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This is the published version of a paper published in Nordic Social Work Research.

Citation for the original published paper (version of record): Welander, J., Astvik, W., Isaksson, K. (2018)

Exit, silence and loyalty in the Swedish social services – the importance of openness

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https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2018.1489884

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Exit, silence and loyalty in the Swedish social

services – the importance of openness

Jonas Welander, Wanja Astvik & Kerstin Isaksson

To cite this article: Jonas Welander, Wanja Astvik & Kerstin Isaksson (2018): Exit, silence and loyalty in the Swedish social services – the importance of openness, Nordic Social Work Research, DOI: 10.1080/2156857X.2018.1489884

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2018.1489884

© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Published online: 02 Jul 2018.

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Exit, silence and loyalty in the Swedish social services – the

importance of openness

Jonas Welandera, Wanja Astvika,band Kerstin Isakssona

aDepartment of Psychology, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden;bDepartment of Psychology, Stockholm

University, Stockholm, Sweden

ABSTRACT

The advent of New Public Management in Sweden has affected the social services in terms of increased workload, more conflicting demands and a reduction in professional autonomy. This study contributes to the understanding of how various job demands, job resources and the organisational factor of openness influence the exit, silence and loyalty strategies amongst social workers and managers in the Swedish social services. Regression analyses of national web questionnaire data gath-ered from 4,068 social workers and 432 managers have revealed that: (1) role conflicts associated positively with exit and negatively with loyalty, (2) job autonomy was negatively related to silence and positively related to loyalty in both groups, (3) openness had a high explanatory value in all of the outcome variables for both groups and (4) openness was a potential mediator between role conflicts and all of the dependent variables. A conclusion is that if organisations want social workers and managers to stop considering exit, want to counteract silence and want to improve loyalty, management strategies need to be developed that reduce the conflicting demands and create organisational structures that facilitate a continuous and open dialogue between the strategic and operational levels of the organisation.

KEYWORDS

Social work; intention to exit; silence; loyalty; openness

Introduction

Being able to express opinions about service quality and working conditions deficiencies as a social worker or manager in the Swedish social services should be a matter of course due to the strong legal protection in Swedish public organisations for freedom of expression. However, there is reason to believe that fundamental democratic values (e.g. openness, discussion, reciprocity and responsibility) increasingly are displaced in the Swedish public management in favour of economic values, which could counteract an open dialogue between different levels in the organisations (Lundquist2001,

2013) and, arguably, have detrimental consequences for staff retention and service quality. This study sets out to explore the importance of perceived openness in the organisation in relation to more traditional psychosocial job demands and resources for Swedish social workers’ and managers’ intention to exit, silence and loyalty in terms of organisational commitment.

In recent decades the public sector in Sweden and in other European countries has undergone comprehensive reforms with a strong emphasis on economic values. These reforms have largely been attributed to New Public Management (NPM). NPM has been described as a management system that focuses on measurable performance, internal markets and increased standardisation (Hood1991; Pollit and Bouckaert2004). Efforts to create a more distinct hierarchical leadership

CONTACTJonas Welander jonas.welander@mdh.se

https://doi.org/10.1080/2156857X.2018.1489884

© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

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structure and a decentralised distribution of responsibility for results and expenses have also been associated with an increase in work demands without adequate resources for handling them (Audit Commission2008; Astvik, Melin, and Allvin2014; Chandler et al.2015; Conley, Kerfoot, and Thornley 2011; Hellgren et al. 2003; HäRenstam 2005; Shanks, Lundström, and Wiklund

2015). Research has further indicated that these changes have negatively affected job satisfaction and that a high incidence of work-related stress is a common phenomenon in the Swedish social service sector (Aronsson, Astvik, and Gustafsson2014; Blomberg et al.2015; Welander, Astvik, and Hellgren2017).

