Exploring Latin American Organizational Social Work (OSW): a primary analysis of the conceptual, epistemic and methodological bases of OST in Latin American schools of social work

ABSTRACT

Despite the prevalence of social workers working in the organizational field, there is no consensus in the literature on what Organizational Social Work (OSW) is and how it is understood from a Latin American perspective. This greatly hinders undergraduate and graduate education in the area and the training of new professionals. The objective of this article is to identify the theoretical, conceptual, epistemic, and methodological bases underlying the practice and teaching of OSW in Latin America, and to reveal the challenges and shortcomings present in teaching. A grounded theory approach was used to conduct 12 in-depth interviews with social workers to explore their definitions of OSW from an academic perspective. The results indicate that OSW taught in universities does not have a precise definition, which is linked to deficits in the available literature. OSW is an interdisciplinary field that arises from practice rather than theory, and its great challenge is the establishment of research and structured academic education.

KEYWORDS:

• Organizational social work
• social work education
• social work in Latin America
• Grounded Theory approach
• Latin American perspective

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).