An administrator can build partnership between the agency’s formal and informal structures in a number of ways. To begin with, administrators can ensure this partnership by clearly defining the mission, procedure and policy at the organization. Further, according to Stojkovic, Kalinich and Klofas (2015), this partnership can be created by ensuring an inclusive, democratic and interactive working environment in which the personnel are comfortable while at work in the organization (p. 23). Moreover, this can be done through an open-ended decision making process that ensures that all the stakeholders within the formal and informal structures of the organization are involved in the decision making process.
Furthermore, an administrator can ensure this partnership through mutual accountability, service delivery duplication elimination, collaboration and resource sharing among the various departments of the organization. Additionally, establishing rules or regulations that govern both structures can help build partnerships when roles and responsibilities are clearly defined. This partnership may also be created through the enforcement of official procedures and policies in the agency and also by creating a notion or a sense of empowerment and ownership of the structures by both managers and their subordinates. Also, making the organizational goals and objectives clear and ensuring that they don’t conflict with individual need can help create and foster partnership. Moreover, by removing unnecessary bureaucracies within the various aspects of the organization can help an administrator to create a partnership between the formal and informal structures.
Leaders in criminal justice agencies and organizations have important roles to play in partnership building for effective service delivery. According to Stojkovic, Kalinich and Klofas (2015), the leaders including managers and administrator play the role of policy, procedure, rules and regulations formulation and implementation to ensure smooth running of the agencies. In my opinion, these leaders also ensure proper communication within the organization and hence partnership between the structures.
Reference (s)
Stojkovic, S., Kalinich, D., & Klofas, J. (2015). The nature of criminal justice organizations. In S. Stojkovic, D. Kalinich, & J. Klofas, Criminal justice organizations: Administration and management (pp. 3-51). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.