Social work has become a quasi-business with a new focus on customer services, cost-e ffec-tiveness and performance standards (Abramovitz and Zelnick2015; Heffernan2006). The gradual degradation of professional autonomy where the organisational governance makes the workforce to adopt a more mechanical approach to delivering social services (e.g. the focus is on increased documentation and more concern for budgets and efficiency in terms of quantity) and has led to social workers migrating to other jobs within the employing organisation or to other organisations (Welander, Astvik, and Isaksson2017). In the Swedish context, the statutory social workers are now drawing attention to the difficult work conditions, the extensive staff turnover and greater incidences of sick-leave (Swedish Social Insurance System 2015; Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions 2016). Although the implications of the NPM ideology for the social services and its organisational leadership have been addressed in the work life research in Sweden (HöJer and Forkby2011; Lauri2016; Shanks, Lundström, and Wiklund2015; Welander, Astvik, and Hellgren2017; Welander, Astvik, and Isaksson2017), the potential effects of NPM on social workers’ and managers’ attitudes and behaviour, such as exit, silence and loyalty, have so far been very limited. To understand what may predict these action strategies, the different psychosocial and organisational factors that the social workers and managers are exposed to need be addressed, especially as they are largely related to public sector management and governance.

Recent research in Sweden has shown that the possible consequenses of NPM on social services are an increased workload, more conflicting demands and a reduced professional autonomy (Astvik, Melin, and Allvin2014; Astvik and Melin 2012; Welander, Astvik, and Isaksson2017). Reports of more demanding work conditions are also confirmed by a number of studies from other countries (Coffey, Dugdill, and Tattersall2009; Lizano and Mor Barak2015; Mänttäri-Van Der Kuipa 2014). Public organisations’ generous use and focus on standardised systems for monitoring and control have seemingly diluted the essence of welfare work (Audit Commission

2002; Burton and Van Den Brock2009; Munro2004), which could mean that the professionals’ needs and requirements remain in the background and the voices of managers and social workers are ignored. A recent study (Shanks, Lundström, and Wiklund 2015) of managers in the social services has shown that they experience an increase in administrative tasks, increased financial responsibility and less administrative support as a result of conducting leadership in accordance with the logic of NPM. The study further showed that the increased number of administrative tasks resulted in less strategic planning of activities together with social workers (Shanks, Lundström, and Wiklund 2015). The increased emphasis on organisational professionalism at the expense of occupational professionalism (Evetts 2003) also means that objectives, tasks, norms, values and quality are defined and controlled by the organisation, rather than the profession. Several studies have shown that the tension between organisational and occupational professionalism in social work has created difficult ethical conflicts in the everyday work situation and led to moral stress (Astvik, Melin, and Allvin2014; Blomberg and Dunér2015; Burton and Van Den Brock2009; Mänttäri-Van Der Kuipa2014; Welander, Astvik, and Hellgren2017).

Previous research on the working conditions in the social services has focused more on the importance of psychosocial factors (i.e., the individual’s perceptions of the work situation) for various outcomes and less on the psychological climate, which has been conceptualised as individual perceptions of organisational practices and procedures relating to organisational influences on individual performance, satisfaction and motivation (Baltes 2001). Kuenzi and

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Schminke (2009) concluded that psychological climate perceptions are often linked to individual-level attitudinal outcomes, such as organisational commitment and turnover intentions.

In this study, the psychological climate factor of interest is openness. Openness can be defined as an organisational norm that promotes an openflow of information (Eisenberg and Witten1987), where opinions and ideas are able to be discussed and evaluated rather than dismissed out of hand (Luijters, Van Der Zee, and Otten2008; Patterson et al.2005). The construct of openness included in this study is used to capture the social workers’ and managers perceived possibilities to express their opinions about service quality and working conditions deficiencies and also to discern whether or not their criticism has been heard or addressed. Recent research has empirically demonstrated that openness can be seen as a mediating psychological climate factor for attitudes towards diversity and the exchange of knowledge amongst employees (Hofhuis, Van Der Rijt, and Vlug 2016). Previous empirical studies have shown that role conflicts lead to social workers’ burnout, lack of organisational commitment, low satisfaction with pay, co-workers’ and managers’ poor performances and job stress (Guterman and Jayaratne1994; Jaskyte2008; Jones1993; Mikkelsen, Osgard, and Lovrich2000). If role conflicts are an inevitable aspect of social work and enhanced by contradictory logics of professionalism, openness in the organisation could be a key to understanding how exposure to role conflicts is related to negative outcomes, especially as openness increases employees possibilities to ventilate divergent views (Hofhuis, Van Der Rijt, and Vlug 2016) about which roles that are perceived as conflicting. However, more research is needed to better understand the significance of openness and its potential mediating role between role conflicts and exit, silence and loyalty.

