Personal till salu? : En empirisk intervjustudie om drivkraften bakom valet att arbeta som socionomkonsult

Sammanfattning: The purpose of the study is to describe and analyze the driving force behind the choice to work as a social work consultant in social services, by mapping motivating factors and what they wish to change in the role. It is a qualitative empirical interview study whose empirical evidence is based on five social work consultants who have assignments within the municipal social services. The result is based on a thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews. We will use an abductive approach to be able to go between theory and empiricism in the analysis process. We want to preserve an actor approach to have a positivist and objective approach to the empirical evidence. The five themes that could be distinguished in the study are to achieve basic needs, to experience autonomy, to feel belonging, to achieve competence and the pursuit of self- actualization. In the result of the empirical analysis, the theory of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the theory of self-determination are used as a complementary theory to build on the reasoning and conclusions that the result of the empirical evidence highlights. The result shows that the main driving forces for working as a social work consultant were salary and well-being, autonomy through self-determination and use of one's competence. In addition, our results showed that the social worker have an aspiration for self-realization throughaltruism and to reach their life's dream. In our last question, the results showed that the social work consultants lack cohesion and participation in the business in their current role. Being a social work consultant is both challenging and enabling, and in this study, we describe the driving forces that motivate social work consultants to work as consultants within the municipal social service.