71 The changing role of management in human service organizations Hillel SCHMID * The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, S chool of Social Work, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem 91905, Israel Hillel Schmid has a B.A. , M.B.A. and Ph.D. degree from the Hebrew Uni- versity of Jerusalem, Israel. He is lec- turer of organizational theory, organi- zational behavior, and management of human service organizations and managerial skills in the school of So- cial Work at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The main research interests are: administrative strategies, strategic planning, organization-environment relations, managerial processes, pat- terns of decision making and roles and functions of executives in human service organizations. Pub- lished articles in the areas of research which ·have been listed above. The context of human service organizations is changing. Social agencies are facing changes in the political, economic, social and technological context which will affect the supply and demand for social services. The role of executives must also evolve to adjust to these changing conditions. This article suggests the direction this adjustment should take in the chang- ing environment. Keywords: Human service organizations, role of management, skills, knowledge, power and politics, resource de- pendency relationships, political interaction, politi- cal skills. 1. Goals and objectives The context of human service organizations is changing and executives' roles must be adjusted to accommodate this change. The aim of this paper is to present a framework suggesting directions for the development of the * The author wishes to express his appreciation to Professor y. Hasenfeld and Professor J. Tropman from the School of Social Work at the University of Michigan for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript. North-Holland Human Systems Management 6 (1986) 71-81 roles, skills and knowledge required by executives of human service organizations, based on antic- ipated trends both within these organizations and in the external environment. The specific contribution of this paper is the presentation of a new definition of the role of the executive, since organizations, especially human service organizations, are becoming more highly politicized and thus the intra- and inter-organiza- tional relationships are becoming based on strug- gles to attain power. According to this concept, there is a resource dependency relationship be- tween the organization and the external environ- ment which makes the organization dependent on resources and knowledge coming from the exter- nal environment. In the course of interactions between the organization and the external en- vironment, the organization strives to free itself from this dependence and to strengthen its inde- pendence in various ways. Consistent with this approach the author views the organization as the scene of political interac- tion between different interest groups and coali- tions. There is an ongoing conflict and compe- tition among them to gain power and control over the organization's real and symbolic resources and the ability to use these to determine the organiza- tion's goals and activities (Bacharach and Lawler [2], Pfeffer and Salancik [26]). Among the coali- tions, there is, on the one hand, conflict, and, on the hand, negotiations take place in which each actively involved group attempts to attain its own political goals and interests. The organization, to some extent, constitutes an internal reflection of the external power struggles for obtaining resources whose function can only be understood when considered as a part of the external and task environment which provides the framework for the organization's activities. The struggle among organizations within the external environment to obtain scarce resources in order to reduce their dependence, has an impact on the internal affairs of the organization itself. This is mirrored within the organization by the political 0167-2533/ 86/ $3.50 © 1986, Elsevier Science Publishers BY (North-Holland)