Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Introduction: Child and adult protective service work is generally recognized as having low antecedents to job satisfaction and high attrition rates mainly due to the high stress, relatively low financial rewards, and the demands of increasing levels of need coupled with nationwide budget cuts. Despite this general recognition, there exists a paucity of empirical studies that examine key theoretical components influencing worker empowerment in social service organizations. This current study then applies and tests Rosabeth Kanter's seminal organizational theory (1979) in social welfare organizations. Kanter identifies three key components of effective leadership: information, resources, and support. Kanter theorizes that supervisors who encompass these three components will be more effective managers. The study of Kanter's theory is especially relevant to social service work given that social service organizations generally function in resource poor environments.

Method: This study utilizes the Survey of Organizational Excellence (SOE), a self-report questionnaire administered to all Texas state protective service employees (N = 3280) to test the applicability of Kanter's organizational theory for social welfare organizations. The SOE queried a number of areas, including supervisory effectiveness, job satisfaction, empowerment, resource availability, and flow of information. The sample comprised of 2763 females and 517 males, and participants self-identified as White (55.3%), Hispanic/Mexican American (23.4%), African American (17.6%), Asian American/Pacific Islander/Native American (1.7%), or multiracial/other (2%).

Results: The results of this study revealed that after controlling for participants' sex, race, years of service, and job satisfaction, all three of Kanter's theorized components (information, resources, and support) were significant predictors of supervisor effectiveness. The block of predictors in the hierarchical multiple regression accounted for 31% of the variance in supervisor effectiveness (R2=.311, F=962.87, p<.001). However, comparisons of the individual contributions of each predictor, revealed that employee support (B=.711) was the key variable in employees' perceptions of supervisor effectiveness and flow of information (B=.090) and resources (B=-.136) added very little to the model. In fact, the contribution of support was so strong that it distorted the effect of resources.

Discussion: The results revealed that providing support to employees in protective service organizations is the most important factor influencing employees' positive perceptions of their supervisors' effectiveness. Furthermore, the results challenge the applicability of Kanter's theory by indicating that flow of information and flow of resources are relatively less important in comparison to providing support. These results could be indicative of the fact that most protective services workers must learn to negotiate and function in generally resource poor environments and therefore do not expect their supervisors to have the ability to secure adequate resources. This is not to imply that information and resources are not important to employees, but that in protective service organizations they are not necessarily distinct from the way that employees think about support. The findings of this study have implications for the development of retention strategies through prioritizing organizational leaders' ability to provide support to their employees. Facilitating support in protective service organizations is then increasingly important as rising needs and ever decreasing budgets challenge social service providers.