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Allison D. Murdach, Practitioners as Managers: The Need for Theory, Social Work, Volume 57, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 91–93, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swr004
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Extract
Social work practitioners in agencies and large organizations over the past few decades have increasingly functioned in a wide variety of nonadministrative managerial roles, acting as case managers, care managers, team leaders, care coordinators, practitioner consultants, clinical specialists, and more (Megivern et. al., 2007). In addition, it has been noted that social workers in private practice are also now immersed in managerial roles in order to both sustain and develop their businesses (Green, Baskind, Mustian, Reed, & Taylor, 2007). Despite these developments, the dual work role of practitioner and manager has been relatively unexplored in the social work literature.
PRACTITIONER–ORGANIZATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS
Direct practice theory in social work has traditionally emphasized the centrality of practitioner–client relationships in the official mission of the profession. Although no one in the field doubts the supreme importance of client-centered practice, theoretical consideration of the organizational context in which such services must be rendered is often lacking in the direct practice literature. Consequently, insufficient attention has been devoted to understanding and mastering the newly emerging role of the practitioner as organizational actor, as participant in the organizing process itself (Gummer, 1987; Specht, 1985). For social workers who are increasingly assuming roles in settings or networks that provide services through the medium of teams, groups, or service delivery networks and systems, little direct practice theory is available to guide them through the matrix of organizational relationships that has steadily come to dominate the practice conditions of the profession (Yan, 2008). Whereas social work managers in official administrative positions have been trained to understand at least the rudiments of the dynamics and workings of organizational life, practitioner–managers have been little prepared for such exposure and often must learn by helter-skelter means how best to ply their trade under the stressful and ever-shifting conditions of organizational politics and bureaucratic games (Grove, 1995). To avoid burnout and workplace fatigue caused by the demands of their newly adopted responsibilities, practitioners must become at least marginally acquainted with the imperatives of organizational practice and managerial work (Grosch & Olsen, 1994).
