Social Work Leadership Theory As Social Justice

Background and Purpose:  The social work profession suffers from a lack of leadership skills that impacts the ability of social workers to effectively do their jobs, and impedes the profession’s ability to advocate for client rights and social justice issues.  Several articles have called for more leadership curriculum in social work education and leadership skills training in organizations, but few studies have assessed the effects of leadership capabilities in the social work field, and true experimental studies are rare.  Leadership as a research topic has only recently filtered into the human services and social work realm. 

Some of the most prominent and popular leadership theories include traditional behavioral-based leadership development models related to individual cognitive processes (authentic leadership); theories that focus on relationships and organizational processes (transformational and charismatic leadership, leader-member exchange, and cross-cultural leadership), and leadership theories that focus on the system or organization as the unit of analysis (complexity leadership, distributed leadership, and team leadership).  This paper conceptually examines what leadership theories and approaches are the best fit for the social work profession, especially given the ultimate goal of social justice, and the research needed to guide the development of leadership practice, taking into account social work’s values, ethics, and many different applications and environments.

Methods:  A search was conducted for leadership studies in the context of human services using PsychInfo with the title word “leadership” and subject words “social work” or “human services” or “social justice”.  Criteria for final articles included the requirement that social workers, human service workers, or social work or human service organizations compose the sample for the study. In addition, leadership had to be one of the main components of the study. Finally, the article had to describe an original empirical study that had been conducted within the past ten years.  Leadership articles were examined for underlying assumptions, implications for leadership practice and research design, and use of results.

Results:  Several leadership theories were identified as being relevant and inclusive frameworks for not only leadership practices that benefit the organization, clients served, and employees within the organization, but also for future explorations in social work leadership research and the promotion of client rights and social justice.  These include Situational Leadership, Transformational Leadership, Distributed Leadership, and Learning Organizations.  Of these theories, Transformational Leadership Theory (TLT) and Distributive Leadership (DL) seem most appropriate and applicable to the practice of social work.  Both TLT and DL (more recently) encompass rigorous research in various disciplines, which has resulted in strong scientific support for their use in different professional and educational contexts, and they incorporate a strong ethical and moral underpinning, which makes them an intuitive match for social work’s social justice and inclusiveness orientation. 

Conclusions and Implications:  Transformational and Distributive Leadership theories could guide social work leadership practice and research, making important contributions to social work in the areas of power distribution, positive effects of balances of power, adaptation to challenges and new circumstances, learning from change, and increasing leadership participation in social work organizations.