The current study aims to empirically examine the direct and indirect effects of social work organizational environment on case management performance and the mediating effects of basic psychological needs and work motivation, which has been continuou...
The current study aims to empirically examine the direct and indirect effects of social work organizational environment on case management performance and the mediating effects of basic psychological needs and work motivation, which has been continuously receiving attention from social work practice. To achieve the goals, this study formulated research questions as follows:
Question 1. Does the organizational environment (organizational support, work guideline, communication, network) perceived by the case managers influence the case management performance?
Question 2. Does the organizational environment perceived by the case managers influence the case management performance through the case manager's basic psychological needs (autonomy, competence, connectedness) and intrinsic motivation?
To examine the research questions, this study, using self-reported surveys with structured questionnaires collected data from social workers who provide case management at community social work centers, senior welfare centers and welfare centers for the disabled in Seoul, Kyonggi and Incheon area. 620 questionnaires, except the poorly answered questionnaires and respondents with no case management work, were used for data analysis. As for the major analytical method, structural equation model (SEM) with statistics programs of SPSS WIN 18.0 and AMOS WIN 18.0 were used.
The findings of the present study are as follows. First, the analytical result of structural regression model showed that among the organizational environment factors, clarity of work guidelines had a direct influence on the performance of case management and indirect effect through intrinsic motivation. Also, organizational environment influenced the intrinsic motivation through competence and connectedness among three basic psychological needs variables (autonomy, competence, connectedness) and also had a significant positive influence on case management performance. Communication did not demonstrate a direct effect on case management performance, but demonstrated indirect effect on case management performance via three basic psychological needs variables (autonomy, competence, connectedness). Network showed indirect effect on intrinsic motivation through connectedness among basic needs variables, and intrinsic motivation showed an effect on case management performance. Organization support showed statistically significant impact only on autonomy.
Second, this study classified the mediation model of basic psychological needs between organizational environment and case management performance into both the complete mediation model and the partial mediation model, and conducted comparative analysis of them. The result showed that partial mediation model fit the data more. In other words, social work organizational environment perceived by case managers not only directly influenced intrinsic motivation but also indirectly influenced it through basic psychological needs variables. In addition, comparing the complete mediation model and the partial mediation model demonstrated that the partial mediation model fit the resulting data more for this study. However, after testing the partial mediation model, autonomy did not show significant effect on intrinsic motivation. This result is different from the previous research reporting the intrinsic motivation will increase as the level of autonomy becomes higher.
Third, the current study analyzed the mediation of intrinsic motivation between the organizational environment and case management performance, comparing the complete mediation model and the partial mediation model. The result showed that the partial mediation model fit the data more for this study. This explains that the organizational environment perceived by case managers have a direct effect on case management performance and an indirect effect through performing intrinsic motivation. This result supports previous studies on motivation theories.
According to the results of the structural regression model, organization support does not influence case management performance. This result is inconsistent with previous research findings and also with results of the partial mediation model or the supplementary analysis that chose individual organizational environment variable as the only independent variable in this study. According to the results of the supplementary analysis, all organizational environment variables including organization support have significant direct and indirect effects on case management performance, which supports the hypothesis of this study. The reason for the inconsistency in the results of this study is because paths that show relatively weak relationships between variables may have smaller coefficient values or the significance level may have exceeded the statistically significant range although multicollinearity between all variables in this research was not found.
Implications based on the study results are as follows. First, this study confirmed the importance of the organizational environment, which influences the case management performance by social workers in the social work field of Korea. Furthermore, this study is especially significant since it carried out an empirical study on a work performance model that includes the variables of basic psychological needs and intrinsic motivation that mediates the relationship between the organizational environment and case management performance. This result was consistent with the self determination theory. Second, this study showed a very important result that the mechanism of promoting case management performance was supported by the partial mediation model along with the complete mediation model. The present study proves that there is a variety of mechanisms that can promote case management performance other than the complete mediation model; this result consolidates the self determination theory. Third, the path from autonomy to intrinsic motivation was insignificant in all the analyses. This result is supported by the cognitive evaluation theory stressing that the effect of autonomy on intrinsic motivation can be weakened. Since being rewarded based on achievement, time limitation and competition are considered to be factors discouraging intrinsic motivation, more efforts are needed to examine and resolve the societal factors that can possibly discourage the workers' intrinsic motivation in the current field of case management in Korea. Finally, the findings of the study demonstrate the significance of organizational environment factors, such as clarity of work guideline, communication and network since they promote case management performance. Therefore, policies at the organizational and national level should be established to pay attention to the clarity of work guideline, communication and network that promote case management performance.