Freedman, Ethan
9/30/25
Columbia University School for Social Work, New York
Submitted in partial fulfillment as Assignment Two within the requirements for Columbia's School for Social Work program and Prof. Jeanette Takamura's Macro Community Practice class.
Acknowledgements:
I would like to acknowledge Professor Prof. Jeanette Takamura and their facilitation of SOCWT7124. With Prof. Takamura's lecturers, recommended readings, and my additional thoughts – this piece took form. Moreover, all my peers in class who contributed to discussions and building ideas that related to the present topic. With these acknowledgements, I present my following work.
The Social Intervention Group (SIG) at Columbia University's School of Social Work offers a unique case study for organizational analysis. As a leading interdisciplinary research center focused on HIV/AIDs, substance use, violence prevention, and social justice, SIG operates at the intersection of academic prowl and generating collective engagement (Social Intervention Group, n.d.). While utilizing organizational assessment tools such as SWOT Analysis (Keela, n.d.) and Bolman and Deal's (2021) Four Frames to gauge the competencies and vulnerabilities of an enterprise like SIG enables surface level examination capable of being intuitively mapped onto any corporation, these tools fall short of identifying the deeper systems at play within an enterprise. The Center for Organizational Design Framework - Transformation Model (ODF) envelopes a more comprehensive diagnosis by examining eight levels of interrelated domains for organizational success: environment, strategy, core process, structure, systems, culture, results, and leadership (ODF, n.d). Through contextualizing SIG with surface level assessment tools that enable expansion to implementing The Transformation Model to uncover deeper systematic proficiencies and drawbacks within the organization, critiques of Social Intervention Group are placed in conversation with leadership and management practices to ground discussions in what is possible (Kotter, 1995; Emerson, 2022; Reisch, 2018; Poland et al., 2021).
Introducing SIG: Four Frames and SWOT as Contextual Tools
Social Intervention Group is an outstanding organization rooted in the practice of ethical interdisciplinary research, and Bolman and Deal's (2021) Reframing Model demonstrates that effective leaders can separate organizations into Four Frames of structural, human resource, political, and symbolic. SIG's structural frame is grounded in Columbia's academic infrastructure, a concrete, immovable, stubborn foundation with scaffolding attached to grant funded research within the agendas of communities and stakeholders. Its human resource frame emphasizes the collaboration between disciplines and departments alongside mentorship, while SIG politically reflects the competitive and authoritative environment for research and funding sources. SIG's symbolism is tied to its mission of advancing social justice and equity through public health interventions and initiatives, but when all the frames are used to contextualize SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) – the details at the surface become more clear.
SIG's strengths include a renowned academic reputation capable of persisting through historical adversity by any means necessary, multidisciplinary expertise spanning generations of affiliated agents and organizations, and consistency in satisfying the confines of grant funding for sustainability. Its core weaknesses are bureaucratic constraints and heavy reliance on external funding sources like the federal government, while also providing opportunities to disseminate information, amplifying community partnerships, and expanding health initiatives. Despite threats stemming from shifting priorities in stakeholders, governing bodies, and political health initiatives at all levels, placing SWOT in tandem with the Bolman and Deal (2021) provides context for Social Intervention Group on a surface level still capable of revealing the nuances worth further exploration. These tools provide a malleable framework that can deliberately and intuitively be equipped to contextualize any entity from an outside standpoint, but exploring SIG's operations internally necessitates utilizing other assessment models.
ODF in Practice: Assessing SIG's Levers and Capacity for Transformation
The Center for Organizational Design Framework - Transformation Model provides eight levers that collectively shape how effectively an organization fulfills its values, vision, and mission (n.d.). Through providing lenses to environment, strategy, core process, structure, systems, culture, results, and leadership, the Transformation Model positions SIG's strengths and vulnerabilities within the organization's environment generating a domain to assess more extensively the internal systems at play in relation to their results and measures of success.
SIG's capacities are attached to a strategic mission focused on addressing HIV/AIDS, substance use, and violence prevention through research initiatives rooted in evidence and responding through interventions and partnerships that align closely with Columbia's broader academic goals (SIG Training Manual, 2025). PrEP for Wings is a SIG initiative that centers women in the legal system who are at high risk for HIV and intimate partner violence, combining biomedical prevention with justice based interventions. With a clear strategy bolstered in research ethic responsibilities, the group's culture emerges as a strength. Emphasizing values, collaboration, equity, and innovation, something reflected in its interdisciplinary projects and community partnerships; SIG reinforces strategic alignment around vulnerable populations to demonstrate coherence between stated mission and the populations it envisions benefiting. The new Uzbekistan Columbia Center with UNICEF and NASP broadens SIG's reach to global contexts because community members from within Columbia and vulnerable Uzbek populations noticed that social workers were needed. SIG research initiatives strategically and culturally sustained by social workers, researchers, and students invoke collective drive grounded in project specific standards of success that simultaneously reflect SIG's overall mission and success metric of benefiting who it serves.
