Since 1977, Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership, and Governance (HSO) has championed scholarship on research and practice in nonprofit and public-sector human service organizations. Building upon a history of social service management, social policy implementation, and organizational research, this journal addresses contemporary management, leadership, and governance issues facing human service organizations. Over this time, HSO has provided timely and relevant research for human service managers, researchers, and educators.
Gratitude and recognition
It is our honor to lead HSO as Editors-in-Chief beginning with Volume 42. We follow in the path led by our esteemed editors emeritus. As social work masters students and practitioners, we first learned about the subject of human service management through the perspectives afforded by Si Slavin and Rino J. Patti. It was in our doctoral studies that we published our first papers under the leadership of Leon Ginsberg. In the past 5 years, Richard L. Edwards and Michael J. Austin have led many important changes, and the journal now attracts more and new readers, authors, and perspectives.
In particular, Dick and Mike, and Managing Editor Alexis Crosta, were invaluable models for us as they collaborated with the Editorial Advisory Board to maintain standards of scholarly excellence and worked with reviewers to enhance the peer-review process and with contributors to disseminate their scholarship. They ensured external production processes with Taylor and Francis and partnered with the Network for Social Work Management to strengthen connections to human service organizational and management practice. We are immensely grateful to Dick, Mike, and Alexis for their signature contributions to HSO, and thank them for their considerable service.
Continuing areas of emphasis
HSO is a premier journal in a very broad field, covering multiple levels of theory and managerial and organizational practice (ranging from the behavior of individual managers and leaders within human service organizations to the interorganizational efforts of groups of agencies) and across all human service fields of practice. As we transition into our new role, we are reminded of the continuing purpose of HSO:
Reflecting its status as the only journal dedicated specifically to the field of human service organizations, authors have contributed to an expanding knowledge base related to organizational adaptation to policies and fiscal demands, interorganizational dynamics, program development and implementation, managing human resources, diversity in organizational staff and service users, promoting and monitoring service quality and outcome measurement, and sharing new knowledge related to promising evidence-informed practices.
The major topics in human service organizational and management practice will continue to engage the journal, including:
Macro-organizational topics that concern relationships between human service organizations and their external environment, including policy processes; public and private funding dynamics; institutional actors in the public, nonprofit, and/or for-profit human service sector as well as in related industries; community forces; and other relevant social, political, and economic factors
Meso-organizational topics that focus within human service organizations upon policy, programmatic, and practice developments that involve management, leadership, governance, innovation and improvement, and partnership.
These areas of scholarly emphasis have expanded as opposed to diminished, particularly as the complexity of human service organizations and needs of managers have increased.
HSO has been, and will continue to be, eclectic substantively, methodologically, and theoretically. We draw upon such varied human service fields of practice as aging, behavioral health, child welfare, disabilities, employment and training, homelessness, and public assistance. Our journal has reflected a blend of conceptual and empirical research, and employed quantitative and qualitative methods alike. Regardless of the methodologies and theories used, HSO will continue to publish the best available scholarship on human service organizational and management practice.
New avenues for scholarship
We also welcome scholarship on new practices, programs, and policies. We continue to seek manuscripts on the contributions of leaders and social entrepreneurs in human service organizational innovations; collaboration, competition, and collective impact across public, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors; talent and leadership development; performance management and accountability approaches; developing and testing evidence-based management methods; policy advocacy and community involvement in human service organizational settings; and strategies for the inclusion and engagement of service users and other critical stakeholders in management and governance. Diversity, inclusion, and equity in the human service workplace are essential topics, and we see the continuing need for scholarship addressing issues of oppression, powerlessness, and social justice in organizational contexts. We also see the need for novel approaches on the implementation and evaluation of human service financing approaches, including performance-based contracting and social impact bonds, as well as social media and other information and communication technologies that support teamwork and advocacy within human service organizations. We look forward to seeing these manuscripts address practice innovations focused upon particularly underserved populations in the United States and internationally.
