Research That Matters (January 17 - 20, 2008)

Purpose: High turnover rates have plagued Public Child Welfare Services (PCWS) organizations historically and continue to do so currently. Since retention directly counteracts the problem of turnover and results in what is generally considered a favorable outcome, retention was a primary focus of this inquiry. The research represented here relies on Glisson's (2000, 2002) and Glisson and James' (2002) previous conceptual and empirical work concerning organizational dynamics and Landsman's (2000, 2001, 2005) research on work attitudes and retention. The author will present findings from a study of n=767 social workers, case managers and other PCWS personnel. These individuals worked in programs in 34-groups within 11-county PCWS agencies in California.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey research design was used to gather data to examine the relationships between group-level variables; organizational culture, organizational climate, service quality (representing organizational dynamics), and individual level variables; work attitudes and the retention of PCWS social workers and case managers. Multilevel modeling was employed with HLM 6 (Raudenbush, Bryk, & Congdon, 2005) to facilitate an optimal fit with the “nested” nature of the data for multivariate data analyses. This allowed for testing of the potential cross-level effects of organizational culture, climate and service quality on retention, and the effects of organizational culture, climate and service quality on the relationships between work attitudes and retention. Two outcome variables were utilized; retention in PCWS agencies and retention in the field of CWS and they were represented by ‘intent to stay in the agency' and ‘intent to stay in the field of CWS.' Several control variables were included in the analyses.

Results: Surprisingly, none of the analyses that used organizational culture or service quality as predictors or as moderating variables yielded significant results. However, analyses with the work attitudes variables resulted in significant predictive relationships with most of the work attitudes variables predicting retention. In addition, both stressful and engaging organizational climates had significant moderating effects on several of the relationships between work attitudes variables and the retention of employees in PCWS organizations. A particularly interesting finding was that even those who rated their job satisfaction as high were less likely to project remaining in their agencies when organizational climates were perceived as highly stressful. Analyses with the control variables revealed many significant differential findings. For instance, black social workers/case managers were less likely to remain in their agencies than white social workers/case managers, those with higher education were less likely to remain than those with lower education and those with degrees in social work were less likely to remain than those with degrees in other fields. Some of these findings were also moderated by organizational climate.

Implications: There are many implications for policy changes in PCWS organizations. For instance, clarification of role expectations and streamlining of roles among PCWS personnel are likely to decrease stress and lead to greater retention. Implications for practice include the consideration of two promising interventions that have resulted in the improvement of climate in other studies. Finally, potential directions for future research will be discussed.