Economics Principles Quiz

Study Notes

This presentation covers the social environment and its relationship to social work.
It examines the concepts of family, group, community, and organizations.

Groups are a critical social system for individuals and helping professionals.
A group is a collection of two or more people that interact, where relationships are distinguishable from relationships with others.
Groups have the potential to foster belonging, validation, shared experiences, and opportunities for collective tasks.
Individuals in groups are affected by a wider range of activities rather than their isolated actions.
Groups are characterized by energy, transformation, and synergy.
Examples of different group formations include formed groups (based on outside influences such as therapy, or other activities), natural groups (formed due to natural events, attractions or needs), and externally designated groups (a homogenous way to treat individuals in a group).
There are several types of groups such as work groups, problem-solving groups, social action groups, mediating groups, legislative groups, and client groups.
Groups in Social Work have specific qualities such as a definable membership, group consciousness, interdependence, and the ability to act as one unit.
Groups play a role in social work through helping individuals, augmenting existing community approaches.
Groups in Social Work can impact participants, alter social situations, and help find collective solutions, with many advantages, including increasing comfort and support, providing support and validation, and utilizing group forces for effective change.
Group processes include communication, atmosphere/climate, procedures, structure, cohesiveness, and conflict.

A community is a collection of people united by commonalities. Some criteria for distinguishing a community include location, interest, and shared activities.
Communities exist in different ecosystems including (but not limited to) agricultural, forest, grassland, freshwater, mangrove, coastal, and urban settings within areas.
Communities are not just buildings; they are people who strive to achieve a productive life and happiness.
Communities often have common interests and are present in a geographic range.
There are different classifications of communities such as geographic, functional, national, and global communities.
Gemeinschaft (rural setting) emphasize close, personal, and traditional relationships.
Gesellschaft (urban setting) are more impersonal, abstract, instrumental, and utilitarian.
Community organization is the deliberate arrangement of group effort to create a single coordinated goal. This is a process of matching needs with resources, and is meant to increase social interaction, while focusing on task goals, process goals, and relationship goals. Models of community development include locality development, social planning, and social action.
Organizing involves diverse stages such as area/site selection, entry/integration, community study, identification of potential leaders, formation of a core group, community organization formation, and mobilization.

Organizations are goal-directed social entities with deliberate structure. They often interact with their surrounding environment and are comprised of social entities, goals, structures, and connections to the outside world.
Social agencies are specifically organizations that provide social services.
Social agencies can be public, private, or proprietary, each with differing structures.
Management theories are frameworks to conceptualize and understand organizational function by stressing certain concepts.
Organizational behavior examines people and their interaction within the workplace, while looking at major goals to predict and control behavior.
Management theories aim to accomplish organizational goals through effective planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. There are three major schools of thought including the Classical or Traditional, Behavioral, and the Modern view. Each view has specific approaches and highlights, for example, the division of labor, scientific management, and the general systems theory.