The glaring fragile levers of Social Intervention Group are the domains of core processes, systems, and the external outputs of results (Center for Organizational Design, n.d.). SIG's core processes encompass how it delivers its mission through research intervention design and implementation. The initiative of GAyI (AI with a Queer Eye) explores how large language models for artificial intelligence address LGBTQ+ wellbeing, while Tech M power and Heal advance harm reduction and digital health stakeholder ambitions. In tandem, the systems operating within SIG include policies and procedures that ensure essential measures of success needed to sustain the research lab. Onboarding processes provide clarity for interns and staff through structured training in areas such as HIPAA, Good Clinical Practice, and Human Subjects Protection), while supervision requirements with leaders ensure resonance between staff. Circuits capable of connecting across labs look more abstract and can limit synergy between SIG and other organizations. With the results of an operation like SIG depending on a combination of all levers, SIG's core processes and systems paradoxically render its own output vulnerable.
Results highlight how success is measured and communicated (ODF, n.d.). SIG's traditional measures of success being grant acquisition, peer reviewed publications and citations, and population backed public health interventions are essential for sustaining funding and prestige. However, they have the capacity to disregard the impact of the group's interventions on community resilience and equity. The effectiveness of PrEP for Wings in reducing HIV risk and violence, or the ISMs and Disability Justice Lab in addressing systemic oppression, struggle to be fully captured in academic outputs alone. Thus, core processes and systems have a conjoined effect on outcomes – rendering a circuitry of weak levers for SIG.
The external forces shaping SIG, including political climates and global health priorities are also shaped by its environment (ODF, n.d.). Projects like P3 remind how federal agendas under the Trump administration disrupted HIV related research, illustrating SIGs vulnerability to shifting policy contexts. The Uzbekistan Columbia Center with UNICEF and NASP demonstrates, in contrast, SIG's ability to adapt, engage, and persist through adversity in diverse environments. While the aforementioned levers reveal strengths and weaknesses, the environment of SIG is less easily categorized on a binary. This assessment of SIG shows that it excels in mission alignment and values, but struggles to measure and integrate the full impact of its innovative work. Projects like PrEP for Wings, GAyI, and HEAL highlight both the promise of SIG's strategy and culture, and the ongoing need to strengthen core processes, systems, and the results of the organization's design.
Compounding Capacities for Organizational Change Through Structure and Leadership
The two remaining nodes to be assessed in tandem with SIG are structure and leadership (ODF, n.d.). SIG's structure informs conversations on leadership as organizational roles and responsibilities operate under Columbia's external institutional hierarchy and SIG's internal administrative chain of command. Leadership at SIG has the capacity to reflect vision and direction within the organization as principal investigators lead projects supported by teams to ensure accountability, but fragmentation is still possible. While figures like Nabila El-Bassel, Louisa Gilbert, and Elwin Wu anchor the managing roles, faculty and students can expand the reach of its projects. Addressing the previously mentioned weak leavers at SIG requires intentional work and evidence based management practices to improve leadership.
Kotter (1995) demonstrates the risks of complacency and the importance of collectivity among stakeholders, arguing that organizational change requires urgency, coalition building, vision, and anchoring in culture. Emmerson (2022, 2025) adds that many change efforts fail due to poor communication, misalignment with culture, and lack of short term successes. For SIG, this means improving processes and lateral capability using integration strategies to bridge projects and reinforce strong communication systems via modeling. Community is the backbone of any organization, and "backbone organizations are ideally suited to bridging grassroots, civil society actors and more formalized organizations" (Poland et al., 2021, pg. 10).
In line with Reisch's (2018) focus on assessments of assets, it could benefit SIG to widen success metrics to more broadly highlight social capital, participation, and empowerment outcomes, not just traditional academic markers. This would align with the Connected Community Approach (Poland et al., 20210) and reflect SIG's mission of centering just research. Moreover, prioritizing mechanisms for fluid collaboration across SIG projects through interdisciplinary workshops, shared digital infrastructure, and strengthening core processes and systems is advantageous for the lab. In tangent with Kotter (1995), SIG can overcome resistance to structural change through building collective spaces for resonant communication streams. Lastly, to enhance, emphasize, or make more legible leadership development opportunities for students and community partners can build long term sustainability. While these are a few recommendations that are feasible and responsive to the levers where SIG shows vulnerability, it is easier said than done to enact change from a leadership position.
SIG's Sustainability: Harnessing ODF for Sustainable Transformation
The Transformation Model provides a powerful lens for assessing organizations like the Social Intervention Group (ODF, n.d.). While SWOT and The Four Frames helps contextualize SIG's work, capacities, and vulnerabilities (Bolman and Deal, 2021; Keela, n.d.), ODF reveals alternative exercises for organization evaluation capable of delving deeper. Through recognizing stronger levers of strategy and culture while addressing weaknesses in core processes, systems, and results, SIG is capable of ensuring sustainable evolution and adaptation. Integrating insights from Kotter's (1995) model of organizational change, Emerson's (2022) analysis of management pitfalls, Bolman and Deals (2021) multidimensional leadership perspectives, and community centered frameworks advanced by Reisch (2018) and Poland et al. (2021), SIG has a roadmap for sustaining its reputation and deepening its impact through interventions for the populations it serves. The Organizational Design Framework demonstrates its utility for SIG, and ultimately becomes a tool for any leader committed to macro level change backed by the best professional practices and language to enact it.
Bibliography
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