Starlight Children's Foundation

Based on the themes we have discussed in class throughout the semester, describe one major change that you would make to an organization you are familiar with. This change could have to do with the organization or space or time, the use of team-based work, management practices, gender relations, or any number of other themes we have covered.

There is an organization called Starlight Children’s Foundation based in Chicago that grants critically ill children a wish of their choice. This is a great organization that does wonderful things but it follows the typical gender roles in our society. They have a wonderful human relations department, but in similar fashion as the typical stereotypes we discussed in class, the department is run by mostly women. “Human relations thinking emphasized the interpersonal and social needs of individuals” (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 82). The human relations approach starts with the assumption that all people “want to feel united, tied, bound to something, some cause, bigger then they, commanding them yet worthy of them, summoning them to significance in living” (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 82). Human relations have romantic ideals. The dominant metaphor is considered organization as the sum of relationships (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 85).

In today’s typical human relations department women tend to fill most of the positions. It is seen as a feminist view of management that focuses on empowering workers by sharing information with them, emphasizing cooperation to solve problems, and organizing teams to accomplish tasks (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 82). The Starlight Children’s Foundation follows this same trend and has women running the humans relations department.

Even though women are stereotypically considered compassionate, organized and good with motivating others I think men would be just as qualified in these typical female gendered roles. There are gender differences at work. Women use conversations to build relationships using rapport talk. Rapport talk emphasizes demonstrating equality through matching experiences, providing support and responsiveness, conversational maintenance, tentativeness, and personal, concrete details (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 204). Men usually engage in report talk, a style of speaking that emphasizes a demonstration of knowledge, skill, and ability, conservational command, direct and assertive expressions, and abstract terms over personal experience (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 204).

I think the human relations department at the Starlight Children’s Foundation could use a more traditional form of management and hire more men. Not only does the foundation need women who are compassionate, provide support and responsiveness but they could use men who are direct and to the point to get the job done as well. The foundation needs people who have a direct and assertive personality to work with certain types of families.

By hiring more men in the human relations department it will balance the office out, creating different points of view. Men add an entirely different element to the work atmosphere, which would benefit and diversify the foundation. In addition to hiring more men, I think the foundation should have a mix of a human relations department and classical management approach. Through scientific rationality it would lead to improved efficiency and productivity (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 85). The foundation would run more like a machine and be procedurally oriented, following “rules,” (Eisenberg, Goodall Jr., Trethewey 85). By implementing some forms of the classical management approach, it would be more conducive to hiring men and the foundation would be more organized and run smoother.