Benefits and qualities of groups in human services Final

The Experiences of Human Service Managers in Contexts of Change and Uncertainty Lynelle Wattsa, Michele Schoderb, and David Hodgsona

aSchool of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University, Bunbury, Western Australia, Australia; bSchool of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Bunbury, Western Australia, Australia

ABSTRACT Against a background of rapid and widespread changes to the delivery of human services and social welfare, this paper reports on a study into the experiences of managers of human services organisations. Within an interpretive methodology, the research utilised focus group and interview methods to examine the relevance and need for business, finance, and management skills from the perspective of managers in the human services. Results indicate that managers of human service organisations need advanced business, management, and finance skills to deal with change and uncertainty in contemporary and competitive service environments.

IMPLICATIONS . Human service organisations in Australia are subject to change

and uncertainty with new models of funding and increased accountability.

. Social workers employed as managers are under pressure to lead sustainable and accountable services, while still holding to social work principles.

. Social workers who manage organisations face a challenge of how to integrate business, management, and finance skills with the values and mission of social work.

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 19 July 2017 Accepted 27 November 2017

KEYWORDS Social Work; Human Service Organisations; Management; Neoliberalism

This paper reports on a study into the practices of business, management, and finance skills in human service organisations (HSO) and situates these within a context of rapid and widespread changes to the delivery of human services and social welfare. Human service workers employed as managers are required to possess and demonstrate business skills and knowledge in their work in managing and coordinating human services. This impetus has been building for some time, as many public and not-for-profit services were forecasted for privatisation as far back as the early 1990s (O’Connor & Sacco, 1993) and have since then undergone significant change under the weight of new public management (NPM) (Webber, 2013) and market models in public and not-for- profit institutions (Berands & Crinall, 2014). HSOs operate in a competitive and increas- ingly accountable practice environment (Connell, Fawcett, & Meagher, 2009). What this

© 2018 Australian Association of Social Workers

CONTACT David Hodgson [email protected] Senior Lecturer, School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University, South West Campus, Robertson Drive, Bunbury, WA 6230, Australia

AUSTRALIAN SOCIAL WORK 2018, VOL. 71, NO. 3, 306–318 https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2018.1448093

means for workers with a professional background in clinical practice entering into man- agement and leadership roles is only recently being examined.

The research aim was to understand the role of business, finance, and management skills and knowledge in the delivery and management of HSOs from the perspective of a sample of managers from the South West region of Western Australia, who have a prior background in direct practice with service users. The research question was: What business, financial, and management skills and knowledge are relevant in human service management practice?

Contexts of Change and Uncertainty

Welfare states encompass “ … education, health care, income maintenance, housing, and personal care” (Hills, 2011, p. 590). It is common to discuss welfare as a mixed economy that has four different sectors: public (government institutions), commercial (for-profit enterprises), not-for-profit (charities, self-help groups, faith groups), and informal (friends, families, households) (Brejning, 2016). Many human services in Australia are delivered “at arm’s length [from government] … through largely autonomous and infor- mal charities” (Murphy, 2006, p. 449), while employment and wage arbitration are the main mechanism for delivering universal welfare benefits.

However, the welfare states of many countries have undergone substantial and contin- ual changes over the last 40 years (Healy, 2002), which has been ascribed to the adoption of neoliberalism (Connell et al., 2009) and its impact on service provision and pro- fessionals within these systems (Wallace & Pease, 2011). Connell et al. (2009) described neoliberalism as “the project of economic and social transformation under the sign of the free market” (p. 331). All welfare states across the world bear the brunt of a neoliberal market economy that impacts national options for the arrangement and delivery of ser- vices (Esping-Andersen, 1996; Evans, 2011), such as: reductions in tax; defunding of social programs, particularly universal programs; and, shifting responsibility for welfare service delivery to nongovernment organisations (Abramovitz & Zelnick, 2015). The result has been that the welfare states of many countries have witnessed a diminished funding environment from government, putting pressure on already scarce resources (Abramovitz & Zelnick, 2015; Germak, 2015).

