Social Work Commons^™

Acknowledging The Crisis In Social Liberalism: A Call For A New Approach To Teaching Social Policy, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

A graduate social policy course at West Virginia University has been redesigned by a senior faculty member and lead instructor to recognize advances in political philosophy and to confront the decline of the social liberal welfare state and the rise of populist radicalism, through civic engagement by citizen-professionals.

Cost Measurement, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article, which originally appeared in the 1997 Supplement to the Encyclopedia of Social Work is an overview and introduction to cost concepts as they are used in social work and human services. A few important ideas and concepts that have come into the picture since the original publication have been added to this version.

Managed Care: The Questionable Triumph Of Financial Management, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Managed Care is a generic term for a broad and constantly changing mix of health insurance, assistance and payment programs which seek to retain quality and access while controlling the cost of physical and mental health services. The introduction of managed care fundamentally transforms the traditional “agency” relationships on which modern social work was built. Little research on its impact on social services is currently available. The managed care model, with its distinctive external patterns of accountability, raises serious questions about the continuing viability of the “social agency” model of practice to which social work has been committed for most …

Justice, Citizenship, Social Cohesion And The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

There is great ferment in political and social theory today due to a number of major changes are taking place in the larger social world and our understandings of it including the crisis of the welfare state; the emergence of more open societies in Russia, Central Europe, Latin America and many of the countries of the Pacific Rim; general movement away from class/stratification and toward group membership as central themes for national politics in many countries; a major crisis of the modernization paradigm; the emergence of a truly-global economy; and the emergence of the internet as a global communications medium. …

The Social Work Docuverse, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The impact of electronic technology on social work has not been fundamental or transformative in any way comparable to the impact upon a variety of other professions and disciplines. A major potential impact of electronic systems for communications-based knowledge systems like social work lies in the area of textual processing systems which are only beginning to come to the fore. This article concentrates on one such set of technology -- hypermedia -- which already makes possible the construction and delivery of a social work docuverse which contains an electronic knowledge base of the field. Actual realization of such a web …

Nonprofit Community Service And The Hidden Cost Of Information Technology, Roger A. Lohmann, Nancy Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Will the information superhighway – like its concrete counterpart, the interstate highway system – turn out to be a good idea but too expensive to maintain properly? This paper will explore issues associated with the initial and ongoing costs of adopting information technology for nonprofit community service organizations, with particular attention to access and use of the information superhighway. Several possible explanations for the lag in adoption of internet technology will be explored. One of these will be the "null hypothesis" that resources and services currently available over the internet may still be insufficient to justify the costs involved for …

Philanthropic Partnerships: The Theory Of The Commons, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

In Anglo-American traditions, the concept of a commons has historically been most frequently attached to shared land in joint use by a village or community. The common theory of voluntary action presents organized collective action as consisting of shared purposes, shared resources and voluntary participation resulting in an evolving sense of mutuality, and moral order, consisting of shared norms of fairness and participation.

Hypertext And The Docuverse: A Research Memo, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The term docuverse was first developed by Apple Computer guru Allen Kay in the late 1960’s. The underlying idea can be traced back decades earlier, to the visionary Vannevar Bush and the Memex (Bush, 1945). According to Kay, a docuverse is a set of related documents together with the linkages between them. In this paper, a docuverse is conceived as a collection of related scholarly documents together with the links, ties and bonds that can bring them together into an integrated logical and conceptual whole. Kay who also coined the term hypertext, which refers to an electronic document with existing …

Why Didn't The Dogs Bark?, Roger A. Lohmann, Shirley Stewart Burns

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This study examines patterns of news coverage of five West Virginia mining disasters in local, regional and national news media. It grew out of an effort to follow up an earlier study of relief efforts at the Monongah mine disaster of 1907. One of the principal findings is that local newspapers consistently provided limited coverage of mining disasters and almost no coverage of relief efforts carried on in the wake of disasters. National coverage, by the New York Times and regional coverage by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reveals a number of persistent themes and some important differences.

Survey Associates: Support Group For A Successful Nonprofit Journalistic Enterprise, 1912-1952, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

More than a century before the current wave of popularity of nonprofit journalism, a group associated with the emerging social work profession developed a successful journalistic support organization in the years before World War I. It continued to provide support and funding for The Survey, a national social work newspaper for the next fifty years.

