Empowering Workers and Clients for Organizational Change

Marcia B. Cohen and Cheryl A. Hyde's book, Empowering Workers and Clients for Organizational Change, prepares students to successfully engage in organizational change practice. The editors focus on "low power actors"-students, line staff, volunteers, clients, social workers-who can utilize their experience and knowledge gained from client and community interaction to initiate broad scale change. These workers are often the most informed about the clients' needs and are well positioned to collaborate with clients, constituents, supervisors, and managers in ways that can empower everyone.

The contributing authors provide extensive case examples of real-life organizational change instituted by low-power actors that demonstrate the theories discussed throughout the book. They then go on to discuss strategies to assess the structural characteristics of agencies, organizational culture, and empowerment. This book also covers present force field analysis as an assessment framework to help promote change within human service agencies at the client service level.