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Emphasizing five basic points, this chapter summarizes what the authors have learned in their development of evidence-based organizational strategies. First, human service organizations vary in their social contexts, and those differences affect the way services are provided. Second, the social contexts of human services can be changed with organizational strategies, and those changes can improve service quality and outcomes. Third, organizational social contexts are essential for innovation because they reflect the power of social systems to promote changes in individual behavior. Fourth, organizational research illustrates that social contexts affect the implementation of best practices to improve effectiveness. Fifth, strategies for improving an organization’s capacity for innovation build upon a century of work on improving organizational effectiveness that has direct implications for human services. This chapter introduces the ARC strategies that include: (1) key organizational principles, (2) organizational components that drive innovation, and (3) mental models to support improvement efforts.

This chapter describes the ARC model of three core strategies for developing effective human service organizations. These include (1) embedding guiding organizational principles, (2) providing organizational component tools for identifying and addressing service barriers, and (3) developing shared mental models. ARC’s strategies provide the tools and the reasoning to guide behaviors and processes among organizational members that ensure improved service quality and outcomes. These strategies are reviewed as part of ARC’s orchestrated and structured process to improve OSC (i.e., the cultures and climates that influence attitudes, decision making and behavior in organizations). The chapter identifies mechanisms of change that highlight the alignment of organizational priorities with the ARC principles, fostering relationships that provide availability, responsiveness, and continuity, as well as developing innovation capacity to adopt new technologies and approaches.

This chapter explains that members of improvement-directed organizations are never satisfied with the status quo and never stop looking for more effective ways to serve their clients. The principle addresses the conflicting priority represented by individuals in formal organizations resisting change and clinging to established protocols, regardless of whether the existing protocols promote improvements in the well-being of clients. The chapter describes improvement-directed organizations, including their application of continuous improvement processes, norms that support ongoing improvement, and behaviors that drive innovation and ongoing growth and development. The chapter presents research evidence and case studies to illustrate how systems and processes, decisions, actions, and behaviors, as well as assumptions and beliefs, need to be addressed to create improvement-directed organizations. Specific case examples illustrate ARC’s application to build improvement-directed organizations.

This chapter explains how mission-driven organizations require that all administrative, managerial, and service provider behavior and decisions contribute to improving the well-being of clients. This principle addresses the threat posed by the conflicting organizational priority of relying on bureaucratic processes and rules to guide policy and practice decisions. The description of mission-driven versus rule-driven organizations includes case examples, empirical evidence supporting the principle, and discussion of the central of role of aligning organizational priorities to focusing on improving client well-being. The chapter explains what it means to be mission driven, the role of leadership in supporting the principle, and why it is important. The chapter also describes the mechanisms that link being mission driven to effective services, including maintaining clear direction for all organizational members in their work, promoting motivation and shared purpose and fostering innovation. A case example illustrates ARC’s success to become more mission-driven.

This concluding chapter suggests that future research and development efforts focus on four interrelated areas. These four areas, together, describe how more specific information about the ARC strategies can increase the capacity for improving human services. The authors argue that the emphasis on evidence-based practices should be expanded to include strategies that focus on the organization’s social context. Knowing which strategies are most effective to alter specific OSC profiles and knowing the sequence of strategies that are most effective for targeted outcomes will allow organizations to tailor improvement efforts with the greatest efficiency. The chapter calls for more information about how an array of strategies can be used most efficiently by an organization to target outcomes over an extended period and how to determine, a priori, the optimal application of the various strategies necessary to achieve success with the least amount of resources.

This chapter explains the ARC principle of being results oriented versus process oriented. The results-oriented principle requires that human service organizations evaluate performance based on how much the well-being of clients improves. The principle addresses deficits in service caused by the conflicting priority of evaluating performance with process criteria such as the number of clients served, billable service hours, or the extent to which bureaucratic procedures such as the completion of paperwork are followed. Results-oriented organizations are described in detail, including case examples from decades of organizational change efforts by the authors in human service organizations. The chapter documents the importance of results-oriented approaches and underlying implicit beliefs to help the reader understand how mindsets and mental models shared among organizational members influence results-oriented approaches and effectiveness in practice. Supporting research, including feedback and goal-setting research are highlighted.