Exit, silence and loyalty

This study is inspired by the typology found in Hirschman’s (1970) classical theory of‘Exit, voice and loyalty’ (EVL), and not the theory itself. In general, a typology serves to simplify and order various empirical data on a particular phenomenon so that the data then can be compared (McKinney1966). In this study, the EVL typology is used to order three various ways in which social workers and managers in the Swedish social services react to different circumstances at work. The concept of voice is replaced by the concept of silence, which will be described in more detail below.

Exit primarily refers to employees’ choosing to exit, or leave their employment, but also includes their intentions to exit, which Rusbult et al. (1988) summarise as a psychological distancing from one’s work. An intention to exit may not always lead to this particular action, although it has been shown that psychological distancing has a negative impact on both performance and organisational commitment (Taylor, Audia, and Gupta1996; Zhao et al.2007). In research on the exit of social workers, a meta-analysis of American social workers showed that a lack of professional and organisational commitment, emotional exhaustion, work-related stress and low social support were all associated with intentions to quit (Kim and Kao2014). Furthermore, quantitative demands showed a relatively strong positive association with turnover intention, while job autonomy had a relatively strong negative association with this outcome variable (Kim and Kao 2014). When it comes to actual turnover, social workers who did exit were dissatisfied with the organisation’s ability to fulfil its promises of a balance between demands and resources at work, a balance between efforts and rewards, organisational professional ethics and responsible human resource practices (Welander, Astvik, and Isaksson 2017). Other studies have highlighted that social workers who contemplate exiting because they are discontent with management practices and have alternative employment options actually do exit (De Panfilis and Zlotnik2008; Webb and Carpenter2012).

As stated above, voice is replaced by silence, which refers to employees choosing not to voice their concerns and critique (Morrison 2014). This focus on the communicative choice and the intentional withholding of ideas, opinions and information that may help to improve both the work and the organisation (Van Dyne, Ang, and Botero 2003). Previous research has also suggested that employee dissatisfaction could result in a withdrawal from committed organisa-tional participation and more silent employee positionings (Naus, Van Iterson, and Roe2007). In

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a similar way as Morrison (2014) conceptualisation, silence has been conceptualised as informa-tion that is consciously held back by employees, rather than an uninteninforma-tional failure to commu-nicate or simply having nothing to say (Tangirala and Ramanujam2008).

A Swedish study has shown that the possibility of expressing views and criticisms has diminished in the public sector (Aronsson and Gustafsson 1999). Although research on the antecedents and effect of silence is limited (Morrison2014), the potential for reduced motivation or exit may be considerable. It may also have a negative effect for organisations, for example in the form of lost competences. A Danish study of efficiency measures in the public sector showed that many employees found it difficult to convey their critical opinions upwards in the organisation (Krause-Jensen2011). In another study, Milliken et al. (2003) mentioned silence as a product of resignation among employees due to the perception that their voices fell on‘deaf ears’ (see also Piderit and Ashford2003; Van Dyne, Ang, and Botero2003). Holte’s (2010) study showed that people choose silence because they are afraid of resistance and reprisals. It also demonstrated a direct link between workplaces characterised by silence and a lack of innovation, knowledge development, safety, democracy, autonomy and service quality (Holte2010).

Most of the organisational literature agrees that loyalty implies some sort of affective attatchment or identification, that binds the employee to an organisation (see Shore, Coyle Shapiro, and Tetrick

2012). In this study, loyalty is captured by the concept organisational commitment, which refers to the individual’s psychological attachment to the organisation (Meyer et al.2002). Previous studies have shown that role conflicts (HüLsheger and Schewe2011), perceptions of organisational politics (Bedi and Schat2013) and psychological contract breach (Zhao et al.2007) are all associated with lower organisational commitment, whereas support from colleagues and support from supervisors and good leadership are associated with higher organisational commitment (Bailey et al.2015). A study of the social services showed that factors predicting organisational commitment were job autonomy, distributive justice and career opportunities (Giffords 2009). Prior studies have also shown that a high degree of organisational commitment is linked to lower turnover intention and better professional performance (Cooper-Hakim and Visweswaran2005; Meyer et al.2002).

Aim

Exit, silence and loyalty affect an organisation’s stability, continuity, efficiency and quality. No previous study in Sweden has investigated the social services using a large national sample of statutory social workers and managers. This study aims to investigate the predictors of intention to exit, silence and loyalty amongst social workers and managers. Factors investigated included job demands (quantitative demands and role conflicts), job resources (job autonomy and co-worker support) and psychological climate in terms of perceived openness in the organisation. An addi-tional research question explored whether openness potentially mediated the relationship between role conflicts and the dependent variables amongst social workers and amongst managers.

