Towards a New Way of Organizing

Abstract

Driven by the conviction that a governance and organizing structure in organizations has a huge influence on human behavior, organizational efficiency and effectiveness, Jos de Blok started to think of alternative organizational structures for community care. He knows the ins and outs of the community care needs and experienced the calling for social change in this industry which he initiated with the start of Buurtzorg Nederland, a new community care organization as an alternative to current organizations (The Dutch name Buurtzorg could be translated by Community Care). Buurtzorg is one of the most talked about and revolutionary cases in community care, the successful and award winning practice of Buurtzorg forms the backbone of this book.

Its achievements have attracted attention nationwide and internationally. While many organizations have been facing the negative impact of the financial meltdown, starting from scratch late in 2006, Buurtzorg has shown a huge growth in turnover, an increase in personnel, as well as good financial results and overall a cost reduction of 40 % compared to similar organizations in community care (More details about the outcomes could be found in the following study: Social Business Case (“Maatschappelijke Business Case”. Netherlands: Transition program/Buurtzorg; 2009). June, Available from: http://www.transitiepraktijk.nl/files/maatschappelijke%20business%20case% 20buurtzorg.pdf).

His calling for social change is something many other entrepreneurs, managers, and professionals experience in various industries. An underlying assumption they have is that available resources could be used in more effective, efficient and meaningful ways to solve many types of problems for their customers. In their discussions they often recall Albert Einstein’s saying, ‘that we cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’.

Many of them realize that change is not enough. It is transformation which is required. While change is about doing things a bit different here and there but within the same structures, transformation comprises of a fundamental shift in consciousness and creativity and it requires a holistic process and structure. This is about conversion of the mindset in the process of using the available resources to solve a problem while synthesizing existing resources with new activities to give birth to new structures.

The case of Buurtzorg shows how such a transformation looks like both for the individual professional, the client, and for the type of organizational architecture and how converting the mindset and integrating activities are key processes of social change and organizational transformation.

Those who are driven by social change and transformation could learn from and get inspired by the underlying principles, a new theory, that has been induced from the case of Buurtzorg.