Abstract:
Research into and conceptualisation of leadership and management in New Zealand social service organisations from the unique Treaty perspective in service delivery is currently limited. I argue that integrating management and social work as two semi-professions (Etzioni, 1969) from the perspective of the Treaty creates a unique construct of leadership and management exercised in social services. The project draws from diverse elements including ‘new public management;’ social anthropological notions of culture; organisation and management understandings of cultural change management; systems approaches to professional leadership actions; organisations as living organisms; change as unpredictable. The research aims to develop a model of leading cultural change for social service organisations in New Zealand using a case study on Barnardos. Transformational change in a ‘turbulent environment’ (Dooley, 1997) is a prime reality for practitioners functioning in formal or peer-recognised leadership positions. The project’s distinctive approach derives from its examination of leadership actions and management of culture change–common enough–but within a New Zealand-specific social work conceptualisation of leadership and management never before attempted. The knowledge gap it thus seeks to fill is professionally validated by the International Federation of Social Work’s (IFSW) recognition in 2004 that management is a ‘core purpose’ of social work. By identifying and analysing leadership processes initiated in Barnardos, research findings potentially offer social service professionals a ‘road map’ of how one entity carried out a change programme.