Method

Data collection and sample

The study is based on a national population study using web based questionnaires. Members of two participating trade unions in the two occupational groups of statutory social workers and managers (working with children, youths, adults or the elderly) were surveyed. The two unions together organise around 85 percent of all social workers in Sweden and 70 percent of managers within the social services. Four participation reminders were issued for the web survey, which was conducted between June and September of 2015. Of the 18,570 members of the unions, 3,085 individuals were missing or had incorrect or out-of-date email addresses onfile. This resulted in 15,486 individuals receiving the questionnaire. Of these, 7,613 responses were registered, giving a total response rate of 49 percent. Of

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those who participated, 17 percent had missing responses for some of the questionnaire items and were excluded in the analyses. In total, 4,857 completed filled-out questionnaires were received, representing 32 percent of all contacted individuals. The reported occupational groups were classified as social workers (n = 4,068), managers within the social services (n = 432) and‘other’ (n = 357). The latter group consisted of those who reported having an occupational title that differed from that registered by their union and was not included in the analyses. This resulted in a total of 4,500 study participants. There were no systematic differences between those who did and did not respond to the questionnaire with respect to type of municipality, age category, union affiliation or gender. Regarding those with missing responses for some of the questionnaire items, the younger age category (18– 40 years) responded partially to a higher degree than the older age category. All participants gave informed consent and the study was approved by the regional ethical review board in Stockholm.

Material

In addition to the background questions, the questionnaire also contained items about the psychosocial work environment in terms of demands and resources at work, perceptions of the management and other organisational factors, work-related attitudes and intentions, coping strategies, stress and health. The variables used in the study are presented below. Descriptive statistics for the entire sample group (including means, standard deviations, alpha values and correlations between the variables) are presented inTable 1. Unless otherwise indicated, the items were answered on afive-point scale (from 1 = ‘Strongly disagree’ to 5 = ‘Strongly agree’).

Background variables

The background variables were gender (1 = male, 2 = female; 89.2% were female), age (years, M = 43.2, SD = 11.7) and years of employment in the social services (M = 12.2, SD = 10.0).

Demands and resources at work

Quantitative demands were measured using three items related to the feeling of having too much to do and too little time (Walsh, Taber, and Beehr1980), e.g.,‘Do you have so many work tasks that it negatively affects your possibility to work effectively?’ (5-point scale: 1 = ‘Never’ and 5 = ‘Very often’). Role conflicts were measured using four questions reformulated to statements from QPS Nordic (Lindström et al.2000), e.g.,‘My job involves tasks that are in conflict with my professional values.’

Job autonomy was measured using three items relating to the degree of control over decision making at work (Lindström et al.2000), e.g.,‘Can you influence decisions that are important for your work?’ (5-point scale: 1 = ‘Never’ and 5 = ‘Very often’).

Table 1.Descriptive statistics for all variables in the study (n = 4500) (Pearson’s correlation coefficients, descriptive statistics and Cronbach’s coefficient alpha).

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

1 Gender 1

2 Age −.08** 1

3 Years in soc. services −.05** .77** 1 4 Role conflict −.02 −.17** −.17** 1

5 Quantitative demands .06** −.16** −.18** .63** 1 . 6 Job autonomy −.03* .08** .12** −.48** −.37** 1 7 Co-worker support .04** −.18** −.14** −.19** −.16** .31** 1 8 Openness −.03* .03 .07** −.47** −.36** .62** .43** 1 9 Intention to exit .00 −.15** −.18** .48** .37** −.43** −.23** −.51** 1 10 Silence −.00 −.09** −.09** .34** .22** −.42** −.24** −.54** .38** 1 11 Loyalty .00 .05** .08** −.50** −.37** .57** .33** .73** −.51** −.39** 1 Means .89 43.2 12.2 2.66 3.57 3.06 3.70 2.65 2.45 2.05 2.35 Standard deviation .31 11.7 10.0 1.04 .88 .80 .98 .87 1.40 1.00 1.00 Cronbach’s alpha (α) .88 .85 .79 .85 .84 .94 .88 .84 Note. *** = p < .001** = p < .01.

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Co-worker support was measured using an index of three statements (Hovmark and Thomsson 1995), e.g., ‘If needed, I receive support and help with my work from my co-workers.’

