Session: Situated within: An Exploration of Frontline Workers Embedded Agency in Human Service Organizations (Society for Social Work and Research 30th Annual Conference Anniversary)

An ongoing tension within organizations and management studies is how to characterize frontline worker agency within institutions: How should we understand the role of frontline workers in attempting, fueling, or inspiring institutional breaks? How does the complex overlay of frontline worker self-definition and institutional positionality shape, and potentially constrain, creative action? What strategies do frontline workers deploy to take creative action and how are these strategies informed by institutional arrangements? The relationship between structure and agency is core to how social workers are situated- tasked by our code of ethics to engage creative action to change institutions on behalf of clients while also being constrained by the institutional norms we are embedded within. Arguably, this paradox is partly the profession's making, claiming values of creative action while largely complying with institutional norms without protest or actively participating in the building of such norms. This symposium explores embedded agency, the notion that frontline worker practices are embedded in, shaped by, and are a reaction to social structures. Our symposium uses various methods to examine embedded agency across contexts, worker identity, and institutional positionality. Investigation into the embedded actions of frontline workers is an opportunity for epistemic justice, building knowledge about institutions from "below."� The role and influence of managers has been a focus of organizational studies. While it is important to understand how managers frame, translate, and shift organizational aims, we argue that the embedded agency of frontline workers provides a critical vantage point to understand, not only why institutions are immutable, but how they can be challenged or why they remain unchallenged. Each symposium paper will serve as a case study for embedded agency in a human service organization. Presenter 1 leverages mixed methods data to examine how the design of districts "route"� students to alternative schools by producing or encouraging particular educator choices. Presenter 2 explores how frontline workers engage and make sense of artificial intelligence fidelity monitoring tools as they navigate compliance demands while implementing federal child welfare policy. Presenter 3 presents a case study to explore how nonprofit program administrators, acting as institutional entrepreneurs, sought out research partnerships and initiated an RCT with an end goal influencing large scale policy change. Presenter 4 draws on the ideas of organizational decoupling and worker discretion within social work education to develop a concept called institutional neglect. This study finds that even within organizational conditions of neglect, there are opportunities for innovation, interdependence, and worker agency. Though each paper traces the institutional pressures and burdens that constrain worker agency, our analyses emphasize how organizational routines shape how action was taken. Our emphasis on embedded agency aims to contribute to the recent work institutional studies focused on the role of workers in challenging institutional norms and contributing to organizational knowledge.