The division of labor in a perfect maintenance agency

This paper presents a description of a perfectly operating, equity-creating maintenance agency. The description is organized around its three major agents-workers, supervisors and managers-and takes the form of a statement of who would do what and why if the system were perfectly suited to its assigned purpose. The worker is the only agent in the system who is in regular, direct contact with clients. His/her principal duty is to assess client needs and disabilities and then award every client in his/her caseload the services each requires to achieve an agency determined standard of adequacy. The supervisor’s principal responsibilities are in creating the program-establishing and adjusting over time the program guidelines that inform workers about which client disability-environment conditions are supposed to be treated through how much of what services-and supervising workers. Statistics that capture the combined wisdom of the workers and supervisor in the unit to facilitate these actions are discussed. The manager’s tasks are to collect and process the statistical information the supervisors need to do their job, and to decide on the overall interrelated parameters of the program: the division of program budget between deciding who gets what and providing it; the caseload levels and the level of adequacy provided by the program. The paper discusses the iterative process for making these decisions.