Organisational factor

Openness was measured by an index developed for this study using items from other investigations (Aronsson and Gustafsson1999). The openness index consist of four statements capturing the degree of openness in the organisation and the workplace: ‘In my organisation we can openly discuss the deficiencies in service quality.’, ‘I am listened to if I raise concerns about the working environment and the working conditions’, ‘The workplace meetings are characterised by an open dialogue.’ and ‘The organisation in which I work tolerates different viewpoints.’

Dependent variables

Intention to exit is a scale consisting of three statements that captures individuals’ intentions to exit the organisation (Sjöberg and Sverke 2000), e.g., ‘I am considering leaving my current job.’

Silence was measured by an index developed for this study using three items from other investigations (Aronsson and Gustafsson 1999): ‘I’m reluctant to put forward critical points of view in the workplace meetings and such.’, ‘I prefer not to raise problems connected with the workplace in case I’m regarded as troublesome.’ and ‘If I convey critical views to the managers I might be demoted.’

Loyalty was measured using three items that had been developed to capture Allen and Meyer (1990) affective component of organisational commitment and a general sense of psychological

attachement with the organisation (see Lindström et al.2000), e.g.,‘My values are very similar to the organisation’ s values.’

Table 1shows the descriptive statistics for all the variables involved.

Statistical analyses

To investigate the effects of demographic factors, demands, resources and openness of each of the dependent variables, hierarchical regression analyses was conducted. Multicollinearity and toler-ance levels were analysed to ensure that the basic assumptions for multiple regression analysis were met.

Separate regression analyses were performed for the occupational groups of social work-ers and managwork-ers. Background variables (gender, age, and years in the social services) were added to the model in thefirst step to control for their effects on the dependent variable. In step two, job demands, i.e., quantitative demands and role conflicts, were included in order to investigate the effects on the dependent variable whilst controlling for background factors. The resources, i.e., job autonomy and co-worker support, were added to the model in the third step. These were followed by the organisational factor of openness in the fourth and final step in order to investigate whether this had any further significant effect on the outcome variables.

To conduct the mediation analyses, Hayes (2012) conditional process model using PROCESS custom dialogue box tools added to SPSS (22) was utilised in combination with bootstrapping. Bootstrapping involves the drawing of a large number of sub-samples from the original sample, and the analyses being conducted on all the samples. The number of sub-samples was set to n = 5000 in the present study, as is suggested by Hayes (2009). In this approach, mediation is tested by assessing the size of the indirect effect and its confidence intervals (Hayes 2012).

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Results

The importance of demands, resources and openness for intention to exit, silence and loyalty

Tables 2, 3and4, below, present the results of the hierarchical regression analyses for the three outcome variables. Although only the fourth step is discussed below, all the steps are presented in order to show the changes to the variables’ beta coefficients.

Table 2 presents the results for the prediction of intention to exit for social workers and managers. Regarding social workers, the results indicated a negative relationship with years in the social services (i.e., social workers with relatively short experience seemed to think more about exiting). Concerning job demands, role conflicts in particular related to higher intentions to exit. The job resource autonomy had an opposite effect. For the managers, role conflicts were related to higher intentions to exit. When the organisational factor openness was added in the fourth step, there was an increase in the explained variance for both groups: social workers (β R2 = .05, p < .001) and managers (β R2 = .04, p < .001). Table 3shows that a lower degree of perceived openness had a very strong and significant effect on intention to exit for both groups.

Similarly,Table 3presents the results of the hierarchical regression analysis for the prediction of silence. The results were similar in some ways to those of exit. When openness was added in the fourth step, the explained variance increased for both groups: social workers (β R2= .10, p < .001) and managers (β R2= .06, p < .001). Role conflicts continued to have a significant positive effect on silence amongst the social workers, whereas quantitative demands were related to silence amongst the managers. Furthermore, job autonomy proved to have a significant negative effect on both groups, indicating that less job autonomy is related to a higher degree of silence. Lastly, a lower degree of openness had a very strong and significant effect on silence among both groups.

Table 2.Predictors of intention to exit among social workers and managers: Standardised regression coefficients (β), t, adjusted R2and R2Change (βR2) for each measurement included in the regression models.

