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The design of social community teams in the municipality of Zwolle

Pistoor, M.E.J. (2016) The design of social community teams in the municipality of Zwolle.

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Abstract:There is no ideal or best design for social community teams, instead the goal of this research is to on the one hand present an overview of possibilities for the design of a social community team and on the other hand to advice the municipality of Zwolle on which changes they can make to optimize their design. The main research question is focusing on the most suitable design for the social community teams in the municipality of Zwolle. With ‘design’, the organizational structure and the directing role of the municipality is meant. The organizational structure of the design consists of a further distinction between the organizational structure on the individual level of the team members, their role in the team so to say, and the organizational structure on the team level. To get an answer to this research question, the thesis consists of three parts. The first part is zooming in on the current design of the social community teams in the municipality of Zwolle. Asking experts and looking into documentation, a complete overview of the situation is made. The second part is evaluation the current design of the social community teams in Zwolle. By evaluating the design, strong and weak aspects of it become visible. The evaluation is done by interviews with the team leaders and a survey is sent to all the team members of the social community teams in Zwolle. The results of this part show that both the team leaders as well as the team members face some difficulties with the fact that the team members are seconded from their mother organizations. Loyalty conflicts, income differences and multiple computer systems are some of the challenges they face. The team members are already relatively content with their individual role as well as with the fact that they work with a generalistic team. The third, and final, part of the research is involving other municipalities. Both the municipality of Utrecht and the municipality of Eindhoven are asked about their design for the social community teams. These evaluations are based on the same aspects as the evaluation of the social community teams in Zwolle. Both Utrecht as well as Eindhoven have a different design, and are not working with seconded team members but have a foundation instead. The difficulties at hand in Zwolle, are not visible in Utrecht and Eindhoven due to that fact. The results show that the biggest downsides of the current design in Zwolle are mostly due to the fact of the secondment. Both Utrecht and Eindhoven work with and organization that hires the team members and it shows that the problems that stem from the secondment are solved that way. The municipality of Zwolle will still be able to have an influence on the social community teams as wished. Because a new organization can still be a part of the municipality, but it can also be an independent organization. And even with an independent organization, due to contracts the municipality of Zwolle can have the influence as they wish. The examples of Utrecht and Eindhoven show that even though both municipalities work with a foundation, the municipality of Utrecht has much closer ties with the foundation. This research is unfortunately not able to advice which type of organization will be most suitable for the municipality of Zwolle, to answer that more time and further research is needed. The advice to the municipality of Zwolle is to let the team members be in touch with their specialistic background and let them work as T-shaped professionals. Furthermore, the teams are currently generalistic teams and this is just fine the way it is. The biggest changes are with the directing role of the municipality. This creates the most downsides for the team members and due to that fact it is the part that needs the biggest changes. Therefore, the advice is to create an organization that hires the team members.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:88 social and public administration
Programme:Public Administration MSc (60020)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/70305
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