The Internet As Commons: A Tale Of Enclosure, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The original model of the internet developed as an electronic commons for scientists and academics. It will be only a matter of time before the same rich and powerful information barons who already control such "fourth estate" communication industries as newspaper, magazine and book publishing, television networks and movie production facilities establish their toll-booths on the information superhighway as well. Fortunately, within this electronic ocean of corporate and proprietary feudalism, there may also be room for an archipelago of freistaaten; "free citystates" functioning as autonomous and self-governing islands for the arts, sciences, humanities, social service and community.

The Monongah Mines Disaster Relief Committee, Roger A. Lohmann, Craig Johnson

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Service Centers: The Neglected Role Of The Town, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The dichotomy of urban and rural areas does not fit the circumstances of contemporary social life in the United States. Although needy populations redistributed across the social landscape, almost no social service agencies serving rural populations are, or ever have been, located in either urban (city) or rural (countryside) areas. Social agencies serving rural populations are nearly always located in towns. The town is a unique and distinctive rural social, economic and political institution. An adequate approach to conceptualizing rural social work must begin with recognition of one of the fundamental insights of contemporary urban theory: the regional character of …

Special Events And Community Elites: An Exploratory Study, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Special events are an important phenomenon in the American voluntary sector, both as a form of fundraising activity and as celebrations of the efforts of volunteers and recognition of the importance of causes and problems. This unpublished paper reports on a study of a national sample of elite special events publicized in a national circulation magazine which at the time published a regular feature in each issue highlighting charitable events. Findings profile the kinds of events and beneficiaries identified as special events during the 1980s, before an extensive amount of fundraising research had been done.

The Commons: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Nonprofit Organization, Voluntary Action And Philanthropy, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The task of identifying nonprofit organizations, voluntary action and philanthropy as the principal constituents of a single "sector" within the larger economy, society and polity has been a central challenge for the multidisciplinary paradigm which seems to be emerging in this field. The concepts of the commons and common goods are presented as concepts with important multi-disciplinary implications. The commons is characterized by uncoerced participation, shared purposes and resources, mutuality and fairness and the derivative concept of common goods, as desirable ends which are universal and indivisible within a commons but not necessarily beyond. Taken together, commons and common goods …

Mental Health Crisis: A Survey, Roger A. Lohmann, Ellen Neidermeyer

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper is a research report on mobile crisis services and other forms of modern crisis intervention services. It is part of a larger project, termed the North Central West Virginia Crisis Study. This paper reports the results of a survey of mental health crisis incidents reported to a multi-county hotline.

Social Planning And The Problems Of Old Age, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper includes a review of the evolution of social planning in the context of human services. It also includes an elaboration of nine approaches to social planning for aging services: community planning councils, the aging network, Title XX planning, state health planning, service reorganization initiatives, the national network of policy institutes, long-term care planning and housing planning. The paper concludes with a consideration of social planning technology, including needs assessment, resource analysis, comparison of alternatives, determination of priorities, implementation and evaluation. It concludes that social planning has been a primary tool in the long-term development of new institutions and …

Finances And The Social Settlement: The Management Of Hull House, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The development of social welfare history has powerful implications for the study of community practice theory. This historical study examines the Hull House social settlement as an actual, working social service establishment, rather than simply the stage for the activities of its most famous resident, Jane Addams. Hull House is examined as an organization, a campus, and a pioneering set of social programs. Its incorporation, by-laws are examined and all board members serving during Addams' 40 years there are identified. Various aspects of dealing with important donors, cash flows from donations and accountability issues are identified and discussed, as are …

Aging And Social Policy, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Social planning has a long history in social work. It has gone from an early emphasis on community as the modal point to an emphasis on public policy planning at the state and federal levels and recently to an emphasis on organizational issues and initiatives. Social planning has been a primary tool in the long-term development of new institutions and practices brought about by the unprecendented increases in the size of the aged population. Probably the oldest intact social planning systems for aging in most American communities today are the networks of community planning which grew up in the voluntary …

Foreword: Managing Contracted Services In The Nonprofit Agency, By Susan Bernstein, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Susan Bernstein's qualitative research of the New York City system of social service contracting between public and nonprofit organizations offers a unique and troubling look at the system of social service contracting.

