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Changing The "Culture" Of Welfare Offices

From Vision to the Front Lines

University at Albany, State University of New York

Norma M. Riccucci

Rutgers University, Campus at Newark

This article examines whether the 1996 welfare reform has led to the culture change in welfare offices advocated by welfare leaders and administrators. Examining a sample of state and local welfare systems, it asks whether and how welfare organizations are seeking to change their culture or, if not their culture, at least some of the structures and processes of their welfare systems. After unpacking the concept of culture in the context of welfare reform, the research finds that welfare leaders and administrators interpret the concept of culture change more broadly than do scholars of organizational culture.Welfare practitioners consider changes in structure and process as culture change, whereas scholars of organizational culture see these changes as only changes in artifacts. Scholars would consider these practitioners'interpretations to be superficial and would argue that they underestimate what it actually takes to effect changes in beliefs, perceptions, and feelings that are sufficiently deep to be called cultural transformations.

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