文献类型：期刊文献

中文题名：理事会治理能促进社会工作机构的政策倡导实践吗?——基于727家社会工作机构的实证研究

英文题名：Can Council Governance Promote Policy Advocacy in Social Work Organizations?:An Empirical Study Based on 730 Social Service Organizations in China

作者：张天真[1];费梅苹[1]

机构：[1]华东理工大学社会工作系,上海200030

年份：2022

期号：6

起止页码：59

中文期刊名：社会工作

外文期刊名：Journal of Social Work

收录：国家哲学社会科学学术期刊数据库

语种：中文

中文关键词：社会组织;政策倡导;自我管理;理事会;政府支持

摘要：政策倡导是社会工作专业实现宏观使命的方式之一,但针对政策倡导的实证研究并不多见。本文通过构建“外部环境—自我管理—行为”模型,对中国727家社会工作机构进行实证分析发现:(1)我国社会工作机构的政策倡导行为并没有显现地域差异,而存在机构注册级别、倡导路径和层级的分异;(2)理事会治理显著影响政策倡导,具有更高理事会治理水平的社会工作机构在政策倡导上表现更积极;(3)政府支持对理事会治理和政策倡导的关系具有调节作用,提升政府支持能够强化理事会对政策倡导的正面影响。研究结论为增强对社会工作机构宏观实践的整体性理解、促进政策倡导的践行提供了启鉴。
Social work has long been committed to policy advocacy for disadvantaged groups,but the academic community still expresses concerns about whether social work has moved away from this historic mission.To respond to these concerns,this article plans to explore the involvement of Chinese social work organizations in policy advocacy and how organizational self-management and the government support received shape policy advocacy behavior.Based on the literature review,we found that the factors affecting policy advocacy mainly include internal context and external support.To integrate these two perspectives,based on Scott’s open systems theory,we further construct an“external environment-self-management-behavior”model to explain the policy advocacy behavior of social work agencies.The respondents of this study are social work organizations,and the data used are from the China Social Work Longitudinal Study(CSWLS)initiated by the East China University of Science and Technology in 2019.It covers 22 provinces in China and uses a multi-stage random sampling method to randomly select social work organizations from a list of registered social work organizations in the sample cities as survey respondents.We first conducted descriptive statistics on policy advocacy behaviors of social work agencies,reflecting their distribution across pathways,spaces,and domains.A general linear regression model(OLS)was then used to estimate the relationship between council governance,government support,and policy advocacy behaviors of social work agencies.Finally,we test the moderating effect of government support on the relationship between councils and policy advocacy by constructing an interaction term between government support and council governance.The findings are as follows:first,more than 2/3 of social work organizations can participate in policy advocacy practice,and there is no significant geographical difference in policy advocacy among social work organizations in China,but there are differences in the registration level,advocacy path and advocacy level of organizations.Second,council governance significantly influences policy advocacy.Social work agencies with higher levels of council governance are more active in policy advocacy.This also suggests that the better the social work agency’s self-management,the easier it is to carry out policy advocacy behaviors.Third,government support moderates the relationship between board governance and policy advocacy.Among organizations with the same level of board governance,those with more government support exhibit more policy advocacy behaviors,The positive effect of board support on policy advocacy is enhanced by increased government support.Specifically,when the level of government support is high,council governance performance has a facilitating effect on policy advocacy;when the level of government support is average,the impact of council governance performance on policy advocacy is not significant;when the level of government support is very low,council governance performance hurts advocacy.Thus,enhancing government support has the positive effect of councils on policy advocacy enhanced.In the local Chinese context,the development of social work organizations is to some extent shaped by the official grand narrative and political discourse.Social work agencies currently receive most of their funding from the government,which leads organizations to become increasingly dependent on the government and may abandon part of their macro mission in order to continue to receive government investment and Institutional conveniences.Based on the empirical analysis,this study finds that social work organizations in the governmentsociety relationship are not only passive“policy receivers”,but also regain their macro missions in the process of taking over the public service functions transferred by the government and strengthening themselves.Gradually,they have grown into“policy advocates”.This shows that social work organizations,as important participants in social governance,are progressively using their professional autonomy to promote the reconfiguration of power and responsibility and boundary adjustment in the relationship between government and society.At the same time,we can also see that the government’s cooperation with social organizations in the process of governance is not intended to undermine the autonomy of social organizations,but to provide benign support for their development,and thus bring more active policy advocacy.The theoretical contribution of this study is that it attempts to propose an analytical framework that integrates two perspectives of internal organizational context and external government support,based on Scott’s open systems theory,for analyzing policy advocacy in social work organizations.At the practical level,the findings of this paper enrich the empirical research on social work macro-practices in China and provide a reference for the debate on government support and policy advocacy in academic circles.The development of social work organizations cannot be achieved without favorable support from the government.Therefore,when examining the macro policy practices of social work organizations,we should not only confine ourselves to the organization itself or its internal elements,but also make a comprehensive judgment in conjunction with the institutional environment in which the organization is located.At the same time,as the main body of policy advocacy,social work organizations should further improve their self-management level,and effectively play the management and supervision responsibilities of the board of directors for the organization’s mission,goals,personnel,finance and other items,To enable the organization to identify better,solve and respond to real problems in practice.