In Australia, this represented a marked change that began as early as the 1970s (Murphy, 2010) and social workers and services have been grappling with these changes since. These arrangements changed further with the opening up of the Australian economy in the 1980s leading to deregulation and downward pressure on wages (Capling, Considine, & Crozier, 1998; Murphy, 2006). Government involvement in welfare delivery (through funding) and noninvolvement (through contracting and outsourcing to not-for- profit providers) significantly changed the Australian welfare landscape (Wright, Marston, & McDonald, 2011).

Acknowledging the operating differences between the private and public sector gave rise to the term new public management (Healy, 2009). With NPM came the adoption of practices from business to the human service sector, heralding a “shift from confor- mance to performance” (Seden, Matthews, McCormick, & Morgan, 2010, p. 18). The adoption of neoliberalism led to the widespread economisation of social life, where the boundaries between state and private capital interests have blurred (Whitehead &

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Crawshaw, 2014, p. 28). A generally accepted concept of neoliberalism as antithetical to the development of a well-resourced and functioning social service sector poses significant challenges for social workers who may seek to creatively resist its impact on social and economic life (Gray, Dean, Agllias, Howard, & Schubert, 2015). Social workers inhabiting these “operating spaces” (Whitehead & Crawshaw, 2014, p. 28) often find themselves in relationships characterised more by commodification than ethics. Whitehead and Crawshaw (2014, p. 29) suggested that “What is being played out and affecting the social and moral substance of organisational existence is the transference of legitimate power from the public sphere into a marketised private domain where capital is the driving force of change”. Marketisation is “the political and socio-economic process whereby whole areas of social life that were once kept beyond the reach of the market by governments have been opened up to market forces” (Wilson, Ruch, Lymbery, & Cooper, 2008 cited in Lawler & Bilson, 2010, p. 12). The effect of these changes is that the Australian welfare sector has had to engage—albeit with reluctance and some resist- ance—the influence of business management practices in the human services.

By the 2000s this trend was well underway in Australia’s mixed welfare economy with the growing emergence of profit-motivated enterprises into what was traditionally a pro- tected not-for-profit sector. The welfare sector experienced increasing government budget rationalisation, changes in funding models, and aggressive competition from new profit- motivated businesses occurring in the context of an ageing and predominately female workforce (Fitzgerald, Rainnie, Goods, & Morris, 2014; Healy & Lonne, 2010). More recent changes include the prevalence of user-pays models of service, and social entrepre- neurialism. Berzin (2012) noted that these models emerge from closer relationships between business and social policy, pointing out that while impacted, social work is largely absent from shaping this development. Yet, Germak and Singh (2009) argued that social work is in a unique position to pursue a “hybrid of social work macro practice principles and business innovation activities” (p. 79). Dees and Anderson (2003, p. 16) contend that there is significant “sector-bending”, which blurs the lines between commer- cial, government, and non-profit enterprises and organisations. In summary, business acumen has become increasingly important to human services managers across the sector.

Human Service Organisations

Given the mixed nature of the sector, it is important to define the kinds of organisations that are in focus here. Hughes and Wearing (2013) suggested that human service organ- isations (HSOs) are typically organised to meet human needs, based in values and morals about what is good and right, authorised by social policies, and measured in relation to interactions between “service users and workers” (p. 14). The Australian human services workforce is diverse in terms of profession and levels of qualifications, because the welfare sector is largely self-regulated, and in some areas unregulated with regard to qualifications. Social work, for example, represents a significant profession within the welfare state because it is one of only three distinctly human service professions that require tertiary qualifications (Healy & Lonne, 2010).

