SAGE Library of Social Research Series

Reforming Human Services

by Hans Toch and J . Douglas Grant

Published 26 January 1983

The authors feel that management techniques adopted from industry have created bureaucratic demands that are not suited to agencies trying to provide responsive, humane assistance. They suggest an approach that draws from democratic management principles to involve front line human service workers in the decision making process. They demonstrate, using studies of industrial democracy (including their own study of criminal justice agencies), that such organizational structures encourage a more committed attitude by practitioners.

′It provides a realistic analysis of the problems and successes that may confront researchers, managers, trainers, and consultants in their endeavors to reform the human services. The book should be of special interest to graduate students and professionals in criminal justice, social welfare, and mental health′ -- Choice, July/August 1983

`The book provides a creative link between industrial sociology and the recent literature on organizational development...could become an important text in many varied courses concerned with current developments in the postindustrial economy.′ -- Contemporary Sociology, Vol 13 No 1, January 1984

`The authors′ positive regard for managers, line staff, and clients is apparent throughout this most readable book which covers a great deal of ground without becoming superficial. It is a serious attempt to deal with problems most criminal justice personnel will recognize.′ -- Federal Probation, December 1983

`It is a lively, useful primer on change strategies in human service organizations. It is the best short compilation of human services organizational change experiments that I have seen′ -- Personnel Psychology, Vol 36 No 4, Winter 1983

`The book is suggested as being useful to students, critics, workers and managers in the human services field.′ -- Work and People, Vol 10 No 3, 1984