Methodologically, we welcome quantitative studies that concern human service organizations and managers involving randomized experiments and natural experiments, data science, longitudinal analysis and spatial analysis, and network analysis. We seek manuscripts reflecting qualitative studies drawing upon ethnography and participant observation, historical analysis, and interpretive policy and organizational analysis. We are also interested in human service organizational and management research that showcases innovations—including refinements, extensions, and combinations—in surveys, interviews, and other data collection methods.
Because many of the dominant theoretical approaches to macro- and meso-organizational research originated in the 1970s and 1980s, there are opportunities for new applications of old theories. We also see the need for manuscripts using newer theories drawn from related disciplines and professions. We also welcome comparisons and synthesis of theories, particularly when applied to substantive topics at the intersection of different levels of analysis. Finally, we reserve a special place for challenges to theory that problematize the assumptions, premises, conclusions, and/or implications of theory.
Toward the future
Under the leadership of Dick Edwards and Mike Austin, HSO made significant advances in the efficiency and quality of its production processes, its outreach to allied associations and journals, and its overall scholarly quality. These advances have helped the journal respond to four prominent dynamics in its external environment. First, HSO must compete with other academic journals in social work, public and nonprofit management, and related fields for high-quality paper submissions, editorial board members, and peer reviewers. Second, the journal should acknowledge tensions in the incentive structures of its main audiences of academic scholars (with their need to publish in journals with high-impact factors, and to develop knowledge of relevance for their research agendas and theory building) and human service management practitioners (with their need for just-in-time information, promising practices, and knowledge with immediate applicability for resolving practice challenges). Third, HSO must acknowledge the challenges of knowledge dissemination in a hyperconnected world, in which journal content arrives by issue whereas Internet-based knowledge platforms can involve multiple forms of real-time media for knowledge dissemination. Fourth, the journal should continue its commitment to rigor and relevance, as each is necessary to advance the knowledge base of the journal and increase its utility among academics and practitioners.
The 2018 to 2021 strategic plan addresses these external tensions in three ways. First, the journal will remain the home for leading scholarship on human service organizational and management practice. Starting with Issue 2 of Volume 42 led by guest editors Jennifer Mosley and Steve Smith, we anticipate publishing one special issue or symposium per volume on topics of broad interest to the field led by leading scholars. We will continue to commission guest editorials from leading social work scholars and practitioners and will invite contributions from experts to address major interdisciplinary and interprofessional developments occurring outside of social work. To promote knowledge synthesis, we encourage the submission of scoping reviews, systematic reviews, and literature review essays charting the evolving state of scholarship and research on critical topics.
Second, we continue to strengthen the historic connection of the journal to practice. Sarah Carnochan will be leading Learning from the Field, an occasional section featuring teaching/learning cases from human service managers and scholars. In addition, forthcoming articles will include “practice points” immediately below their abstracts. So that the voices and perspectives of practitioners are more prominent in the journal, we will occasionally commission leading human service managers to craft one- to two-page responses to key articles.
Finally, under new Managing Editor Tiffany Newton the journal will continue to run like an excellent small business. We are delighted to have six new members join our 13 current members of the Editorial Advisory Board, all of whom bring considerable expertise and experience to their scholarship and research. They are listed in the journal masthead, and we express our gratitude to them for their excellent service. We will continue to promote efficient and excellent scholarly peer reviews. HSO will also reaffirm its relationships with its partners, notably the Network for Social Work Management and the Society for Social Work and Research Organizations and Management Special Interest Group. Finally, to identify new journal production processes as well as new social media technologies to disseminate journal information, we will informally survey editors of other leading journals in social work and adjacent fields. Our periodic editorial reflections will summarize the “behind the scenes” work of the journal.
Conclusion
In welcoming readers and contributors to Volume 42, we look forward to advances in scholarship, research, and practice on human service organizations and management. We also welcome your comments and suggestions for new ideas and improvements in our processes as we join with you on an ever-learning journey to better understand and capture today’s evolving human service organizations.