inevitably brings about the adjustment and redistribution of government administrative power. Therefore, delegating power to local governments, mobilizing the enthusiasm of administrative personnel at all levels, and promoting democratic political construction are also part of the administrative system reform in countries worldwide. A wise approach to adjusting government administrative power is to return powers that belong to local management to the local governments while concentrating macro-control powers in the central government. Specific measures include:
improving the tax-sharing system to reasonably divide central and local financial revenues; granting local governments autonomy in socio-economic management under the premise of redefining government socio-economic functions and dividing powers; community development is carried out against this reform background; standardizing various political, economic, and social relationships between the central and local governments through legal means to avoid arbitrary power division; increasing local socio-economic legislative power under the premise of unified legislation by the central government.
4. Reform of the Personnel System
The success of government administrative system reform depends on the quality of personnel within government administrative institutions. Regardless of how well-organized the government is, how sufficient its financial resources are, or how appropriate its working methods are, without outstanding talent serving in the government, effective implementation of work cannot be achieved. Therefore, it is necessary to deepen the supporting reforms of the personnel system, introduce competitive incentive mechanisms, create a fair, equal, competitive, and merit-based environment for personnel, and establish a dynamic management mechanism that allows for entry and exit, promotion and demotion. Accelerating the development of human resources as a whole, improving the civil servant system, and striving to build a high-quality, professional team of administrative cadres for social work are essential.
5. Standardization of Administrative Actions
The operational mechanism of government social work administration is a normative constraint on the behavior patterns, principles, and procedures of administrative subjects in social work administration. It specifies and influences the basic direction and nature of social work administrative management, serving as the soul of the social work administrative system. It includes decision-making, implementation, feedback, and other links, forming a dynamic process. Therefore, to ensure the efficiency and coordination of the government's social work management system, it is necessary to improve the operational mechanism of social work administration by strengthening social work administrative legislation, establishing and improving legal norms for social work administrative behavior, and perfecting coordination, incentive, supervision, and restraint mechanisms. Standardizing administrative procedures, overcoming the arbitrariness of the behavior of social work administrative personnel, and achieving the goal of administering according to law.
The social work administrative decision-making system refers to the organizational system and institutions formed by decision-making bodies and personnel in social work administration. A key component of the social work administrative decision-making system is decision-making power, which can be defined as a legal power to make choices among a series of possible actions or to influence decision-makers to choose a preferred action. Another essential element is the decision-making subject, which consists of decision-makers and decision participants. The power structure formed by the distribution of decision-making power among decision-making subjects, and the extent of their involvement in the decision-making process, constitute the social work administrative decision-making system. The organizational system of social work administrative decision-making includes close cooperation and coordination among information systems, think tanks, decision-making systems, and implementation systems. The information system includes all personnel and work systems involved in acquiring, processing, transmitting, and storing information, serving as the foundation of the social work administrative decision-making organizational system. The reason decision-making issues are raised is because society has certain demands on the administrative system, which are recognized and addressed by the system, leading to decisions that are implemented by executors to meet societal needs. It is clear that obtaining accurate and useful information in a timely manner and processing it promptly is a necessary prerequisite for effective administrative activities. With the progress and development of society, people's demands in various aspects continue to grow, and the role of the information system in the social work administrative decision-making organizational system becomes increasingly important.
