PhD Scientific Days 2021

MH_I_P: Mental Health Sciences I. Posters

Professional confidential network profiles of social care institution leaders in Hungary

Text of the abstract

Introduction
To study the social network in leadership is an expanding approach in management literature. Unfortunately, social work research still lacks management theory analyses especially network-based research. Additionally, empirical literature concerning the role of leaders in social care institutions primarily focuses on the for-profit management sector. Therefore our knowledge of the professional network of social institution leaders is very limited.
Aims
This work attempts to address this research gap by empirically examining social care institution leaders' confidential professional network structure profiles. In order to further explore the unique characteristics of this group of leaders we also incorporate additional parameters derived from structural network features.
Methods
To achieve our aims, on a sample of more than 500 leaders in the Hungarian social care institutions, we used name generator questions to map the confidential professional network structures. We classified the alters listed in the leaders’ confidential networks on two aspects of their status quo: level of homogeneity was measured regarding alters’ occupation and its hierarchical position to the respondents.
Result
We successfully separated significantly different groups by cluster analysis based on the characteristics of status quo homogeneity in the confidential professional networks. We identified different leadership groups with lower-level, similar-level, and higher-level relations.

Conclusion
Due to the societal function of social care institutions, private sector management theories cannot be applied without proper specification to this peculiar area.
Our results succeeded in combining two disciplines when exploring the confidential professional network characteristics of social institution leaders.
The cluster structures suggest that it is meaningful to examine in-depth the relationship between confidential network capital and managerial characteristics.

University and Doctoral School

Semmelweis University, Doctoral School of Mental Health Sciences