As the welfare sector has had to adapt to the changing environment, so too have human service workers and managers, who are experiencing an increasing need to adapt to business practices in order to compete for funding against commercial for-profit

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enterprises (Germak & Singh, 2009). It is not uncommon for social work managers to be recruited from practice roles, yet uncommon for managers to have undertaken formal postgraduate training in business. In light of this, recent research has begun to explore the transition of practicing social workers into management. Knee (2014) found that social workers who move to management roles face considerable challenges in transition- ing to new roles, such as integrating new perspectives, responsibilities, and skills. Hurst and Hurst (2017) contend that such transitions demand a “paradigm shift” (p. 438) to a different mindset, somewhat removed from the familiar routines of direct practice. Others (Austin, Regan, Gothard, & Carnochan, 2013) proposed a conceptual model for developing a management and leadership identity, one that implies considerable identity work as well as skills development and ongoing reflection and learning.

Yet, business and management concepts and social administration rarely feature in a meaningful way in social work curricula (Gilliam, Chandler, Al-Hajjaj, Mooney, & Vakalahi, 2016). Goldkind and Pardasani (2013) suggest that as the need for social workers with these skills has become more urgent, the numbers of students who express an interest in careers in social administration has fallen. Promoting from within the field can be difficult due to a lack of investment in succession planning as well as the “high level of burnout among supervisory and case management social workers” (Gilliam et al., 2017, p. 334). There is also the question of whether the practice skills of human services professionals, including social workers, is sufficient for general leadership and managerial purposes (Shanks, Lundström, & Bergmark, 2014). It is from within this context that this study is situated.

Methodology

This is an exploratory and interpretive study (Blaikie, 2004) that explores the experiences of human services managers about the role of business, finance, and management skills and knowledge in their practice. Theoretically, the study is placed within a symbolic inter- actionist perspective. It was guided by Blumer’s notions of exploration and inspection (Williams, 2008) and included different but overlapping stages. Exploration refers to the development of familiarity with the topic at hand (Williams, 2008). Familiarity was developed through a number of activities. As a research team we utilised reflexive discus- sion (Gilmore & Kenny, 2015) to explore the different disciplinary knowledges of the topic. This was important as the research team was made up of researchers from both social work and business disciplines. Second, we engaged with literatures from business and social work to build familiarity with ways to conceptualise business, management, and finance skills and knowledge in the human services. Third, we recruited six partici- pants from the human services sector to participate in a single focus group.

Participants in the focus group were asked to discuss and exchange views on the three key concepts in the research question (i.e., business, finance, management). They were also asked to identify and describe what skills and knowledge are indicated in these areas, and second, explore the reasons or contextual drivers for these in their practice and in their organisations. This resulted in data that produced a descriptive account of certain skills and knowledge domains, but also some critical commentary on the nature and context of HSOs generally, such as current tensions, complexities, and uncertainties in practice. Three of these participants completed a follow-up interview on the basis that they had

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expressed particular views considered by the research team as warranting further explora- tion. Given the small sample, the scope of the study is necessarily exploratory, seeking to identify key concepts and points of relevancy that could inform the basis of larger studies.

Participants

Participants were recruited through the networks of the research team based on predeter- mined criteria (Emmel, 2013). These criteria included:

(1) Participants to be employed in an HSO that provides community and social services. HSOs may include government, nongovernment, not-for-profit, and private practice.

(2) Participants to be employed in a management or leadership role where they have sig- nificant responsibility for the organisation’s operations. Examples include director, CEO, coordinator, or manager.

(3) All participants to have at least 5 years professional background working in HSOs in social work, welfare, community work, counselling, or equivalent roles.

The study had institutional university ethics approval and participants gave their consent to participate in writing. Six participants were recruited for the focus group, which was recorded and transcribed. Three individual unstructured qualitative interviews were undertaken with participants who had participated in the focus group. The inter- views averaged 45 minutes and were transcribed. The six—four male and two female— participants represented nongovernment, government, not-for-profit, and for-profit organisations. Participants from the sample were (1) CEO (large NGO), (2) operations manager (government department), (3) team leader (large NGO), (4) private practitioner (manager of private practice), (5 and 6) site managers (from different multisite NGOs). The minimum qualification held by participants was a bachelor’s degree; three of the par- ticipants had a masters qualification. Four were social work qualified and two held quali- fications in a cognate discipline (psychology and theology).

