Corsi di Studio del Dipartimento di Culture, Politica e Società

The teaching contributes to the attainment of the training goal of the BD in Social Work:

-providing students with the knowledge derived from organizational theory, essential to understand the organizational phaenomena, with a special attention on matters of interest for those who work in social services;

-encouraging the critical judgment on the relationship between professional autonomy and organizational regulation.

These knowledge and skills will be useful as a reading key in the internship experience.

"Knowledge and comprehension skills"

At the end of the teaching, students must be able:

-to describe the crucial issues of work organization, their emergence and transformation into the history of multidisciplinar organizational thinking;

-to understand how these questions can receive very different answers, also depending on the different epistemological conception of organization.

More specifically, according to the professional nature of the undergraduate degree in social service, such knowledge and understanding skills will concern :

-the relationships between the organization and its task environment, with particular reference to the action domain of large bureaucratic organizations;

-the analysis of real organizational processes in multiple plans of action and decision-making which are interdependent;

-the structuration variability in relation to uncertainties faced by organizational processes;

-the relationship between prescribed rules and effective regulation in social services;

-The relationship between the professional and social mandates of the social worker and the organizational action.

"Communication skills"

 The students should be able to use the basics of specialized and multidisciplinary language of the organizational analysis

"Independent judgment"

Students should be able to identify in autonomy links between the contents, including implicit ones, contained in the exam texts and in the teaching material provided by the teacher.

"Ability to apply knowledge and comprehension"

 At the end of the learning, students will be able to use some criteria for organizational analysis that will be useful in the internship experience and will find further links with arguments treated in the Internship's Guide to Organizational Analysis.

The teaching consists in 18 on line lessons, consisting in audioslides (and other materials) and webinar through webex. All the teaching material, including the webex recordings, will be uploaded on the moodle platform. We recommend that you follow the lessons as they are uploaded to moodle.

The exam consists of two parts: a written test consisting in 22 multiple choice questions (22 points as maximum) followed by an oral exam (two questions, up to 5 points each).

Oral exam can be sustained if the student has obtained at least 13 points in the written exam.

The final mark consists of the sum of the points obtained in the written exam and the interview. Further details will be provided at the request of the student during lesson time or on appointment fixed by e-mail).

Erasmus students can take the exam in english language (written test consisting in 32 multiple choice questions). Erasmus students are invited to contact the teacher during lessons time.

Optional online laboratory activities led by a tutor. Starting from reading a text on the topic "social service and organization", students will have to integrate and comment a text in the light of what they learned at lesson.

The program will be communicated through moodle at the start of the teaching.

The teaching will present key-concepts and useful theoretical frame for understanding the organizational dimension in the activities of professional social work, with special reference to the ones performed within (or in relation with) public bureaucracies. More in details, it will focus, with examples rooting in the social services, on the following topics:

-the epistemological foundations of organizational theories;

-properties of organizational rationality; 

-the relationship between organizational objectives, technical rationality and regulation of the tasks and of the social structure;

-the relationship between the organization and its environment;

-the competency-Based Human Resource Management;

-the relationship among organizational choices, autonomy and well-being of the agents at work;

-institutional structure of social-welfare services and underlying trends of the changes that have taken place in the last decades.

1) Albano R., Curzi Y., Fabbri T.M., System, Actor, and Process, Routledge, Oxon/New York 2020;

2) Rossi P., L’organizzazione dei servizi socioassistenziali. Istituzioni, professionisti e assetti di regolazione, Roma 2014, except chapters 2 and 7 and paragraph 6.1

3) Slides and other training-aids that will be provided by the teacher (uploaded on the moodle page of the teaching)

The program is the same for all students. Erasmus students adopt the same Reading materials.

Registration on ESSE3-system for the exam is mandatory. 

Given the situation generated by the COVID 19 outbreak lessons could be subject to last minute changes. In any case, online teaching will be available throughout the whole academic year.