Social workers Managers

Model β t Adj.R2 ΔR2 β t Adj.R2 ΔR2

Step 1 (Constant) .03 .03*** −.00 .00

Gender −.01 −.75 −.01 −.27

Age −.02 −.95 −.02 −.35

Years in social services −.16*** −6.41 −.03 −.49

Step 2 (Constant) .24 .21*** .22 .22***

Gender −.00 −.31 .03 .61

Age .02 1.02 .01 .14

Years in social services −.11*** −4.99 −.04 −.59

Role conflicts .39*** 22.01 .47*** 8.96

Quantitative demands .11*** 6.04 .01 .09

Step 3 (Constant) .30 .06*** .29 .07***

Gender −.01 −.63 .02 .39

Age −.02 −1.04 −.04 −.69

Years in social services −.09*** −4.42 −.03 −.44

Role conflicts .28*** 15.45 .36*** 6.64

Quantitative demands .08*** 4.60 −.06 −1.18 Job autonomy −.21*** −13.52 −.20*** −3.72 Co-worker support −.11*** −7.75 −.16** −3.37 Step 4 (Constant) .35 .05*** .33 .04*** Gender −.02 −1.23 −.00 −.07 Age −.03 −1.29 −.04 −.70

Years in social services −.09*** −4.69 −.04 −.74

Role conflicts .22*** 12.28 .29*** 5.37

Quantitative demands .07*** 3.99 −.05 −1.08

Job autonomy −.09*** 2.59 −.09 −1.55

Co-worker support −.02 −1.67 −.09 −1.77

Openness −.31*** −17.95 −.28*** −4.87

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The findings regarding the role of background factors for loyalty did not differ for the two groups in thefirst step of the analyses. Some weak effects of the background factors emerged in the later steps for the social workers, which could indicate interaction effects. In the fourth step, role conflicts showed a negative association with loyalty for both groups, implying that a higher the level of perceived role conflicts results in a lower the level of loyalty to the organisation. Among social workers, there was also a significant negative association between quantitative demands and loyalty, whereas the reverse association was found amongst managers. When it came to job resources, job autonomy continued to have a positive significant effect for both groups, i.e., the greater the job autonomy, the greater the loyalty. On the whole, the results for job demands and resources were similar to the other outcomes. Co-worker support did not seem to be relevant for any of the studied outcomes. The results show that while openness in the organisation has the greatest effect on loyalty amongst social workers, this effect is even greater for managers. Overall, the results show that the variables included in the model explain a very large proportion of the variance in loyalty in both groups.

Openness as a potential mediator

To test the potential mediating role of openness, Hayes (2012) conditional process was performed in combination with bootstrapping. In this approach, mediation is tested by assessing the effect sizes of the indirect effects and their bias-corrected bootstrap confidence intervals based on 5000 bootstrap samples. When a confidence interval does not contain zero, mediation is present (Hayes

Table 3.Predictors of silence among social workers and managers: Standardised regression coefficients (β), t, adjusted R2and

R2Change (βR2) for each measurement included in the regression models.

Social workers Managers

Model β t Adj.R2 ΔR2 β t Adj.R2 ΔR2

Step 1 (Constant) .00 .00 −.00 .01

Gender −.01 −.56 −.09 −1.79

Age −.03 −1.29 .01 .18

Years in social services

−.04*** −1.54 .05 .70

Step 2 (Constant) .11 .11*** .08 .08***

Gender .00 .04 −.06 −1.25

Age .00 .12 .02 .31

Years in social services −.01 −.38 .05 .81

Role conflicts .32*** 16.66 .32*** 5.63

Quantitative demands

.02 1.24 −.09 −1.58

Step 3 (Constant) .21 .10*** .17 .09***

Gender −.01 −.34 −.07 −1.47

Age −.05* −2.46 −.04 −.61

Years in social services .12 .54 .07 1.12

Role conflicts .18*** 9.16 .18** 2.98

Quantitative demands −.01 −.73 −.17** −3.00 Job autonomy −.27*** −16.73 −.32*** −5.63 Co-worker support −.15*** −9.57 −.07 −1.46 Step 4 (Constant) .31 .10*** .23 .06*** Gender −.02 −1.13 −.09* −2.11 Age −.06** −2.90 −.04 −.63

Years in social services .01 .45 .05 .81

Role conflicts .09*** 4.97 .09 1.48

Quantitative demands −.03 −1.83 −.16** −2.96

Job autonomy −.11*** −6.26 −.18** −2.97

Co-worker support −.03 −1.75 .02 .40

Openness −.43*** −23.90 −.36*** −5.95

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2012).Figures 1–3, below, present the results of the mediation analyses with role conflicts as the

independent variable. Direct and indirect effects are tested for each occupational group, for each of the three dependent variables with openness as the possible mediator.