Data Analysis: Inspection

The second aspect of Blumer’s (Williams, 2008, p. 6) phases involves inspection of data collected during the exploration phase. Data included notes from meetings between the research team, transcripts of interview data, and spreadsheets used for coding. All members of the research team were included in the exploration and inspection phases of the research.

Definitions for business, management, and finance were established as part of the exploration phase. Business skills were defined as knowledge aimed at the allocation of resources to achieve specific outcomes for an enterprise (Branagan, 2009). These include strategy, using delegations and authority, sourcing funding, networking, and col- laborating. Management refers to the attainment of organisational goals through: plan- ning, organising, leading and controlling organisational resources (Samson & Daft, 2015). Finance skills are defined as the “art and science of managing money” (Gitman, Juchau, & Jack, 2011, p. 4). This includes making decisions about money and understand- ing and tracking cash flow and its relation to organisational objectives.

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Data analysis proceeded with each team member reading and undertaking open coding (Saldaña, 2012) with the transcripts of the focus group and interviews. The resulting open codes were discussed by the research team. Notes were taken of this discussion and agree- ment was reached on the focus for a second cycle of coding, which included coding for business, management, and finance skills directly. Two team members coded the second stage under these categories and then the whole team met again to discuss the results. The results of the analysis are reported below.

Findings and Discussion

We’re about to undergo some of the most significant changes in the human services in the next 5 years with the introduction of large for profit [services]. (Comment from focus group)

Bring out any graduate of any human services course that is business savvy, they’re going to be in demand. (Comment from focus group)

This section summarises the results by highlighting the skills that participants reported on when asked about business, management, and finance in the context of their management roles in HSOs. Key skills identified as codes from the data are presented in Table 1.

Participants went beyond reporting on the skills in Table 1 and provided information that contextualised these in relation to their work. A summary of the reasons for the skills and the context that drives them are outlined below. The results and discussion are organ- ised under the three main concepts of this study and we consider the implications in relation to other literature.

Business

When asked about what business means in relation to their work and their roles, partici- pants articulated the need to build and maintain effective and well-functioning services. This idea relates back to the concept of business discussed earlier, which concerns orien- tating efforts and resources towards achieving specific outcomes. In this respect, the business impetus here is not so much to create profit, but to meet increasing levels of

Table 1 Concepts of Business, Management and Finance Skills Business Management Finance

Strategic thinking, vision, developing new services

People skills, communication, conflict resolution

Understanding the funding environment

Tender writing, procurement Self-awareness (reflection) Financial planning Understanding governance, legislation Emotional intelligence, social

intelligence Generating and managing financial resources

Working with boards and committees Recruitment skills, staff development and training

Developing and managing budgets

Due diligence, delegations, proper process

OSH knowledge Connecting budgets to strategic purposes

Marketing, networking, collaboration Time management Utilising others’ expertise (finance, administration)

IT skills Flexibility, creativity, adaptability, open- mindedness

Managing change Leadership and innovation

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accountability and to foster organisational functionality, including financial sustainability (Jones & Mucha, 2014) and meeting accreditation standards (Carman & Fredericks, 2013).

Business skills translated to an HSO context include strategic thinking, creating and pursuing a coherent vision, and developing new services and new initiatives. Relatedly, marketing skills, networking, and collaboration with other services and stakeholders were argued as necessary for developing a service focus, and for maintaining a sustainable enterprise in an increasingly competitive environment. For example:

… you’ve also got to understand marketing and work out “what sort of marketing strategy am I going to have, what sort of communication channels am I going to push, what sort of services am I going to develop and who am I going to target these services to and what’s a price point for these particular services?” (Comment from focus group)

The participants noted that a business focus meant skills in “good governance” and an ability to “interpret and apply relevant legislation” to the management and development of services. For example:

… once you start to move into leadership positions, you need to be able to understand business. You need to be able to understand the legal IR [industrial relations] implications in a way we’ve never had to face before. (Interview participant)

At an applied level, this requires abilities to work with Boards and Committees, and to exercise due diligence in following delegations and procedural accountability. The latter was deemed particularly important for human resources (HR) demands that arise from increased casualisation and short-term employment churn. The working life of a social worker seems to be shorter than other health professions (Curtis, Moriarty, & Netten, 2010), and supporting newly qualified workers is essential for promoting “job satisfaction and workforce retention” (Healy, Harrison, & Foster, 2015, p. 8). Hence, in a context of workforce change, skills in managing staff recruitment, retention, and turnover are needed.