The Executive Director As Keeper Of The Past, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper outlines a rationale for the materials which ought to be preserved by executives of local agencies, identifies some of the legal issues involved in record keeping for historical issues and resources available at local and state levels and discusses access issues.

The Repertory Of Social Care Of The Elderly, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper is an analysis of aspects of the emergence of a repertory of social care services for the elderly from the vantage point of the common theory of voluntary action. One facet of that theory, labeled here as endowment theory, is an emerging rational choice model of the praxeological implications of voluntary action within the pragmatic problem-solving tradition. Three terms – endowment, repertory and commons – are presented in the paper as terms whose conventional meanings contain previously undisclosed connotations relevant to a fuller understanding of voluntary action.

The Generalist-Advanced Generalist Continuum, Patty Gibbs, Barry Locke, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper explores the concept of generalist-advanced generalist in practice and in education by discusing some of the tenets of generalist practice, advancing a paradigm for framing the BSW/MSW educational continuum, and presenting one possible curriculum design--including practice outcomes, course content and sequencing issues--to articulate an educational continuum in schools of social work that offer both the BSW and MSW degrees.

The Organization And Administration Of Korean Social Welfare: A Review Of The Literature, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper is an effort to provide an overall view of the organization

and administration of Korean Social Welfare. It is based upon a literature

review of published materials on the subject in both Korean and English.

This study is part of a research initiative on East Asian social administration

at the West Virginia University School of Social Work. The basic effort is to

examine aspects of social administration in East Asian countries and

compare them with administrative practices in the Anglo-American tradition.

The paper was prepared with the assistance of two doctoral students.

Ms. Younock Kim and Mr. Sienam …

Four Perspectives On Appalachian Culture And Poverty, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Poverty is as closely associated with the Appalachian region as coal mining and the hammer dulcimer. Appalachian poverty has seldom been portrayed simply as poverty, but as the expression and symbol of something larger. Images of poverty - poorly dressed, sooty, emaciated, barefooted, mostly white, rural children and adults beside cabin porches - are as closely associated with Appalachia as cowboy hats with the West or moss-covered trees and white-columned mansions with the Old South.

Social Agency Accountability In Two Cultures, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The research reported in this paper is an effort to shed empirical light on traditional accountability in a cross-cultural perspective. Because of the suspicion of a connection between the persistence of the issue in the United States and indigenous cultural factors (most notably the uniquely enduring influence of the Protestant ethic) it was decided to investigate the issue through a comparison of some of the accountability practices of American social agencies with those outside the United States. This study compares the operation of certain accountability dynamics in samples of social agencies in the Appalachian region of the United States and …

Social Welfare In The Emerging World Culture, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The end of the cold war brought with it a new period of globalization and an emerging world cultural consensus in which social welfare values of the welfare state figure importantly. An essential element of this development has been indigenization in which universal social welfare values, like those on display at various United Nations agencies and in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights are adapted and fitted to the unique demands and requirements of individual cultures.

Social Welfare In Emerging World Culture, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The paper argues for the emergence of a world-wide universal pluralistic culture, in which a common core of humanitarian values will eventually be institutionalized in the major institutions of each society in ways which are consistent with the unique historical, cultural, economic and political context of that society. It is this process of adaptation of universal, or at least trans-cultural, values to the unique circumstances of individual cultures which can be called "indigenization".

Peace, Or The Problem-Free Interval, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper argues for wider recognition of general program indicators as evaluative criteria and sets forth four general dimensions of outcome measures that might serve as comparative evaluative indicators for a wide range of programs and services. Pragmatic problem-solving is outlined as a theoretical basis for an approach to such general indicators. The argument for general program indicators of problem presence, frequency, duration and severity is grounded in general problem-solving theory and is part of an evaluative study of a mental health crisis unit. Peace, defined as a problem-free interval, is offered as an example of a general program outcome …

The Social Work Scholar: An Integrated Approach To Computing In Social Work Education, Roger A. Lohmann

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This paper is a progress report of a set of personal professional development efforts by a faculty member at a school of social work in a state land-grant university. The common theme of this effort is applications of available computer technology to the ordinary faculty tasks of teaching, research and public service over a 15-year period.