This study focused on the macrosocial orientation of frontline social workers to develop an integrated model for professional identity. We used a nationally representative sample of 3069 frontline social workers in China and conducted confirmatory factor analysis, structural equation modeling, bootstrapping mediation, and multiple-group moderation analyses. The results show that cynicism and job characteristics, as a causal chain, serially mediated the relationship between macrosocial orientation and professional identity, and those relationships varied depending on the following three factors: social work education, licensing, and workplace setting. The findings have theoretical and practical implications for how frontline social workers form professional identity.

Purpose: Using situational leadership theory, this study examined the innovation of social workers in community-level social work institutions under different leadership styles. Methods: We conducted an online survey experiment on the professional strengths of social workers in eight cities of mainland China from December 8–20, 2020. Results: Both ethical leadership and servant leadership are conducive to social workers’ innovative behaviors. Our full model also suggests that organizational climate moderates the effects of leadership styles on innovative behaviors, with servant leadership having a greater impact than ethical leadership on social workers’ innovative behavior in low-innovation climate environments, but ethical leadership has a greater impact than servant leadership on social workers’ innovative behavior in high-innovation climate environments. Conclusion: Our study provides important strategies to fully stimulate the innovation effects of leadership based on the stage characteristics of social work innovation practices.

Critical consciousness, as a core competence of western social workers and a type of personal resource, has been diminished in China. This study examined whether critical consciousness buffered the effect of role stress on burnout with a nationally representative sample. Results showed that critical consciousness prevented emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in social workers suffering from role stress while it did not enable them to perceive personal accomplishment. The results carry implications for maintaining social workers’ workplace well-being and professional pursuits by incorporating critical consciousness into their professional competence and personal resources.

The expansion of emotional labor into the human services sector has raised concerns about emotional exhaustion and gender inequality, yet the potential for emotional work to serve as a source of motivation and meaning remains underexplored. This study reconceptualizes emotional labor as a dynamic, agentic process encompassing three stages: experiencing, regulating, and expressing emotion. Drawing on a nationally representative, multi-source dataset from the first round of the China Social Work Longitudinal Study (N = 5965), we examine how this emotional process unfolds differently by gender and how professional efficacy mediates the relationship between role ambiguity and work meaningfulness. We further explore how organizational governance—specifically internal governance and governmental support—moderates these relationships. Our findings reveal that women demonstrate stronger emotional regulation and derive greater work meaningfulness through professional efficacy, particularly under low governmental support, whereas men’s emotion processes are more direct and enhanced by organizational governance. These results underscore the importance of gender-sensitive and organizationally informed approaches to managing emotional labor. By integrating gendered agency and institutional context, this study offers a new framework for understanding emotional work and vocational development in the human services sector.