Organisational justice and emotion among social workers: an exploration of the lived experience of child and family social workers

There is still much to learn about what it means to be a child and family social worker. Child and family social workers have a job that often entails making difficult decisions regarding vulnerable children and families in collaboration with other professionals, under stressful conditions in an increasing cost-restrictive climate and with diminishing resources. The lived experience of these social workers has been rarely researched and is poorly understood. Using primarily a deductive qualitative approach, seventeen Scottish social workers were interviewed by employing the framework of ‘organisational justice’. The organisational justice framework is mostly used quantitatively and was converted to a qualitative interview schedule in order to gain further insight as to the experience of the social workers. The advantages of using the organisational justice framework in a qualitative way is that it allows for a deeper analysis of people’s experience within their agency. With regards to the social work profession, analysis of the field data allowed for insight into the organisational elements that are primary influences on a social worker’s working life. Utilising a secondary, more inductive approach, emotions experienced by the respondents also emerged. The results suggest that social workers experience a range of emotions that have been under-explored. The results also offer a deeper understanding of where these emotions stem from because not only are they due to personal experiences, they are also the product of working in a profession that is regarded with ambivalence by the public, unlike other ‘people’ professions that are generally the subject of admiration such as nursing. The research has shown that an organisational justice framework can be used to access qualitative perspectives as well as quantitative ones. Above all, this research concludes that there are aspects of the lived experience of child and family social work practitioners that have hitherto been underexamined and need to be fully understood in order to ensure best practice. Areas of impact for education, practice and policy are discussed at the end. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures and Tables 11 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 12 1.1 Introduction 12 A note on terminology 16 1.1.1 – Context 16 1.2 Overview of the Problem and How it will be Addressed 17 1.3 – Statistical Information and Staffing Levels 22 1.4 – Surveys of Social Workers – Morale and Other Issues 27 1.5 – Public Perceptions of Social Work 33 1.6 Conclusion 36 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 39 2.1 Introduction 39 2.2 The Search 39 2.3 The Growth and Development of Local Authority Social Work: History, Responsibilities and rise of Managerialist Culture 44 2.3.1 History 44 2.3.2 Legal Responsibilities 50 2.3.3 Scottish Reports 52 2.3.4 21st Century Local Authorities: The Rise of Managerialism 55 2.4 Organisational Justice: The Concept 63 2.4.1 Distributive Justice 66 2.4.2 Procedural Justice 66 2.4.3 Interactional Justice 68 Interpersonal Justice 68 Informational Justice 69 2.5 Organisational Justice and Social Work 70 2.6 Lived Experience, Child Protection and Organisational Justice 73 2.7 Conclusion 78 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN, METHODOLOGY AND METHODS 81 3.1 Introduction 81 3.2 Epistemology and Ontological Position 82 3.3 Research Questions 83 3.4 Reflexivity 86 3.4.1 Myself as a Researcher 87 3.4.2 – Insider and Outsider Research 90 3.5 Methodology 93 3.5.1 Methodological Standpoint 93 3.5.2 Validity and Reliability 95 3.5.3 Ethical Considerations 97 3.6 Research Location 99 3.6.1 Physical Context 99 Local Authority A 100 Local Authority B 102 3.6.2 The Role of the Child and Family Social Worker 104 3.6.3 Access 105 3.6.4 Units of Analysis and Sampling 106 3.7 Data Collection 109 3.7.1 Methods 109 From Quantitative to Qualitative – Development of the Interview Schedule 111 Conducting the Interviews 115 3.8 Data Management 116 3.8. 1 Recording 116 3.8. 2 Transcription 117 3.9 Analysis 118 3.9. 1 Analytical Approach 119 3.9. 2 Process of Analysis 121 Analysis of Organisational Justice 123 Analysis of Emotion 125 The Missing Positive Emotions 126 Coding 128 3.10 Conclusion 129 CHAPTER 4 – ORGANISATIONAL JUSTICE 131 4.1 Introduction 131 4.2 – Distributive Justice 133 4.2.1 – Pay 133 4.2.2 – Training and Other Rewards 136 Time Off and Holidays 139 Reward Scheme 140 4.2.3 – Status 143 4.2.4 – Recognition of Stress 146 4.3 – Procedural Justice 151 4.3.1 – Involvement in Decision Making Procedures 151 4.3.2 – Contributions from Social Workers 152 4.3.3 – Development of Role 154 4.3.4 – Perception of Routine Organisational Procedures 156 4.4 – Informational Justice 159 4.4.1 – Communication 160 4.4.2 – Transparency and Accuracy of Information 162 4.4.3 – Induction 163 4.5 – Interpersonal Justice 164 4.5.1 – Praise 166 4.5.2 – Interpersonal Treatment 167 4.5.3 – Relationships 169 Peers 170 Supervision 171 The Council 172 4.6 – Conclusion and Reflections 173 CHAPTER 5 – EMOTIONS AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCE 177 5.1 Introduction 177 5.2 Literature on Emotions 179 5.2.1 Emotions 179 5.2.2 Emotional Labour, Management and Intelligence 181 5.2.3 Emotions and Organisational Justice 184 5.2.4 Emotions and Social Work 186 5.2.5 Social Work Students and Emotions 190 5.2.6 Reason and Emotion 192 5.2.7 The Dichotomy of Reason and Emotion 194 5.2. 8 Guilt and Shame 197 Guilt 199 Shame 200 5.3 – Shame as it Presented in the Interviews 203 5.3.1 In Self 204 5.3.2 With the Profession 207 5.3.3 By Other Professions 208 5.3.4 By Society 211 5.4 – Guilt as it Presented in the Interviews 213 5.4.1 Workload 213 5.4.2 Clients 214 5.4.3 Guilt of Not Being Able to Cope 215 5.5 Anxiety 217 5.5.1 Related to Sense of Self 217 5.5.2 Related to Interactions with Others and the Local Authority 218 5.5.3 Related to Clients 219 5.6 Other Emotions and Feelings 220 5.7 Reflections 222 5.7.1 As a PhD Student and early researcher 222 5.7.2 As a Social Worker 225 5.8 Conclusion 227 CHAPTER 6 DISCUSSION 231 6.1 Introduction 231 6.2 – Emotions, Organisational Justice and Social Work 232 6.2.1 Emotions and organisations 239 6.3 Social Work as ‘Dirty Work’ 241 6.4 Dirty Work and Shame 246 6.5 – Conclusion 248 CHAPTER 7 – CONCLUSIONS 250 7.1 – Introduction 250 7.2 Key Findings 251 7.2.1 The Methodological Insight of the Organisational Justice Framework 251 7.2.2 The Organisational Justice Framework and the Lived Experience 252 7.2.3 Emotions and the Lived Experience 252 7.3 – The Contribution to Knowledge 253 7.3.1 Methodological 254 7.3.2 Conceptual 255 7.3.3. Applied 256 7.4 Practical Implications Arising From the Research 256 7.4.1 – Implications for Training and Education of Social Workers 256 7.4.2 – Implications for Practice 258 7.4.3 – Implications for Policy 260 7.5 – Reflections 261 7.6 Limitations and Future Research 263 7.7 Concluding Remarks 267