Promoting Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment, and Community Change Through Organizational Development: Lessons for Research, Theory, and Practice

Abstract

SPEC Learning and Changing by Doing is a three-year, action research, and organizational change project designed to ultimately promote social justice and well-being in the community. SPEC is an acronym that stands for Strengths, Prevention, Empowerment, and Community Change. The project consists of five organizations tackling internal organizational change in order to better promote justice and well-being in their respective constituencies. In this article we present a formative evaluation of this multicase study of organizational change in human services. This article contributes to the empirical and theoretical literature on organizational change in the nonprofit human service milieu.

KEYWORDS:

• community change
• empowerment
• organization development
• prevention
• promoting strengths

Acknowledgments

This research is made possible through funding from The Children's Trust.