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Abstract
Social workers are professional forces providing social services. Currently, the lack of professional identity among Chinese social workers threatens the sustainability of social service provision. Based on the job demand-resource model, this study explores the influence of work support on professional identity and further verifies the mediating roles of job autonomy and organizational commitment. A sample of 5930 social workers was obtained from the first wave of the China Social Work Longitudinal Study. The empirical results indicated that increased work support significantly improved social workers’ professional identity. Specifically, work support promoted social workers’ professional identity by stimulating their job autonomy and organizational commitment. Practical implications for social policies and practices are discussed. This study points to a need for future studies to examine the influencing factors on social workers’ professional identity in detail and to design relevant interventions and programs for this population.
Acknowledgments
Data used in this study were from the China Social Work Longitudinal Study (CSWLS) 2019 collected by East China University of Science and Technology. The authors appreciate the assistance in providing data of 2019 CSWLS.
Disclosure Statement
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Ethical Approval Statement
All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Research ethics approval was received from the institution where authors affiliated.