The purpose of this study was to deduce critical success factors (CSFs) affecting successful performance of social work supervision and prioritize those factors, so that it could provide a framework of supervision management system in organizational a...
The purpose of this study was to deduce critical success factors (CSFs) affecting successful performance of social work supervision and prioritize those factors, so that it could provide a framework of supervision management system in organizational aspects. Here, the CSFs refers to a few and limited major fields that should be well managed to successfully perform certain tasks and achieve desired goals, Indeed, it is a concept that has been usefully adopted in aspect of organizational management. In this study, such concept of CSFs was applied to a field of social work supervision, because this study expected that it would likely contribute to showing any orientation for successful supervision in practical sites that strongly feel necessity and importance of supervision, but still lack in systematized execution of supervision. That is, this study aims to determine potential factors affecting successful performance of supervision and identify the priority of these factors, so it is expected that the results of this study will be helpful to select and converge on major fields to manage with high priority in organizational aspects.
In order to meet the above purposes, this study conducted Delphi survey and AHP survey as expert decision-making methods from January 8, 2009 to March 20, 2009. Thc Delphi survey costed total 3 rounds to deduce CSFs and involved final 24 respondents. And AHP survey was also conducted to identify thc relative priority of CSFs deduced through Delphi survey, and involved total 131 respondents. However, in regard to characteristics of AHP survey, this study excluded invalid questionnaires with high inconsistency found in consistency testing of responses. Thus, only 51 questionnaire responses were used for final data analysis. Delphi survey data were processed using SPSS12.0 and were analyzed by descriptive statistics and paired sample t-test. And AHP survey data were processed using EC 2000 and were analyzed by consistency testing and weight calculation. Both surveys targeted supervisor, supervisee and academic experts in order to put together a variety of expert opinions, promote mutual understandings with group-by-group comparison, and create a little more rational and useful supervision management system.
The results of this study can be outlined as follows:
(1) The CSFs of social work supervision were classified into 5 upper factors, and it was found that organization had highest relative priority of all 5 factors, which was followed by supervisor, supervision performance, supervision relationship and supervisee respectively.
According to comparison on relative priority of CSFs among each expert group, it was found that supervisor group, supervisee group and academic expert group put organization, supervision performance and supervisor at highest priority respectively, but all the three groups ranked supervisee at lowest priority.
(2) The CSFs of supervision were subdivided into the following 32 lower factors: Supervisor involved 7 lower factors such as knowledge and skill, value, attitude, age, practical career, experience of providing supervision, and academic career, Supervisee involved 4 lower factors such as knowledge and skill, attitude, practical career, and development of self-cognition. Supervision relationship involved 7 lower factors such as mutual trust, clear-cut communication and feedback, mutual understanding and respect, sense of fellow, sense of intimacy, recognition and encouragement, and support of professional relationship. Supervision performance involved 8 lower factors such as purpose and goal of supervision, normality, available time of supervision, available type of supervision, supervision contract, functions of supervision, content of supervision, and supervision record. Finally, organization involved 6 lower factors such as supervision policy, supervision appointment, supervisor education, organizational director's will, check and rating of supervision, and compensation system for supervision.
(3) According to comparison on relative priority of total 32 lower factors, this study could deduce top 10 lower factors where supervisor's value was put at No. 1 priority, which was followed by organizational director's will, content of supervision, supervisor's attitude, check and rating of supervision, supervisor education, purpose and goal of supervision, supervisor's knowledge and skill, supervisee's attitude, and supervision policy respectively.
(4) According to comparison on top 10 lower factors by priority among groups, it was found there were more or less differences among expert groups. For supervisor group, it was found that two lower factors such as recognition and encouragement and compensation system for supervision, which were excluded from top 10 rank in other 2 groups, were included in top 10 rank. For supervisee group, it was found that three lower factors like functions of supervision, experience of providing supervision, mutual understanding and respect, which were excluded from top 10 rank in other two groups, were included in top 10 rank. And for academic expert group, it was found that supervision policy, and supervisor's knowledge and skill were rated at No. 2 and No. 3 respectively, which was different in opinions from other two groups.
In addition, according to comparison on relative priority and weight of factors among groups, it was found that academic expert group had a tendency to show higher weight deviation in each factor than other two groups on the whole. This finding indicates that other two groups placed each CSFs on similar relative priorities, whereas academic expert group placed significant differences in priority of each factor.
Based on the above findings, this study focused its discussions on 5 upper factors and top 10 lower factors in priority, and sought to make further discussions on certain factors with difference in opinions through comparing 3 expert groups, Starting from such discussions,