i need u to avoid the errors that my prof comments last time, i show u his feedback. please see the guide at the attachments and make sure it’s nonprofit organization. also i attached three examples ..Your final case study should be able to answer or at least address all of the following questions: How does the organization use planning? Does it have a strategic plan? Does the strategic plan tie to its resource allocation? If so, how? How does the organization decide on how to distribute its resources? When resources are tight, what processes do they use to make the resources fit their priorities? What kind of budget system do they use? How does the organization ensure its annual resources carry them through the year? Does the organization use risk management? If not , how does it view risk? If it does, how is risk management applied? Does the organization use performance management? If so, how is it used? What kind of accounting system/measures are used? How does it handle financial management and financial reporting? What kind of audits are used? What process is used to make management decisions? Does the organization have a continuity plan? If so, what does their plan address?
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Case Study Guidance
The case study is an in-depth research project on a non-profit or government organization and its
management control system. Your case study should start out with:
• a description of the organization. It should include: name; size of the organization; when it
came into existence; any history; services and products it provides; the organization’s mission;
constituency it serves; possible how it is governed; and any other pertinent information that
helps the reader understand who they are and what they do.
• Next it should cover the organizations planning. Describe if you can its planning philosophy and
processes. Does it have a strategic plan? How many years does it cover? How often is it
updated? What are the vision, goals, and objectives from its latest strategic plan? Are the
organization’s plans linked? Does the organization rely on its strategic plan for its resource
planning? What other levels of plans does the organization use?
• Next you need to address programming. In other words, how the organization decides what
projects/programs will be funded and to what level. Does it have an internal organization like
an Investment Review Board to make recommendations? How are the decisions ultimately
made?
• Budgeting is next. What budget system is used – line item; zero-based; performance; program;
or composite (it should fall into one of those categories even if they call the system by a
different name)? Is there anything interesting or unique about how the organization budgets?
• Budget execution in general: – does the organization have spending plans? What is its general
approach to how it monitors spending? Does it have mid year or quarterly reporting? How is
this done – in writing or in presentations?
• What accounting system(s) are used – cash, accrual, modified accrual, cost, etc? Any
interesting information about the organization’s accounting approach.
• Financial management – any information about how the organization manages its finances –
especially non-profits that need to balance donations and other sources of revenue against
administrative and operational costs. Does the organization borrow money and if so how much
is it leveraged?
• Financial reporting – basic information on what reports are required and any information about
how the organization does its reporting. Who in the organization is responsible for the reports?
• Performance management – how does the organization manage performance? Is performance
a central part of the organization’s approach?
• What is the organization’s approach to risk? Do they try to manage it and if so how?
• Does the organization have a business continuity or continuity of operations plan and program?
• After you have gathered all of the above information you should assess the information and
draw some conclusions. This section is very important because it demonstrates your
understanding about the information you gathered. Any areas where there was no information
or not done by the organization, you should make some recommendations for how you think it
should be done in the organization. Also make any other recommendations for changes you
would advise.
If you cover all of these areas you should do well with this assignment. I hope this information is helpful.
ORGANIZATIONAL CASE STUDIES
CMGT 573 will require that students carry out an organizational case study as their major assignment/Final for the
course. This is a field research project in which you select a nonprofit or government organization and collect
information about its management controls, its activities, its structure, its resource base, the institution it relates to,
and its relationships with other organizations. The following is a description of some issues to consider when doing
an organizational case study. It will give you an idea of the kinds of information you will have to collect to conduct
your organizational case study.
Organizational Case Studies
The main purpose of this assignment is to give you exposure to the management controls of an organization and how
they contribute to the success or lack thereof of the organization. What you must know is that in organizations many
things go on behind the scenes that are absolutely central in shaping its reputation. Many of these things are easy
enough to learn about if you know to look for them, and if you have a general idea about the major categories that
shape life in organizations.
Most of these categories are familiar to us as members of the common culture, but it is important to list them and
talk about how to get information that will tell how these elements work in the particular organization you are
working in. What follows is a list of categories with a brief discussion of how to learn about them.
Most of the information about organizations listed is actually available to the public—or ought to be available (some
nonprofit organizations do not like to release financial information but you can usually get it on your own by going
to one of the following web sites: Internet Nonprofit Center (organizational profiles of all nonprofits:
http://www.nonprofits.org; Duke University Nonprofit Program (general information on nonprofits:
http://www.pubpol.duke.edu/courses/pps2805/index.html; National Charities Information Bureau (for fundraising
charities): http://www.give.org; Guidestar; The Donor’s Guide to the Nonprofit Universe: http://www.guidestar.org
).
Also, you will find that some information may not be available for your organization or the questions do not make
sense for the kind of organization you are studying. That’s OK, but you ought to write a note about why that’s true
in the space provided for information. The way your organization does not fit is important information. We have
culturally ingrained ideas about how a bureaucracy works and what kinds of responsibilities employees have.
Discovering that the organization you are studying breaks the rules helps you understand in a more creative way
what’s behind the stereotypes, and maybe what’s wrong with the “traditional model.”
The information described below gets complicated and can be an entire semester project in itself. Do not let the
project of collecting this information swamp or overwhelm you. This is a learning exercise meant to alert you to the
ways that your immediate work setting relates to a larger organizational system of services.
Kinds of Organizational Information

