National Center for Refugee and Immigrant Children

4: Organizational Structure

Background

An organizational structure is a framework that determines how and where each staff members fits within the organization. According to our class readings and discussions, an effective organizational structure should be appropriate to organization’s function, size, context, and environment. It is important to have an effective organizational structure in order for the organization to deliver its mission to its maximum capacity, efficiency, and efficacy.

There are three types of models of organizations--Bureaucratic, Matrix, and Team. Organizations that have bureaucratic model has a highly hierarchical, highly specialized, and impersonal structure. The matrix model, on the other hand, are composed of specialists that are arrayed in a functional structure and its day to day work depends on each projects (1). The third model is a team model where it is composed of small integrated groups. These groups constitute of different staff members that come from various discipline/division.

NCRIC is a combination of bureaucratic and team model organization. The organization is bureaucratic because NCRIC is a division/program under USCRI. Therefore, NCRIC is part of USCRI’s hierarchical, top-down system that is composed of a president and a vice president, and then goes down to directors of specific divisions, such as NCRIC; this leads to senior program officers, program officers, assistants, and other specialized personnel; finally, the very bottom part of the structure are the volunteers and interns. NCRIC, itself, is a semi-bureaucratic and semi-team model that includes a director on top, and then a senior immigration program officer, an immigration program associate, and a case manager all working together on the same “mid-level,” and finally the interns or the immigration assistants working together at the bottom, supporting the “mid-level” staff.

Analysis

Due to its combined nature--bureaucratic and team model structure--few of the challenges of NCRIC are the lack of clear lines of authority/diffusion of authority and the lack of capacity in terms of the number of staff members. After immigration assistants write a memo summarizing a child’s case, they place the file in a designated place where any of the “mid-level” staff can take the case to begin the process of matching the child with a pro-bono lawyer. This process of sharing responsibility may be viewed effective because more people are participating in taking the case to match a lawyer. On the other hand, once the case has been submitted, it is difficult for immigration assistants to find out who among the “mid-level” staff member is working on the case. The cases can eventually be tracked down because of the small size of the organization; however, it is not the best use of time for immigration assistants. I believe that this problem could temporarily be solved through having the “mid-level” staff indicate in the database system that he/or she is working on the case. Nevertheless, in my experience, as an immigration assistant having this shared “authority” and responsibility created a confusion of who am I particularly accountable to.

Another challenge that is valid to mention is the number of staff members in NCRIC. Size is an important factor to consider in having an effective organizational structure. Despite having three “mid-level” staff to work on matching cases, the process is still slow in proportion to the number of new cases coming in, not to mention the urgency of various cases of children that are approaching the court date. Furthermore, NCRIC is also in need of a staff to focus on organization’s development, such as increasing networking opportunities with lawyers, fundraising activities, writing grants, etc.

Recommendations

- NCRIC should clearly define the roles and functions of each staff members and transfer this information in a written format. Furthermore, the organization should provide this information when orienting the new interns and volunteers.
- NCRIC should work on strengthening its capacity and organizational structure by increasing staff members who will support NCRIC’s process of matching cases and who will work on organizational development.