Social Work Leadership and Management: Current Approaches and Concepts for Social and Human Service Organisations

This book describes the transformation of leadership and management in the context of selected newer leadership approaches in social work and human service organisations. It is an essential primer that focuses on the extent to which the approaches presented help managers in social enterprises deal with current challenges in depth and to develop suitable answers to questions such as: What is leadership? How does this differ from management? What leadership qualifications do executives currently need for long-term and future-oriented management?
Leadership and management in social work and human service organisations are constantly confronted with various challenges: employees want to be supported individually; managers must be able to act in an entrepreneurial manner; the organizational culture should be developed from a holistic point of view. Self-management in self-organised work contexts is increasingly the focus. In addition, organisations and the employees working in these institutions must struggle with constant changes in the environment under volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) conditions.
Based on an overview of classic and newer leadership approaches, this book introduces readers to selected concepts and theories relevant to the social economy, which various current textbooks in general business administration and specifically in social work management do not provide in a concise way. After introducing an innovative translational leadership framework, the book places leadership and management theories and approaches at the centre of the discussion that help to reflect on the application and adaptation of leadership styles in social work practice. Additionally, the book discusses changes taking place in the social and economic environment as well as in attitudes of agile leaders, in the practice of adaptive and digital leadership.
Social Work Leadership and Management: Current Approaches and Concepts forSocial and Human Service Organisations is specifically geared to the needs of social work educators, students, researchers and practitioners in academic and agency (social and human service sectors) settings who can acquire knowledge and skills to support the viability and positive functioning of social work organisations, and to engage with other individuals, groups, and organisations.

Maik Arnold, Dipl.-Kfm., Dr. rer. soc., FRSA, is professor for Social Work Management and vice-president for Research, Innovation, and Transfer at the Fachhochschule Dresden – University of Applied Science Dresden, Germany. From 2013 to 2017 he was managing director and research associate of the Centre for Research, Further Education, and Counselling at the University of Applied Sciences for Social Work in Dresden. He has conducted various projects in the fields of intercultural competence and cooperation, game-based learning, digital education, and organisation research; was research associate at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (UK); was visiting fellow at the Goethe Institute in Cracow (PL), the Institute for Advanced Study in Humanities in Essen, and the Global Young Faculty in Essen (Stiftung Mercator). After his studies in Business Administration and Intercultural Communication at the Chemnitz University of Technology (Germany) and the Strathclyde University (Glasgow, UK), as well as Protestant Theology at the Evangelical Church of Central Germany, he received his PhD in Social Sciences at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) in 2009. Since 2020, he holds the honorary position as a board member of the International Association of Social Work Management (INAS e.V.) and is speaker of the German Network of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). He is a certified systemic coach for change management and an intercultural trainer. He hosts the podcast Managing Around – A Podcast about Management, Culture, and Social Sciences which is part of the Talk About Organisations Podcast Network. As a published author of various books, textbooks, book chapters, journal articles, and presentations locally, nationally, and internationally, he specializes in social work management didactics and education, digital education management, management of social organisations, systemic coaching, intercultural communication and competence, cultural psychology, religious identity in intercultural contexts as well as methodology of qualitative empirical research. His last co-edited book Leadership and Organisation: New Developments in the Management of the Social and Health Economy (Führung und Organisation: Neue Entwicklungen im Management der Sozial- und Gesundheitswirtschaft) was published by Springer in 2019, and another edited book Handbook of Applied Teaching and Learning in Social Work Management Education: Theories, Methods, and Practices in Higher Education will be published by Springer Publishing Company in 2022.