Participants also outlined why these business skills are demanded of human service workers in management roles. The rationale concerned the need to be more adaptable, flexible, and responsive to widespread and far reaching changes in the funding and policy environment due to continual uncertainty and change. These changes are the result of the marketisation of the welfare state (Rainnie, Fitzgerald, Gilchrist, & Morris, 2012; Spies-Butcher, 2014), which includes increasing targeted eligibility testing (Garthwaite, Bambra, Warren, Kasim, & Greig, 2014), the transformative influence of neo- liberalism on the state (Spies-Butcher, 2014), and the space–time compression of late modernity (Hughes & Wearing, 2013, p. 51). Participants spoke of the pressure to gain a competitive edge just to maintain financial viability and sustainability of their services and organisations. Further background to this is increased competition, dwindling resources, and increased levels of accountability from funding entities. This includes out- sourcing (Rainnie et al., 2012) and the push for not-for-profit organisations to become more businesslike (Considine, O’Sullivan, & Nguyen, 2014).

Management

When asked about management, participants framed their responses in terms of “people skills”, such as excellence in communication, conflict resolution, and leadership to effec- tively manage workplace conflict and grievances—including managing the many

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industrial problems that are generated by a casualised workforce. Relatedly, participants outlined the place of social and emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and reflection (Lawler & Bilson, 2010) as comprising subsets to communication and management skills. Reflective practice (Fook & Gardner, 2007) and social and emotional intelligence (Morrison, 2007) are attracting increasing interest in the social work and organisational and leadership literature (Cherniss, 2010). One interview participant commented, “I see that in myself or managers around the organisation and the ones who actually have that ability to self-reflect … so the ones who have higher emotional intelligence or self- awareness are much better managers”.

Participants reported that good management demands knowledge and skills in the areas of “occupational health and safety”, “information technology”, and “time manage- ment”. Furthermore, management requires knowledge and skills in “staff recruitment”, and “staff development” and “training”.

It was clear that there was pressure to “manage change, complexity and uncertainty”. For example, “ … it’s so turbulent though and we predict very turbulent times through maybe the next 5 maybe, 10 years. So if our staff can learn anything it’s around change management” (comment from focus group).

Lawler and Bilson (2010) argued that services are under pressure to cope with the uncertainty that is an artefact of widespread organisational transformation amidst the coalescing of “public services and private, corporate, commercial and third sector inter- ests” (Whitehead & Crawshaw, 2014, p. 26). Hence, the ability to be flexible, creative, adaptable, and open-minded was also reported by participants as necessary requisites for good management.

Change and uncertainty places demands on managers and leaders to build a positive, optimistic, and functioning work culture and climate (Schneider, Ehrhart, & MacEy, 2013). Change also requires managers to develop effective and well-functioning systems to meet the demands for sustainability and viability. The context of change was a key force that necessitated strong communication, management, and people skills and was a significant theme overall.

Finance

Finance concerns making decisions about money and resources. It was clear that questions concerning finance exercises considerable mental energy of HSO managers. This is because financial management and accountability occupies a substantial place in the market models underpinning the operations of modern HSOs (Rainnie et al., 2012). At the same time, participants reported that they were neither trained nor adequately pre- pared for what would be demanded of them in comprehending and responding to finan- cial matters in their roles, “ … it’s a massive part of the job, financial management, and I have to admit I had no skills coming into it” (comment from focus group).

