Organizational Structure and the Ongoing Service Decision: The Influence of Role Specialization and Service Integration

ABSTRACT

This study examined the impact of the structure of child welfare organizations (i.e., worker specialization and service integration) on the decision to provide ongoing services. A subsample of 4,949 investigations from 16 agencies that participated in the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect – 2013 was included. Specialization and service integration did not predict ongoing service provision in the final models. Based on an examination of the variance at the organizational level, it is clear that organizational factors impact decision making, but the nature of this impact remains unexplained.

KEYWORDS:

• Child welfare decisions
• organizational structure
• specialization
• service integration
• ongoing services

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the invaluable assistance of Martin Chabot who provided consultation regarding the statistical analysis, although any errors are those of the authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship and Ontario Graduate Scholarships. The funding sources were not involved in study design, collection, analysis or interpretation of data. The funding sources were not involved in the writing of the report or the decision to submit the article for publication.