Committed social workers are significant to organizational performance and service quality; therefore, it is crucial to explore the contributing factors of turnover intention to enhance social workers’ commitment. To reduce social workers’ turnover intention, this study used the first national survey data (N = 5620) of social workers in China to find out the relationship between workplace social capital and turnover intention in public service and explore possible solutions. This study treated workplace social capital as a comprehensive measure that captured employees’ overall perceptions of their interpersonal relations in the public sector. It covered the impact of many other organizational factors on turnover intention, such as job embeddedness, social networks, social relations, communication, and organizational fairness. The results confirmed that workplace social capital had a significant negative impact on employees’ turnover intention. Workplace social capital could be a better predictor of employees’ turnover intention than a single organizational factor or a combination of several factors. These findings not only deepened the theoretical understanding of social capital within the organization and brought insight into how workplace social capital affected employees’ turnover but also promoted a formation of a holistic organizational perspective from the fragmented organizational factors. Results also showed that job burnout and job satisfaction mediated the relation between workplace social capital and turnover intention. Public service agencies should endeavor to foster an organizational climate of cooperation and trust, encourage teamwork and altruistic behaviors among coworkers to reduce emotional exhaustion, and strengthen the professional identity and professional value of social work.

Disaster preparedness is crucial for providing an effective response to, and reducing the possible impacts of, disasters. Although volunteers’ participation plays an important role in disaster preparedness, their actual participation in disaster preparedness activities is still low. To find ways to encourage more volunteers to participate, this study analyzed the social background and organizational and attitudinal factors affecting the volunteers’ willingness to participate. Questionnaires were distributed to 990 registered disaster volunteers across Beijing and the data were analyzed using linear regression models. Results revealed a weak willingness to participate in disaster preparedness. Only 28.08% of the respondents indicated that they were “very ready” to participate in voluntary disaster preparedness, and 14.65% showed “a little bit” of interest. The following was concluded: (1) Disaster volunteers’ social background variables were related to their willingness to participate in disaster preparedness. Compared to male volunteers, female volunteers were more willing to participate. Chinese Communist Party members were more willing to participate than non-members. (2) Providing accidental life insurance for the volunteers had a positive effect on their willingness to participate in disaster preparedness. Provision of more training had a negative effect on the volunteers’ willingness to participate, indicating a low quality of training. (3) Organizational identification was positively related to the volunteers’ willingness to participate. According to these results, we suggest that volunteer organizations should improve their standards and procedures for disaster volunteer recruitment and selection, and gain a deeper understanding of the needs of the disaster volunteers in order to better motivate them to participate.

Social workers’ attitudes towards evidence-based practice (EBPA) are critical to evidence-based practice (EBP) implementation. However, current studies on EBPA have not yet established a theoretical framework based on the intrinsic motivations that underlie social workers’ attitudes. By applying self-determination theory, this study constructed an explanatory framework that focussed on intrinsic motivation and used organisational learning capability (OLC) as a moderating role. Furthermore, this study verified the constructed framework using data from the Chinese Social Workers Survey including 5,620 social workers from all provinces in China. The results showed that social workers’ professional autonomy, job satisfaction and professional competence had significantly positive impacts on their EBPA and that OLC played a moderating role in the relationship between social workers’ intrinsic motivations and their EBPA. These findings provide further insight into social workers’ EBPA. The practical implications include emphasising practitioners’ innate psychological needs, including the voice of service users and building learning organisations when improving social workers’ EBPA and implementing EBP.

Disaster mitigation policy is playing an more and more crucial role. The success of such policies hinges significantly on the street-level bureaucrats (SLBs), who not only serve as the primary agents of implementation but also exercise considerable discretion in interpreting and applying policy directives. However, the drives of the SLBs to implement disaster mitigation policies remain underexplored. Current studies only focus on the external incentives of the SLBs while neglect the endogenous motivations behind policy behaviors. This article constructs a conceptual framework based on the Prospect Theory and Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF), and examines both external incentives and endogenous motivations of policy implementation of the SLBs. Data were collected from 481 SLBs in China. Results demonstrate that deep core beliefs (such as risk perceptions and vulnerability) have a significant impact on policy implementation behaviors. Policy core beliefs (such as public service motivation and policy effect) and perceived benefits (such as promotion and resource allocation) mediate the impact of deep core beliefs on policy implementation behaviors in a positive way. Moreover, discretion plays a moderating role in the relationship between policy core beliefs and policy implementation behaviors. These findings contributes to the mechanism of what and how the SLBs are motivated to implement disaster mitigation policies. It is proposed that beliefs and perceived benefits aligned with the SLBs should be taken into account when designing disaster mitigation policies.