Social Work Agencies: Adopt the Business Model at Your Peril
by Mimi Abramovitz, DSW, MSW, and Jennifer R. Zelnick, MSW, ScD
What is changing in your workplace? Do you have less time for the people you work with, new requirements for reporting, less time with your supervisor? Has your job changed from a full-time staff position to fee-for-service? If so, you may be experiencing the effects of a trend toward using the business model (or, “managerialism”) in U.S. human service agencies. Our new study, recently published online in the journal Social Work, reports on this troubling trend.
As professors of social work in New York City, we developed an anonymous online survey in collaboration with five major organizations, including the New York City chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. More than 3,200 NYC human service workers responded – making the survey the largest of its kind to date in a major U.S. city. Given the large response, the many unsolicited comments, and the diversity of frontline respondents, we knew we had hit a nerve.
Respondents were 80% women and nearly 50% people of color. They worked for both nonprofit and public sector organizations and different types of agencies, including health, mental health, child welfare, substance use, and homelessness. Whereas other studies have focused on social welfare programs and client outcomes, few have drawn, as our study does, on the voices and experiences of frontline workers.
Regardless of agency focus or worker demographics, respondents reported many problems with managerialism. They identified pressure to be more productive (e.g., “getting more done in the same amount of time”), accountable (e.g., “too much reliance on quantifiable performance measures”), and efficient (e.g., “need to increase numbers of people seen”). Respondents were especially troubled by the focus on performance outcomes versus outcomes most important to clients, and the routinization of practice that eroded the trust in the client-worker relationships. Some felt they were providing “cookie cutter services.”
What difference does it make?
We found that managerialism in human service agencies profoundly affects service delivery and the well-being of workers. Using a “commitment to managerialism” scale we created, we learned that the greater an agency’s commitment to managerialism, the more problems workers reported about client access to services and workers’ abilities to fully respond to complex client needs.
Equally troubling was the impact on the workers themselves. The greater the commitment to managerialism, the more burnout, ethical dilemmas, and turnover reported. High quality services depend on the capacities and engagement of workers; that social workers in this study reported less job satisfaction, retention, and staff well-being places high quality services at risk.
Despite these difficult outcomes, workers believed that their work made important contributions to society. The study also identified a path forward: agencies reporting low commitment to the business model did much better -- workers and managers in these agencies reported a higher commitment to social work’s mission, fewer workforce issues, and better service delivery.
Most human service agencies seek to deliver high quality services. Most social workers prefer to work efficiently and to account for their successes. At the same time, we uncovered a serious tension between the logic of the market (the business model) and the logic of social work (our values and mission). This study challenges our profession to pay more attention to the voices of the human service workforce and to mobilize the profession to critique the business model. Social workers can further strengthen trusting relationships with clients and fight for services that promote quality care, social justice, and social change.
Mimi Abramovitz, DSW, MSW, is Bertha Capen Reynolds Professor of Social Policy, Silberman School of Social Work, Hunter College. CUNY, and the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the author of Regulating the Lives of Women: Social Welfare Policy from Colonial Times to the Present.
Jennifer Zelnick, MSW, ScD, is Professor and Social Welfare Policy Chair, Touro College Graduate School of Social Work. She holds an MSW in community organizing and planning, and a doctorate in public health. Her work focuses on the health and well-being of health and human service workers in the U.S. and South Africa.