2009 – Volume 18, Issue 3, pp. 23–41
URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-100138
ISSN: 1876-8830
URL: http://www.journalsi.org
Publisher: Igitur, Utrecht Publishing & Archiving
Services in cooperation with Utrecht University of
Applied Sciences, Faculty of Society and Law
Copyright: this work has been published under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No
Derivative Works 3.0 Netherlands License
at the Centre on Inequality, Poverty, Exclusion
and the City (OASeS: www.ua.ac.be/oases).
Correspondence to: Sint-Jacobsstraat 2, 2000
Antwerpen, 03 265 53 41,
E-mail: Peter.Raeymaeckers@ua.ac.be
Received: 3 March 2009
Accepted: 26 June 2009
Review category: Research
P e T e R
R a e y m a e c k e R S
H u l P V e R l e n e R S e n H u n o m g e V I n g
e e n k wa l I TaT I e V e S T u d I e o V e R d e R o l Va n d e o R g a n I S aT I e c u lT u u R
A b s t r A c t
Social workers and their environment – a qualitative study on the role of the organizational culture
The starting point of this article is that social workers exert a certain amount of “discretionary power”. This discretionary power allows workers to interpret the rules of the organization (Driessens, 2003; Lipsky, 1980; Luyten, 1993). Whereas earlier studies focus on how this discretionary power is used, this article presents the results of a qualitative research on the role of the organizational culture in determining the everyday practises of social workers. 25 social workers and 3 team leaders of three local centres of the Antwerp public centre of social welfare are interviewed.
The article describes how these social workers define the activation of their clients and how these
definitions are developed within the organizational culture of the three centres. The authors also
discuss differences in organizational culture and the impact of these differences on the way clients