The hazards of helping: Work, mission and risk in non-profit social service organizations

Abstract

Non-profit organizations play an important role in the provision of health and social services. No longer temporary providers of emergency services, non-profit organizations appear to be permanent features of the social service landscape. Despite some of the intrinsic rewards that work in non-profit organizations offers, jobs in these organizations can be characterized by high demands, long working hours, low pay and exposure to violence and infectious disease, conditions which may be deleterious to worker health. This paper is based on an ethnography of three non-profit organizations: a homeless women's drop in, a drug treatment agency and a men's homeless shelter. We examine organizational ‘mission,’ a dominant discourse about the purpose and value of providing ‘help’ to marginalized clients, and the implications it has for work practices and for the way that workers understand work-related risk in these organizations. We describe how the notion of mission is continually reproduced, and trace its relationship to worker risk acceptance and risk taking. We suggest that the functions of such discursive commitments in organizations, and their implications for the well-being of workers, underscores the importance of understanding organizational culture and the social construction of risk when attempting to improve working conditions and protect worker health in social service non-profit organizations.