Organizational Demographics. This involves basic information like the name, location of
the organization, the year the organization was founded (both the local branch and the
larger organization) and the geographic area the organization serves. This information
sometimes gets complicated because an organization may have a number of branches in
different locations and it may have a number of corporate subdivisions. The older the
organization, the more complicated it is likely to be. If you are researching an
organization more than ten years old, it would be a good idea to pick up a printed
organizational history if one exists, or to ask someone about the organization’s history.
This is especially helpful if the organization has changed its name or its location since
some information you pick up later on may refer to these different names and locations
and that will be confusing unless you have the history.

Hierarchy and organizational form. Specify whether it is a government or non-profit
organization. Some organizations are legally incorporated or legislatively mandated and
they have an official organizational chart or hierarchy. Get a copy of this organizational
chart, study it, and explain how the unit you are focusing on fits into the whole.
One way of understanding the hierarchy of your organization is to learn how its system of governance works.
Government organizations may be very transparent, but non-profits organizations usually will have a board of
directors that legally “owns” the organization, and understanding who is on this board and how board members are
selected can help a lot in understanding things the organizations does. (For example, one reason a private institution
may support fraternities is that many alumni who are fraternity members are on the board and will not allow
changes.) Other times, practices of an organization that puzzle you may become more sensible if you understand
some principles of governance. Understanding that hospitals have a formal business board of directors, a doctor’s
board, and contractual arrangements with independent physician groups (which are private businesses working
within the hospital) helps to explain hospital politics. Understanding that some organizations make governance
decisions by consensus of all members (a Quaker style nontraditional school in our area, Alcoholics Anonymous,
many religious congregations) helps you to understand that you need to get away from conventional managerial or
professional thinking to make sense of what you are seeing.
Each week of class we will cover a different aspect of management controls. Those same areas of management
controls need to be addressed in your case study. It is suggested that you pace your case study by addressing each
segment of management controls for your selected organization the same week as we discuss them in class. This
will help to ensure you cover that area and also keep the case study from becoming a very difficult project over the
last weeks of the class. Ideally, if you pace yourself, the final week will just be drawing conclusions and
recommendations and putting it into the final format.
The areas that must be addressed in the case study are:











Planning – How does the organization use planning as a management control? How effective is their
approach? Are strategic plans (if existing) connected to tactical plans and resource allocation plans? How
are plans updated and maintained?
Budget Systems and programming – What budget system does the organization use? How does the
organization decide how resources are distributed across the organization?
Budget process – How does the budget process work in the organization? What parts of the organization are
involved?
Budget execution – In general, how does the organization execute its budget? How does it ensure that
resources are available throughout the fiscal year? What reporting does the organization require internally
to monitor the execution of its budget?
Accounting – What accounting system(s) does the organization use? How prominent of a role does
accounting play in the control of the organization?
Financial management – Discuss the financial management approach.
Financial reporting and auditing – What financial reports are required? How has the organization
performed in its latest reports? What audits do the organization use? Internal audits? External audits?
Performance management – How does the organization approach performance management? Does it cover
organizational performance? Down to what level? Individual performance? How effective has it been?
Risk management – Does the organization utilize risk management? If so, how does it approach risk
management? How effective has it been for the organization?
Management control decisions – What decisions are made from annual reports? How often are reports
reviewed for making management decisions?
Continuity – Does the organization have a continuity or business continuity plan? Does it address all of the
elements of a good continuity program?
It is important for you to make a real effort to understand what people do in offices though you may have no daily
contact with them. You can usually gain this understanding by having one or two people you work with go through
the organizational chart. Ask them to tell you whether they know the people holding the different positions and ask
them to tell what those people are like and what they seem to do. The people you talk to might not know and that’s
OK (once more, it’s useful information to know that there are mystery people in the organization.) More likely, you
will find that your informants have feelings about the people, the work they do, and how these other people affect
the work you are observing. Pay attention to whether your informants seem to feel ownership of the organization
and investment in its well-being or whether they feel like they are “just” employees and that they are somewhat
distant or alienated from the center of energy and passion that makes the organization succeed (or fail).
You may find that the local organization is small, informal, and relatively democratic, but that it is part of some
larger system or organization. Battering shelters and AIDS organizations, for example, are closely tied to state-wide
associations that distribute public money for the state government. Churches are often part of regional church bodies
to which they are more or less closely tied (Catholics are closely tied, Episcopalians less so, independent bible
churches and reform Jewish synagogues not at all). Some organizations (the YMCA or local branches of the
National Cancer Society) are like fast-food franchises that are locally owned but that must follow the directives of a
national office. Some public organizations (like the Area Agency for the Aging—a “quasi-nongovernmental
organization or QUANGO) may look like independent organizations, but actually they may turn out to be agencies
of government with boards made up of elected officials. We call these connections “vertical ties” and they may lay
down many of the rules people follow in day-to-day activities.
Other organizations are in charge of networks of organizations, rather than being subordinate in that sort of system.
The United Way in your community is this sort of organization since it collects money for the community and then
distributes it to member organizations that depend for survival on that money. The United Way has a powerful
influence on what those organizations are allowed to do.
The United Way calls attention to another fact about your organization, that it is likely to be tied in cooperative ways
to other organizations in the local community. For example, a program for high risk youth we work with receives
referrals from the juvenile court and from ten to fifteen local school districts, it provides foster care programs and so
coordinates with other foster care agencies, and it recruits volunteers from local churches. We’ve found that we
cannot understand this organization without understanding these referral systems because those ties to other
organizations set the rules that govern how the organization we are studying works. This set of relationships is called
the “local interorganizational field”. Students usually will not be able to make sense of how it works since it
involves the operations of many organizations. Be aware, however, that every social service agency is likely to have
close ties to between five and twenty other organizations that shape and influence internal practices.

