SCHOLARSHIP, PRACTICE, AND LEADERSHIP

Scholarship, Practice, And Leadership

Scholarship, Practice, And Leadership

The introduction of market reforms to human services industries is leading to the restructuring of social services work. The process of competition reform or 'marketization' of human services is well established in many western democracies, such as the USA and the UK. Though in some countries, such as Australia, reforms are more recent and long-term outcomes are uncertain. Few issues unite the human services' academy and the field as strongly as concern about the implications of reform for the future of social service provision. The repercussions of the reform processes for professional practiceand employment prospects of human service workers are widely canvassed (Coulshed Mullender 2001 pp.112-114). However, the implications for human service professionals in management are less well understood. Evidence from the USA and Australia suggests that social workers are losing ground in achieving management positions in human services organizations (Giddens 1999 pp.89-92). The marginalization of social workers from the realm of management is of concern because it compromises their capacity to exercise professional leadership and decision-making in the organizations that employ them. The determinants of the level of support employment provides remain far from clear, and knowledge of employment conditions faced by frontline human service workers is particularly limited. Several recent studies have found, however, that firms operating in the same field and local labor market can offer strikingly contrasting levels of benefits, differences that are consequential for individuals' abilities to stay and prosper in employment (Coulshed Mullender 2001 pp.112-114). Lambert and Haley-Lock (2004) and Lambert, Waxman, and Haley-Lock (2002), for example, found that cashiers at one major retailer were given higher starting wages, quicker access to benefits, and more—and more predictable— hours than did cashiers at a retailer just a few miles away. Haley- Lock (2003, 2007) obtained similar results in a study of staff in nonprofit domestic violence programs, which revealed variation in the benefits extended to frontline workers within the same employing agency and for the same frontline job title across different agencies. As many social service organizations continue to struggle over staff recruitment and retention, understanding the predictors of such variation is important for identifying potential managerial and public policy remedies (Knapp Wistow Forder Hardy 1994 pp.45-52).

Turning to chain affiliation and professionalized leadership, scholarship that attends to the roles of these organizational features in shaping the quality of lower-level jobs has been relatively scarce. O'Brien, Saxbery, and Smith (1983) were the first to introduce the importance of chain affiliation to the discussion of ownership and quality of care within the nursing home industry, asserting that distinguishing among nationwide, multisite corporations, and sole proprietor, neighborhood-based facilities is critical to isolating the effect of sectoral affiliation on care quality. Only in the past few years, however, have organizational researchers begun to take chain affiliation into account as a critical measure of organizational complexity and a unique organizational form (Kruzich, 2005; Luksetich, Edwards, & Carroll, 2000). Nursing home membership in a multifacility organization, or chain, versus independent operation is likely to correspond to differences in organizational mission, board ideology, ability to secure capital and pursue growth, structural capacity, and motivation to handle consumer problems (Banaszak-Holl, Berta, Baum, & Mitchell, 2002). 

Scholarship

Administrative and other staff professionalization has long been a subject of academic and practical ...