Overt and Covert Ways of Responding to Moral Injustices in Social Work Practice: Heroes and Mild-Mannered Social Work Bipeds

This article explores overt and covert actions taken by social workers against perceived moral injustices in their work organisations. Covert and overt actions are defined and examples of these actions from a research study of social work ethics are presented. The paper argues that both covert and overt actions ought to be considered heroic in light of what appears to be timidity on the part of many social workers to act against perceived moral injustice in their workplaces. The concepts of multiple institutional logics and embedded agency are used as a means of moderating and contextualising the concerns social workers might have about acting in either covert or overt ways to address moral injustices, and to examine the potential pitfalls and merits of each type of action. The article concludes by encouraging social workers to consider more systematically avenues for overt actions to address perceived moral injustice, as basic social work values of client care can be paradoxically found even in the logics of dominantly neo-liberal organisations. If overt action is not possible or may have the potential of causing more harm to the client, covert actions can be morally justified.