From a simple mediation analysis conducted using ordinary least squares path analysis,

Figure 1 shows that role conflicts indirectly influenced intention to exit through its effect on

openness for both social workers and managers. Role conflicts had a significant indirect effect, via openness, on intentions to exit, both for both social workers (b = .23), BCa CI [0.21, 0.25], and managers (b = .24), Bca CI [0.17, 0.31]. In addition, there was a significant direct effect on the relationship of role conflicts to intentions to exit for social workers (b = .41) and managers (b = .40). Mediation was partial, as indicated by the significant direct effect, even when the effect

Table 4.Predictors of loyalty among social workers and managers: Standardised regression coefficients (β), t, adjusted R2and

R2Change (βR2) for each measurement included in the regression models.

Social workers Managers

Model β t Adj.R2 ΔR2 β t Adj.R2 ΔR2

Step 1 (Constant) .00 .00 −.01 .00

Gender .01 .86 .01 .12

Age −.02 −.68 −.06 −.81

Years in social services .04 1.51 .02 .24

Step 2 (Constant) .25 .25*** .28 .28***

Gender .01 .33 −.04 −.93

Age −.07** −3.12 −.09 −1.56

Years in social services −.01 −.65 .02 .33

Role conflicts −.44*** −24.82 −.53*** −10.49

Quantitative demands −.11 −6.08 −.00 −.04

Step 3 (Constant) .39 .14*** .48 .20***

Gender .01 .91 −.02 −.66

Age .00 .17 −.01 −.11

Years in social services −.04* −2.05 −.00 −.03

Role conflicts −.26*** −15.54 −.33*** −7.10

Quantitative demands −.06 −3.89 .11** 2.55 Job autonomy .34*** 23.43 .39*** 8.61 Co-worker support .18*** 13.30 .22 5.49 Step 4 (Constant) .54 .15*** .66 .18*** Gender .02* 2.2 .02 6.52 Age .01 .62 −.01 −.15

Years in social services −.04* −2.16 .03 .86

Role conflicts −.16*** −10.51 −.18*** −4.67

Quantitative demands −.04** −2.88 .10** 2.74

Job autonomy .13*** 9.32 .15*** 3.74

Co-worker support .03 2.44 .06 1.80

Openness .53*** 36.43 .61*** 14.99

Note. ***p < .001, **p < .01, *p < .05.

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of the mediator was accounted for. This indicates that the experience of role conflicts has a positive relation with intention to exit and that this intention is further strengthened by a lack of openness in the organisation.

Figure 2shows the results of silence as the dependent variable. It was observed that role conflicts had a significant indirect effect, via openness, on silence, for both for social workers (b = .22), Bca CI [0.20, 0.23], and managers (b = .16), Bca CI [0.11, 0.22]. Again, thefigure shows that mediation was partial due to the significant direct effect in addition to the indirect effect for social workers (b = – .11). For managers,Figure 2shows a full mediation because the direct effect was not significant.

Finally, as can be seen inFigure 3, role conflicts were also found to have a significant indirect effect on lotalty via openness, for both social workers (b = – .26), Bca CI [−0.28, −0.24], and managers (b =– .41), Bca CI [−0.48, −0.34]. There was a significant direct effect on the relation-ship of role conflicts to loyalty for social workers (b = −0.19) and managers (b = −0.20), indicating that mediation was partial for both occupational groups. The bias-corrected bootstrap confidence interval for all reported indirect effects on both occupational groups was entirely above zero.

Discussion

The purpose of the study was to investigate predictors of intention to exit, silence and loyalty among statutory social workers and managers within social services. Specifically, the aim was to investigate the importance of demands and resources at work and of the perceived openness in the organisation. The mainfinding was that work demands, especially role conflicts, were associated with all of the outcome variables among social workers. For the managers, role conflicts were found to have explanatory value for intention to exit and loyalty. The emergence of role conflicts

Figure 2.Model of role conflicts as a predictor of silence among social workers and managers, mediated by openness.

