Identifying Implicit Rules in Social Work Agencies for the Exploration of Measures to Promote Efficiency of Social Work Practice

사회복지실천의 효율성 증대방안 모색을 위한 사회복지기관의 '숨은 규칙' (implicit rules) 찾기

This discovery-oriented study explored 31 social workers' perceptions of discrepancies between explicit and implicit rules in their work places that are supposed to affect the quality of social work services, and identified eight categories of dilemmas: (a) confused accountability or purpose, (b) ambiguous principle, (c) improper authority, (d) confused role of social workers, (e) conflict between ideal and reality, (f) confused work ethics, (g) confused boundary of workers' rights, and (h) binds. These eight categories revealed the real philosophy and purposes of social work agencies, work ethics and values prevalent among social work agencies, agencies' orientation toward clients, and the conditions of social support from the society in large. Instead of searching for discrete variables as separately responsible for inefficient social work services, this approach probed malfunctioning implicit rules in a holistic context to see if inefficient or ineffective provision of social work services is a logical response to a much larger and deeper nexus. Insight into discrepant rules does not solely ensure the improvement of social work practice in the field, particularly if their identification is simply used as another opportunity to blame and avoid self-responsibility. However, such discrepancies between implicit and explicit rules are real enough to the staff workers and agency administrators that they may want to begin the dialogue of contradictory rules as a way of sanctioning discussion of previously forbidden topics. This study provided the ground-work for the dialogue.