Exit, silence and loyalty in the Swedish social services – the importance of openness

ABSTRACTThe advent of New Public Management in Sweden has affected the social services in terms of increased workload, more conflicting demands and a reduction in professional autonomy. This study contributes to the understanding of how various job demands, job resources and the organisational factor of openness influence the exit, silence and loyalty strategies amongst social workers and managers in the Swedish social services. Regression analyses of national web questionnaire data gathered from 4,068 social workers and 432 managers have revealed that: (1) role conflicts associated positively with exit and negatively with loyalty, (2) job autonomy was negatively related to silence and positively related to loyalty in both groups, (3) openness had a high explanatory value in all of the outcome variables for both groups and (4) openness was a potential mediator between role conflicts and all of the dependent variables. A conclusion is that if organisations want social workers and managers to stop considering exit, want to counteract silence and want to improve loyalty, management strategies need to be developed that reduce the conflicting demands and create organisational structures that facilitate a continuous and open dialogue between the strategic and operational levels of the organisation.