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as an important predictor of intention to exit and loyalty in both groups could be viewed in relation to management changes, such as an increased emphasis on organisational professionalism to the detriment of occupational professionalism (Evetts2003). Several studies have shown that the tension between organisational and occupational professionalism has affected individual professionals facing difficult ethical conflicts in their daily work (Astvik, Melin, and Allvin

2014; Mänttäri-Van Der Kuipa 2014; Welander, Astvik, and Isaksson 2017). The results in this study indicate that these role conflicts constitute consequential risk factors for personnel turnover and diminished organisational loyalty. Job autonomy was the only resource variable that had some impact on silence and loyalty in both groups. Job autonomy was also associated with intentions to exit among social workers.

Openness was found to have a remarkably high explanatory value for all the outcome variables in both groups. Furthermore, the results showed that the impact of role conflicts on all of the dependent variables were potentially and partially mediated by openness (except for managers’ role conflicts as a predictor of silence, where openness potentially fully mediated the relationship). This indicates that when experiencing role conflicts, the possibility for open communication lowers the social workers’ and managers’ intentions to exit, contributes to the reduction of silence and enhances loyalty with the organisation. As such, it confirms existing claims that psychological climate variables are important for predicting and explaining organisational behaviour in general (see Dwertmann, Nishii, and Van Knippenberg2016; Martin, Jones, and Callan2005).

Thefinding that the perception of the organisation’s openness has a strong explanatory value for whether social workers and managers choose silence may not be so unexpected, but the finding that an organisation’s openness plays such an important role for loyalty and exit is an interesting and noteworthy result. One interpretation could be that openness is a fundamental value and that when it is perceived to be disrupted, the relationship between the professional and the organisation is affected. Despite the fact that there is strong legal protection in Swedish public organisations for freedom of expression there appears to be a lack of openness, which leads to the counterproductive and, from a democratic perspective, dangerous choice of silence. In his research on democracy, Lundquist (2001, 2013) describes NPM combined with new liberalism, as economism and that the primacy of economic values in public management displaces funda-mental democratic values. Besides the absolute values of equality, freedom and justice, democracy encompasses procedural values such as openness, verbal exchange, reciprocity and responsibility. Lundquist (2001) further points out that openness is a necessary requirement for discussions about political issues for holding those in power accountable. The lack of openness in public organisations may also be linked to the development of the‘audit society’ (Power2003), as a part of public governance. According to Power (2003), one of the consequences of governance via documentation, measurements and constant benchmarking is that organisations become more focused on their reputation and image and take fewer operational risks. In other words, things looking good becomes more important than actually doing a good job. From a managerial perspective, pointing out the negative consequences that budget demands may have on service quality is not always viewed as the most loyal of actions an employee or manager can engage in. A limitation in the present study is its cross-sectional design. Thus, inferences about causal effects cannot be drawn from the found relationships. Further analyses using longitudinal data would be valuable for gaining a clearer understanding of the phenomena. As the data was collected using a single instrument (one questionnaire), a common method bias (CMB) test was performed to determine whether a method bias influenced the results. A Harman’s single factor test revealed that one single factor explained 38.8% of the variance, indicating that CMB was not a serious concern (because it is clearly < 50%; see Podsakoff et al.2003). Lastly, because the study sample only consisted of union members in Sweden, no conclusions can be drawn regarding social workers and managers that are not union organised and/or that work in other countries. However, it still seems reasonable to assume that the identified relationship between openness and the studied outcome variables would apply for statutory social work in other countries too.

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Concluding remarks

The results of the study indicate that organisations in the Swedish social services face an important challenge in developing and ensuring openness so that social workers’ and managers’ voices are heard and sought. Without open critical reflection, it is not only essential democratic values that are at stake, but also professionalism and the service quality provided to clients. From the results we can conclude that if the organisations do not want social workers and managers to exit, be silent or disloyal, management strategies must be developed that reduce conflicting demands, increase professional influence and enable a continuous and open dialogue between the strategic and operational levels of the organisation. The article thus points towards the nessecary managerial steps that need to be taken for greater stability, continuity and quality within the social services.

Funding

This work was supported by AFA Försäkring [grant number 140049]

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Figure

Table 1. Descriptive statistics for all variables in the study (n = 4500) (Pearson’s correlation coefficients, descriptive statistics and Cronbach’s coefficient alpha).
Table 2 presents the results for the prediction of intention to exit for social workers and managers
Table 3. Predictors of silence among social workers and managers: Standardised regression coe fficients (β), t, adjusted R 2 and R 2 Change ( βR 2 ) for each measurement included in the regression models.
Figure 1. Model of role con flicts as a predictor of intention to exit among social workers and managers, mediated by openness.
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References

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