Practitioners as Managers: The Need for Theory

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 (Megivem 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 (Yah, 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). THEORY FOR ORGANIZATION PRACTICE Management theorists have for many years sought to prepare fledgling managers in industry and commerce for the demands of their roles (Drucker, 1985; Grove, 1995). One of the earliest and most famous of these theorists was a social worker, Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), now deemed the mother of modern management (Linden, 1995). Follett's writings on such topics as power, authority, conflict, cooperation, decision making, and leadership can still be read with profit by social workers today (Fox & Urwick, 1973). At present, the profession has ceased to be interested in producing anything resembling management theory for direct practitioners. Social work thought on management is addressed principally to social work administrators or students preparing for this area of practice. Since general management theory is today primarily commercially or administratively oriented, it is consequently ignored by social workers in direct practice because this type of information is identified primarily as business- and not service-oriented theory. Because of this perception, it appears that none of these sources of ideas is deemed useful by educators training social workers for direct practice roles (Green et al., 2007). In this article, I briefly review some of the seminal work of management theorist Henry Mintzberg to illustrate how his work can help social workers better understand the role requirements of practitioner-managers in direct practice settings. MINTZBERG ON MANAGING Henry Mintzberg, professor of management at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, has written about management and organizational issues for over 30 years. …