Associate Professor Corey Shdaimah, PhD and Bethan McGarry, (MSW '17) have a new paper published in British Journal of Social Work, that explores how social workers maneuver within the challenging landscape of service delivery to achieve better outcomes for clients. They apply the concepts of moral entrepreneurship and street-level bureaucracy to three case studies to illustrate how social workers meet organizational mandates while maintaining personal and professional integrity.
These case studies demonstrate how social workers can and should utilize discretion to further the interests of clients, to resist structures that undercut these interests when necessary and to act in accordance with their professional ethics.
More details can be found at Shdaimah, C. & McGarry, B. (2018). Social workers’ use of moral entrepreneurship to enact professional ethics in the field: Case studies from the social justice profession. British Journal of Social Work, 48(1), 21-36.