As there is lately growing demand for social welfare in our society, the government has increasingly entrusted relevant private facilities with welfare service, and the number of private welfare establishments is steadily on the rise. The concept of c...
As there is lately growing demand for social welfare in our society, the government has increasingly entrusted relevant private facilities with welfare service, and the number of private welfare establishments is steadily on the rise. The concept of competition is being applied to the welfare sector, and such a change makes it clear that the focus of the social welfare system should be shifted to quality from quantity, and that a more rational management technique should be introduced to the welfare sector in order to ensure the managerial efficiency, transparency and professionalism of social welfare facilities. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to examine the influence of human asset and structural asset on the organizational effectiveness of social welfare facilities and the mediating effect of the followership of social workers in a bid to help improve the value of social welfare organization.
After literature of the characteristics of nonprofit organization, social welfare organization, knowledge management, organizational effectiveness and followership was reviewed, a survey was conducted to verify hypotheses formulated in the study on executive officers, section chiefs, team leaders and guides of social welfare facilities who handled work related to knowledge management. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS WIN 11.5 program, and the findings of the study were as follows:
First, Hypothesis I said that human asset and structural asset might affect organizational effectiveness. When this hypothesis was tested, it's found that the organizational effectiveness of the social workers was under the influence of three components of human asset that included self-development, job performance and interpersonal relationship. Among organizational effectiveness subvariables, their job satisfaction was affected by their job performance and interpersonal relations, and their organizational commitment was impacted by their self-development, job performance and interpersonal relations. Their innovativeness was influenced by their job performance and human relations. In the event of structural asset, shared culture and knowledge-management strategy had an impact on the organizational effectiveness of the social workers. Their job satisfaction and organizational commitment were under the influence of shared culture, process and knowledge-management strategy, and their innovativeness was affected by shared culture, information technology and knowledge-management strategy.
Second, Hypothesis II said that human asset and structural asset might exert an influence on the followership of social workers. As a result of testing this hypothesis, two components of human asset that involved job performance and interpersonal relationship exercised an influence on their followership, and two components of structural asset that included process and knowledge-management strategy affected their followership as well.
Third, Hypothesis Ⅲ said that the followership of social workers might influence organizational effectiveness. When this hypothesis was tested, it's found that two types of followership that contained practical and compliant ones had an impact on organizational effectiveness. Among organizational effectiveness subvariables, job satisfaction was affected by practical and compliant types, and organizational commitment was influenced by practical and compliant types. Innovativeness was impacted by exemplary and compliant types.
Fourth, Hypothesis Ⅳ said that human asset and structural asset might affect organizational effectiveness through the mediating effect of followership. As a result of testing this hypothesis, human asset and structural asset had an impact on organizational effectiveness without being mediated by followership. That had no mediating effect on job satisfaction and organizational commitment, but had a mediating effect on innovativeness.
The above-mentioned findings suggested that the higher level of human and structural assets, two components of knowledge management, was concurrent with the higher level of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, innovativeness and organizational effectiveness in the social welfare organizations. So knowledge-management technique that is widely employed by profit-making corporations and hospitals could be said to contribute to boosting the organizational effectiveness of social welfare facilities as well.
Given the findings of the study, social workers should be encouraged to seek after self-development, and there should be a large-scale investment to create a more structured operating system so as to have knowledge management take root in social welfare organizations. Social workers should be helped to have an exemplary type of followership, and in order to make it happen, they should receive education about followership and put confidence in their leaders. In addition, every member should try to improve their mutual communication, to behave in a more creative way and cooperate with one another.
This study was meaningful in that it provided informative information about knowledge-management strategy to be set by advanced social welfare facilities in the 21st century. But the scope of this study was just confined to some social welfare agencies for children, the elderly and fatherless families, and future research efforts should cover a wider variety of welfare facilities.