Do Social Workers Lead Differently? Social Workers' Leadership Style and Organizational Climate

Background and Purpose: Despite being the dominant workforce, social workers are underrepresented among the leadership of human service organizations. Neoliberal policies championing market-competition have contributed to this underrepresentation with the prioritization of financial management capacity as a leadership qualification met with limited organizational management and leadership material in social work curriculum. Social worker leaders have used an ethical, principled, and process-oriented leadership style with a systemic perspective – an approach that is often critical to serve community needs and advance their missions. In mental health settings, such an approach could better support service provision that reflects recovery-oriented values and actively partners with people seeking services. This study aims to understand the differential impact of social work leaders by comparing the leadership style, values-based organizational context, and organizational climate among social work leaders as compared to leaders without social work degrees in mental health settings.

Methods: Data were drawn from a NIMH funded randomized controlled trial testing the effectiveness of an emerging evidence-based practice. The criterion sample of providers (N=224) worked in 10 community mental health organizations across two states and completed electronic surveys administered via email. Data were examined in six models using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) in Mplus 7 testing organizational climate as measured by the organizational readiness for change subscales for stress, mission, communication, change, autonomy, and cohesion. Exogenous variables included social work led organizations, transformational leadership (Multifactor leadership Questionnaire) and values-based context (Recovery Self-Assessment). Covariates included caseload and years in the mental health field.

Results: Findings for all six models demonstrated consistent results such that the mean of the outcome variable (reported here is cohesion) increased on average 3.98 units (SE=1.13, p<.001) for every unit increase in mean values-based context and 1.63 units (SE=.72, p<.05) for every unit increase in transformational leadership. Social work led organizations had an indirect relationship with outcomes via transformational leadership and values-based context such that transformational leadership increased on average .522 units (SE=.14, p<.001) and values-based context increased .151 (SE=.07, p<.05) for social work led organizations. The direct effect of social work led organizations on outcomes was not significant. Exogenous variables accounted for 22% of the variance in the outcome cohesion. 

Conclusions and Implications: Findings demonstrate that social work leaders are associated with being more transformational in their leadership style, and leading more values-based and positive organizational climates. In addition, social work leaders’ transformational leadership style and relationship with an improved value-based context in their organizations are critical potential mechanisms for their influence on organizational climate. Social work leaders may be better equipped to maintain both an ethical and functional organizational context within the current policy landscape. Due to their clinical training, social work leaders may also have key insights into the best motivational strategies to engage a majority social work workforce in their agencies and their prioritization of social justice may create a more values-based context. This study makes a critical contribution to the evidence-base supporting efforts to demonstrate the value of social work leadership in human service organizations.