Function or Service Industry. Often we refer to service industries as institutions and we
recognize that professional training and service philosophies change profoundly when we
shift from institution to institution. Think about the differences between a church, a
prison, a hospital, a school, and a public welfare office, between a minister, a prison
guard, a doctor, a teacher, and a public welfare social worker. Even without having taken
classes related to each of these fields, you know many things about how these institutions
and the professions that work in them are supposed to be different. If your organization is
not in any of these categories, is there some other institutional or professional ethos that
rules?
One of your important tasks is to learn about the values and service ethic among the people in your setting. It is a
good thing to think self-consciously about how the service values you see are those that rule in another setting (one
student emergency medical technician picking up a patient at the hospital reported how strange it was to have a
guard yell as they departed, “let him die!”) You also need to be aware of the different service ethics held by different
people in your organization. Doctors, nurses, administrators, and emergency medical technicians in the emergency
have really different ideas about how to treat patients, how to relate to other staff, and how to exercise professional
knowledge. Coaches and professors on your campus have really different ideas about what education is about.

Structural characteristics. These are related to the question about hierarchy since when
we talk about the “structure” of an organization we are referring to its subdivision or
“division of labor” as well as to its system of governance and supervision, which is
reflected in the system of hierarchy. The point of this question is to get you thinking
about the size of your organization, and how that matters. If you are in a small social
service organization this will not seem as important as it will if you are working in a big
community hospital, a high school, a penitentiary, or a university. (Thinking about your
university as an organization in terms of how its division of labor works is a really good
exercise to help prepare for doing this in your field research organization.)
Size is important because in big organizations you have many divisions where people do very different things, and
sometimes those things seem to be in direct opposition to each other. Those contradictory purposes can tell you a lot
about why activities in a local field setting do not quite seem to achieve the goals and purposes that they are
supposed to be advancing.
Actually, one of the main themes in organizational sociology is that hidden influences, or latent functions, usually
deflect organizations from carrying out their primary or manifest functions. As you become more familiar with your
field setting, looking for and describing these latent functions may help you a lot in feeling that you understand your
setting.

Budgets. Most people get nervous when you start talking about money, but most
organizations are required to produce annual reports that tell how large their budget is
and what they spend their money on. Some organizations will willingly share with you
audited annual budget reports. Public organizations are required to report salaries of all
employees (figuring out where this reporting happens can be a challenge…it might be
printed in the newspaper or it might be filed with an office of the state). All nonprofits
with annual budgets over $25,000 are required to file Form 990 with the Internal
Revenue Service and this information is available on the web as noted above.
In addition to raw budget numbers, you want to pay attention to how funding is secured to pay for the program you
are working in. Many organizations receive grants from foundations or government offices to set up and operate
programs. You need to know what the terms of the grant are to understand what the program is supposed to be
doing, and not doing. Often these funds come with frustrating restrictions attached to them that create real
organizational hardships. It is not fair as a field observer just to note that a program has certain areas of
ineffectiveness if you do not at the same time note that staff members are compelled to operate in certain ways.
You also will learn that staff members in many organizations spend a lot of time worrying about “their funding”. It
is worth recognizing that organizations may operate very differently if they gain funding by selling a service (what
is called “fee for service”) and thus can operate somewhat like a business, if they gain money from grants, or if they
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