Knowledge Management

Austin, Michael J.; Claassen, Jennette; Vu, Catherine M.; Mizrahi, Paola

doi:10.1300/j394v05n01_13

Cited by 28 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The concept of knowledge management is novel and remains largely unexplored and underutilized in the public sector [27]. Furthermore, knowledge management is especially neglected as a research topic in the field of social work [17,62,63]. Similarly, the aspect of social sustainability has gained inadequate attention and recognition in previous studies [3,4].…”

Section: Theoretical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We particularly advise managers to actively support and engage in creating and maintaining a supportive workplace environment where employees are motivated to apply and implement knowledge in their work [101]. A clearly defined incentive structure [62,102] typically encourages employees to participate in knowledge management activities. Therefore, social work centers could change their human resource management practices towards more knowledge-based compensation.…”

Section: Practical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As our population is ageing, it is also extremely important to engage more young people to choose the social work profession and enter the educational process. Similarly, important to the success of knowledge management is clear and active communication of expectations and benefits related to knowledge management [62]. Therefore, we would encourage delivering strong messages from management [104].…”

Section: Practical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite knowledge management being of paramount importance, though, the academic research of knowledge management in the public sector is still in its nascent stage [39]. Knowledge and understanding about knowledge management in social work in particular is scarce [62,63]. Furthermore, authors [26] argue that the public sector research on knowledge management is clearly fragmented, typically being dominated by unrelated research in the education and research sectors.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The primary goal of our study is to contribute to the underdeveloped literature about knowledge management in the public sector [26] and especially in social work settings [62,63]. The intent of our paper is to partially fill this gap with a theoretical analysis followed by an empirical examination that links knowledge management and social work by considering the positive effects of knowledge management on the availability of skilled social workers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Knowledge Management and the Sustainable Development of Social Work

2019

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The growing shortage of skilled social workers, accompanied by an ageing population and the increasing number of fragile, elderly individuals that require social services, poses a serious challenge for our society. The magnitude of this problem is seen in the various predictions hypothesizing that, globally, there is likely to be a shortfall of millions of social workers for the successful provision of social services. To make matters worse, there are not enough social work students to fill that void, whereas the existing employee turnover is another serious concern for the social work field. Policy makers in many countries do not yet understand the pattern of growing needs and have no tool to forecast the future increase in educational requirements for creating a pool of adequately skilled social workers. In addition to this, understanding the patterns of workforce entrance and exit for social workers and the dynamics of transition becomes important for national policy and decision makers. In our paper, we build on current research about knowledge management in social work settings to demonstrate that knowledge management can have a positive impact in helping to fulfil the important role of social work in any ageing society. With our research, we contribute to the underdeveloped literature about knowledge management in the public sector and especially in social work settings and to the knowledge-based view of the organization. We present a multiple decrement model of social workers’ entrance and transition from social work student and social worker trainee to fully productive social worker, to their exit, whether by changed profession, retirement or death. We argue that the availability of social workers in a national economy depends on the development and operationalization of appropriate policies, where knowledge management can be influential. Our model allows measuring the quality of the national policy system related to the social work profession, something which has not been achieved yet, and shows how knowledge management solutions can positively influence the whole field of social work. We apply an objective measuring tool, grounded in an already developed actuarial–mathematical method. Our case relies on the collection and analysis of relevant data found in publicly available statistical reports for Slovenia. Existing data enables us to provide assumptions on how to better forecast the transition of social workers.

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