Klaipėdos universitetas

The focus of this article is on the personality of a social worker as most qualified representative of the profession. The task of the article is to explore social worker’s personal agency and context beliefs as a factor to increase the motivation of social worker’s professional activity. The methodological basis of the research is the Concept of Effective Functioning (Motivational Systems Theory, Ford, 1992). The talk – interview was used to gain factual information about social worker’s capability beliefs related to the main elements of problem solving process. To explore social worker’s context beliefs, a construct embracing essential factors characteristic to social organizations was made. The research provide information about the mentioned parameters of the beliefs and reveal the dominating patterns of social workers’ professional functioning indicating the level of their motivation.

The paper focuses on the currently rather intensive process of the social work professionalisation and proposes to place a greater emphasis on the human dimension, i.e. social worker’s personality as a guarantee of professional success. The occupational burnout syndrome is discussed as a negative subjective circumstance of the profession of social work. The principal traits of the occupational burnout syndrome are revealed, and the dimensions of the occupational burnout syndrome are identified and characterised. On the basis of the works of Lithuanian and foreign researchers on the said subject, the discourse of the occupational burnout syndrome in social work is presented, and the factors that influence the emergence of the phenomenon (both individual and job-related / organisational) in professional activity are discussed. The empirical research by means of the so far the most popular Maslach’s Burnout Inventory (MBI) reveals the effects of the occupational burnout on social worker’s personality, practical activity, and the status of the profession of social work in the society.