The Organizational Context of Research-Minded Practitioners

Abstract

If some practitioners are more research minded than others, then promising approaches for bridging the research to practice gap may be developed by describing research-minded practitioners and examining how to locate and support them. This article follows this basic logic in providing an overview of organizational development and practitioner support models for increasing knowledge use in human service organizations. The article begins with a conceptual profile of research-minded practitioners-individuals with an affinity for empirical inquiry, critical thinking, and reflection allied with a commitment to datadriven organizational improvement-and the organizational settings needed to host research-minded practice. This is followed by a description of the challenges involved in promoting practitioner involvement in using, translating, and doing research and strategies to address these challenges. We conclude with implications for supporting research-minded practitioners and aligning their efforts with organizational improvement processes. The goal of the analysis is to identify the organizational contexts in which research-minded practitioners can thrive as well as new directions for practice research.

Organizational supports used by private child and family serving agencies to facilitate evidence use: a mixed methods study protocol

“…What does a typical day or week look like?Organizational contextOpen-ended• KS: Can you tell me a little bit about the [agency]’s strategic priorities?• FLW: How much discretion do you have in your work with clients? What factors external or internal to your agency have the greatest influence on your daily work?Evidence useClosed-ended• Measures of research evidence use will be drawn from one of three validated instruments: the Output scale of the Structured Interview of Evidence Use (SIEU) [102], the Evidence-Informed Practice Survey (EIPS) [103], or the Research Utilization Questionnaire (RUQ) [100, 104]. Specific measures administered will be based in part on expert panel feedback regarding topic salience and respondent burden.Open-ended• KS: What types of information do you use when making decisions about programs or policies?…”

Building Knowledge to Support Human Service Organizational and Management Practice: An Agenda to Address the Research-to-Practice Gap

“…In particular, from a social work practice perspective, research is needed to help HSOs determine how to respond to funding constraints and cutbacks, without resorting to tactics that undermine social work values and ethics (for example, rationing the delivery of essential services, underpaying workers, or failing to invest in needed technology). Such research is focused not only on description of the needs of managers, but also on identification of promising, sensible, and ethical strategies to address these needs specifically and effectively (Guerrero, Hanh, Kachikian, Chuang, & Brown, 2017;McBeath & Austin, 2015).…”

“…Underlying our aims is the understanding that research-practice partnerships are fostered when academics and practitioners locate mutually beneficial and common goals; address ongoing challenges related to practices, programs, and policies; and combine their diverse and complementary skill sets (Amabile et al, 2001;McBeath & Austin, 2015). The overall objective of this article is to inform a broadscale framework for social work researchers to reduce the research-to-practice gap concerning organizational functioning and management effectiveness.…”

Factors Associated With Managerial Innovation in Public Human Service Organizations

“…In relation to this perspective, a growing number of research efforts have focused on clarifying the importance of social supports within HSOs for fostering managerial learning and supporting organizational change, working from the premise that individual managers may require training, mentoring, and administrative sanction to engage in experimentation (McBeath & Austin, 2014). A critical support is the availability of knowledge-sharing teams that facilitate the locating, appraising, and use of diverse types of evidence to support managerial decision making (Austin et al, 2012).…”