The think tank system is the organizational guarantee for the soft technology of social work administrative decision-making. Its role is to fill the gap between leadership responsibilities and capabilities, specifically including: participating in administrative decision-making, providing consulting services to decision-makers, diagnosing decision-making issues to identify their root causes. The role of think tank personnel is purely advisory, while the responsibility for making decisions still falls to the administrative leadership, which is an inevitable requirement of the administrative responsibility system. The decision-making system is the core subject of social work administrative decision-making, consisting of a leadership collective or individuals with administrative decision-making power. The decision-making activities of the decision-making system typically fall into two categories: one is the distribution of decision-making power at different levels of organizations, leading to horizontal departmental power differentiation and vertical hierarchical power differentiation, i.e., a centralized and decentralized system within the hierarchical structure. The other is the distribution of power among decision-makers at the same level, forming individual decision-making models and collective decision-making models. Individual decision-making models include autocratic individual decision-making and head responsibility systems. The former is prone to autocratic rule due to centralized power without supervision, while the latter, though under individual authority, requires the decision-maker to be accountable to voters or their representative bodies, with strict legal and regulatory constraints. The head responsibility system is the main form of administrative decision-making in administrative systems worldwide today. The collective decision-making model refers to a situation where all members of the decision-making body have equal decision-making power, making joint decisions and sharing responsibility. It can also be referred to as a committee system in contemporary times. The advantages of this system are that it benefits from collective wisdom, handles issues cautiously, and reflects the needs of various interest groups. However, its disadvantages include slow decision-making and mutual shirking of responsibility. For an administrative department, whether to adopt a head responsibility system or a committee responsibility system depends on various factors such as the nature, tasks, and level of the department.
Administrative decision-making, in addition to the coordination of the above three systems, also requires an implementation system. The implementation system puts into action the action plans and programs determined by administrative decisions. This involves administrative leadership, administrative organizations, administrative plans, and administrative communication, which are discussed in detail in a separate chapter of this book.
I. Meaning and Characteristics of Social Work Administrative Implementation
Social work administrative implementation refers to the entire administrative activities and processes carried out by social work administrative institutions to implement national social welfare policies. It is one of the links in social work administrative management but is not equivalent to the entire social work administrative management. Social work administrative implementation is the specific work done to achieve certain decisions, but it is not the decision itself. Decision-making merely determines action goals and principles, while to become reality, it must be transformed into a series of administrative implementation activities. Therefore, social work administrative implementation has its own characteristics and significance.
The characteristics of social work administrative implementation are:
1. Purposefulness
Social work administrative decision-making is merely ideals and plans, and only by implementing them to make goals a reality does it become meaningful. Social work administrative implementation strictly adheres to decision-making goals, with all activities and the entire process centered around these goals, demonstrating strong purposefulness.
2. Practicality
Social work administrative implementation is a process of transforming social policies into concrete social services. It is not an activity that remains at the theoretical level but rather focuses on turning ideas into practical actions, possessing certain applicability and practicality.
3. Regularity
Social work administrative implementation involves the repeated execution of established social welfare systems and policies. The demand for social welfare from the public is always present, and the administrative implementation functions of various social work administrative institutions cannot be interrupted, making it a regular feature.
4. Continuity
Social work administrative implementation is an ongoing and cyclical process in practice. The demand for social welfare from the public is constantly changing, and established social welfare policies will change with social, political, and economic conditions. Social work administrative implementation should also adapt accordingly, demonstrating continuity.
5. Timeliness
Social work administrative implementation must achieve decision-making goals swiftly, decisively, efficiently, and promptly, thus possessing timeliness.
6. Flexibility
Social work administrative implementation involves the specific realization of decision-making goals, requiring situational adjustments, adaptation to local conditions, timing, and leverage during implementation.
7. Hierarchy
Social policies differ in hierarchy from macro to micro, and social work administrative implementation involves transforming these different levels of social policies into concrete social services, thus possessing a hierarchical nature.
II. Position and Role of Social Work Administrative Implementation
The realization of social work administrative decision-making goals is important, but the implementation of these goals is also a crucial link that should not be underestimated. In fact, social work administrative implementation still plays a very important role in administrative management.
1. Social work administrative implementation is a key link in administrative management
Setting up reasonable institutions, providing high-quality personnel, improving laws and regulations, establishing work systems, and making correct decisions are all important factors for completing social work administrative tasks, but only through administrative implementation can they be reflected. Additionally, social work administrative decisions are often made at the leadership level with limited participation, while social work administrative implementation requires the involvement of all members of the institution. The human, material, and financial resources involved in social work administrative implementation, as well as the spatial and temporal scope, far exceed those of administrative decision-making. Any mistakes in understanding or implementing social policies by those involved in implementation will directly affect the implementation of social policies, leading to doubts about the correctness of the policies themselves and a lack of confidence in the administrative capabilities of social work institutions.