Smithsville Area Aging Office: Case Study

Smithsville Area Aging Office is in a state of emergency. It’s federal, and state funding has been frozen, pending investigation of legal action filed against the agency, its staff, and its Board of Directors. The legal action pending is a class action suit brought against Smithsville Area Agency by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Smithsville Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Coalition. The agency has refused to deliver services to gays/lesbians/bisexuals/transgenders. The agency must close its doors because it solely relied on federal and state funding to operate its services. The company will be closed pending investigation and throughout the litigation process unless another avenue of revenue can be identified and accessed. According to Kirst-Ashman (2014), An organization can be broken into four topics “(1) social entities that (2) goal-directed (3) are designed deliberately structured and coordinate activity

Theorist Max Weber states that Bureaucracy is an administrative structure with well-defined offices or functions and hierarchical relationships among the functions. He stated that traditional bureaucracies emphasize the following highly specialized units performing precisely specified job tasks, minimal direction on the part of the employees and numerous specific rules to maintain control. The people who are ranked according to authority shall define the responsibilities for those who will hold particular positions. The Culture Perspective looks at the organizations belief and practices as to how things shall be done. Organization culture is “the set of key values, beliefs, understandings, and norms shared by members of an organization …Culture is a pattern of shared values and assumptions about how things are done within the organizations.” (Kirst-Ashman,