Human Service Organizations Management, Leadership & Governance
Volume 40, Issue 1, 2016
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wasw21/current

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Guest Editorial
Implementing Challenging Policy and Systems Change: Identifying Leadership Competencies
Marvin Southard
pages 1-5
[No abstract]

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Articles
Change Communication Strategies in Public Child Welfare Organizations: Engaging the Front Line
Yiwen Cao, Alicia C. Bunger, Jill Hoffman & Hillary A. Robertson
pages 37-50
DOI:10.1080/23303131.2015.1093570
Abstract
In public child-welfare agencies, successful organizational change depends on effective internal communication and engagement with frontline workers. This qualitative study examines approaches for communicating planned organizational change among frontline child-welfare workers. Five, 90-minute focus groups were conducted with 50 frontline workers in an urban, public child-welfare agency. Consistent with prior research on change communication in business organizations, two broad categories of communication strategies were described: programmatic (top-down) and participatory approaches. Results suggest that participatory communicative strategies emphasizing employee engagement might be most effective in combination with programmatic approaches that communicate targeted messages about the change.