Organisations and Management in Social Work

Reviews / Votes

Organisations and Management in Social work is a leading text in the field, providing both context for students and tools for practitioners and managers to bring social work values and theories to bear in the neoliberal bureaucracies we so often find ourselves in. Thoughtful, accessible and targeted specifically at social workers, this new edition engages practically and politically with the realities of contemporary service provision. -- Chris Maylea The new edition of Organisational Practice is a solid up-to-date textbook for social work students seeking to be effective social workers within organisations. Mark Hughes and Michael Wearing have included interesting cases, diagrams and reflective questions, which are useful for making important concepts and theories accessible. Highly recommended! -- Jean Burke This is a comprehensive and sufficiently challenging text for undergraduate students which promotes thinking and critical analysis of the 'real world' within which social work practice takes place. -- Lynne McPherson Stimulating critique and challenging perspective of the book really makes the reader think and question their practice. -- Julia Foster-Turner In reading this book, those already in practice, either as social workers or managers, will have many light-bulb moments where an explanation is offered for something they will see within their own workplace and, for students, they will be better prepared for some of the more mystifying elements of working in large organisations. They will then be better prepared to, as the authors put it, humanise some of the dehumanising elements of working in organisations -- Stephen J. Mordue
Understanding the organisations within which we work is essential to effective social work, but is rarely a key driver for practitioners; so, delivering a literary work on this subject that is engaging and accessible is challenging. It may be their ability to achieve this that underpins the authors' success. Without diminishing the complexity of external and organisational factors impacting on social work practice, they explain and help to make sense of them. -- Linda Horner Martin This is a highly accessible read that focuses on important themes in both the organizational theory and social work practice literatures. It can be used as an introductory text in a macro-community practice class at the Masters or Bachelors level in Social Work schools, or as a text for practitioners with no formal training in organizational theory or research. -- Marcus Lam