Healy (2002) noted that social workers may be excluded from occupying management positions, which is “of concern because it compromises their capacity to exercise pro- fessional leadership and decision-making in the organizations that employ them” (p. 528). Yet, many HSO workers—including social workers—receive little financial man- agement training in their foundational education. Participants had clear views on what financial skills and knowledge are required of managers in HSOs, saying that they

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should at least know how to “develop, read and manage a budget”. It was reported that although HSO managers may utilise the financial expertise of others, they still need finan- cial literacy if they are to action critical financial decisions. Participants contended that HSO managers need to be able to “connect budgets and resource allocation to strategic and operational imperatives”, and engage in concerted “financial planning”—the latter of which demands skills in “understanding the funding environment”. An interview par- ticipant said, “ … in this role you wouldn’t be able to operate if you were really not looking at the bigger organisation and where it sits within a political context and a financial context.”

Sectoral change, funding uncertainty, and high levels of governmental accountability for fiscal reporting were seen as substantial drivers for well-developed financial skills in HSO management and leadership. This need for skills in budgeting has been recognised by the Network for Social Work Managers and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) (Gilliam et al., 2017). The move towards market-based funding models and increasing competition for scarce resources is said to drive imperatives towards organis- ational efficiency and financial sustainability (Fitzgerald et al., 2014; Rainnie et al., 2012). Participants noted the importance of developing an asset and financial base that may be protective during funding shortfalls or changes in policy from different govern- ment and social service priorities. For example:

… we’ll get paid on delivery, we’ll get paid on outcome, and it was said probably 18 to 24 months ago that your best friend in a community organisation is going to be your bank manager, because you’re going to be highly reliant on lines of credit, or you’re going to be looking for for-profits or entities who are going to invest on a guarantee of return. (Interview participant)

This imperative towards asset building and financial surety requires a depth of financial modelling and planning. This responsibility tends to sit within a relationship amongst managers, finance personnel, and (where relevant) boards and committees that provide governance and oversight to services, particularly in the not-for-profit sector.

Conclusion and Implications

Although based on a limited sample, the results indicate that significant sectoral change is creating downward pressure for human service trained professionals in management and leadership roles to develop high level business, finance, and management skills and knowl- edge. This context is driving increased competition and imperatives for organisational and financial sustainability. Although this underscores the importance of adapting and responding to these changes, it signals scope for critical reservations about the move to business models and what this would mean for the forms and functions of HSOs, their operations, missions, and values.

There would be room to develop a deeper engagement with this situation in a more systematic way through social work curricula, practice standards, and supervision. Social work in Australia is accredited by the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW). Yet, the AASW accreditation and practice standards make little mention of business concepts or skills for social work practice (Australian Association of Social Workers, 2012, 2013) and neither do the Standards of Proficiency for Social Work in

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England (Health Care and Professions Council, 2012). Although Gilliam et al. (2017) suggested that social administration and leadership has been taken up in the Social Work Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards in the USA (Council on Social Work Education, 2015), there remain important opportunities for this to be considered in social work curricula in Australia.

At the same time, practice in the not-for-profit and human service sector is demanding new levels of accountability, requiring high levels of business and financial acumen from the existing workforce (Berands & Crinall, 2014). This begs questions about the sort of on- the-job training opportunities to help practitioners transition into management and lea- dership roles. It suggests a potential skills gap, raising questions about what social workers and other human service trained professionals need to transition from practice and clinical roles into service management positions. This training and education needs to go further than instrumental skills development: it should support managers and leaders to explicitly engage with the tensions between business and social work values and norms, through supervision and ongoing continuing professional education (CPE), for example. Social work has long maintained a critique of the effects of neoliberal capit- alism, and is critical of the appropriation of business concepts and values to human service work. The implications are that HSO managers with a social work identification may be practicing in a highly contested field, trying to balance competing values, priorities, and imperatives (Shanks et al., 2014). Finally, as this is an exploratory study with a limited sample, the results are indicative rather than generalisable. Further research should explore the implications of transitioning into management roles, the implications for edu- cation and professional development, and how and in what ways social workers are mana- ging these competing demands as they acquire new skills and knowledge.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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