BJSW Advance Access published online on April 7, 2008
British Journal of Social Work, doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcn036
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Effectiveness of Welfare Organizations: The Contribution of Leadership Styles, Staff Cohesion, and Worker Empowerment
Amnon Boehm is Associate Professor and Chair of Community Practice in the School of Social Work, University of Haifa, Israel. His recent research projects are in the areas of community resilience, social marketing, community practice intervention in crisis situations, community and organizational leadership, and social involvement of citizens, businesses and academia. Amno Boehm also leads a research group that is exploring the involvement of the civil society in emergencies.Nir Yoels holds a master's degree in community organizations and management from the School of Social Work at Haifa University, Israel. His fieldwork specializations included groups, families and individual therapy. He currently works at a community mental health clinic and at a family therapy center for children at risk.
Correspondence to Amnon Boehm, Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Faculty of Welfare and Health Sciences, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. Email: aboehm{at}research.haifa.ac.il
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Abstract |
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Numerous recent studies reveal the contribution of leadership and leadership style, in particular, to effectiveness in different organizations (Sosik et al., 1998; Ogbnna and Harris, 2000; Hoyt and Blascovich, 2003; Hullinger, 2003; Berson and Avolio, 2004), including the field of welfare organizations (Gummer, 1995; Arches, 1997; Fisher, 2005; Mary, 2005). These publications suggest a preference for the transformational, compared with the transactional, leadership style. However, the studies reviewed do not examine the contribution of organizational leadership compared with other aspects of organizational life. Using the previous studies as its point of departure, the present research examines the contribution of the leadership styles of the directors in welfare departments to the effectiveness of the social workers in these organizations. However, it also undertakes another task, by comparing the contribution of leadership style to effectiveness with that of staff cohesion and social worker empowerment. Thus, the findings and discussion presented in this paper compare the respective contributions of three central levels of the organization to effectiveness—the administrative level (director's leadership styles), the staff level (staff cohesion), and the individual level of the social worker (worker empowerment). The research examines this issue in a public welfare department in Israel.
Keywords: Effectiveness, welfare organizations, leadership styles, cohesiveness, empowerment