New public management and social work in Sweden and England

Challenges and opportunities for staff in predominantly female organizations

The Authors

Elisabeth E.B. Berg, Department of Human Work Science, Lulea University of Technology, Lulea, Sweden

Jim J.J. Barry and John J.P. Chandler, Organisation Studies Research Group, University of East London, London, UK

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the issues for middle-level social work managers arising from the development of the new public management, with its emphasis on the intensification of work, the measurement of performance in service delivery, and cost efficiencies. This is commonly thought to have affected those working in human services such as social work adversely. This paper explores the nature of these consequences, from the point of view of those centrally placed in its implementation.

Design/methodology/approach – The methodology adopted in this paper is designed to acknowledge and explore the perceptions of middle-level social work managers as they contribute to the social construction of the new public management. This is accomplished through in-depth interviews with a sample of their number in Sweden and England.

Findings – The findings reveal that social work managers are not only comfortable dealing with budgets but also enjoy the autonomy this affords them in their relationship with their subordinates. The findings also reveal that they appreciate the benefits of the more generalised knowledges of management, used in their work with junior colleagues, who they attempted to lead rather than manage and who they respected as colleagues. This has further implications: the possibility of new career opportunities for these predominantly women managers.

Originality/value – The managers in social work see the knowledges gained from their position as managers as transferable to other areas of the public and private sectors, thereby opening up new career opportunities. They were also found to enjoy dealing with budget issues, contrary to earlier studies.

Article Type:

Research paper

Keyword(s):

Public sector organizations; Social services; Gender; England; Sweden.

Journal:

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy

Volume:

Number:

3/4

Year:

2008

pp:

114-128

Copyright ©

Emerald Group Publishing Limited

ISSN:

0144-333X

Introduction

According to published literature, the public sector in both Sweden and England has been undergoing major shifts in recent years, with the changing function of management being discussed in both countries, generally and in relation to social work. What this literature has identified is a series of problems associated principally with management and leadership functions (Lawler, 2005; Wolmesjö, 2005; Blomberg, 2004; Holmberg and Henning, 2003; Harlow, 2002; McLaughlin and Thorpe, 2000). These include a lack of focus on management functions, and also a lack of competence and sensitivity to public sector concerns. Consideration of these problems offers a number of interesting insights into reasons for the mismatch between private sector managerial practice and public sector aspirations.

Interest in a new public management emerged in the late 1970s and quickly spread to many OECD countries finding favour, albeit differentially, in many parts of the world. Despite its varied manifestations, it has been identified with private sector managerial techniques and ideologies, and subjected to cultural evangelism, performance management, increased surveillance, oversight and regulation through audit and inspection (Hood, 1995, pp. 95-7; Hood et al., 1999, pp. 191-3; see also Pollit and Bouckaert, 2000). This is also thought to have affected social work, an area of provision often seen as appropriate for the employment of women (Davies, 1996; Waerness, 1982), even though there are those who have identified a potential mismatch between the macho image of the new management (Clarke and Newman, 1993) and the supposedly transformative styles of women and their positioning in care functions (White, 1995).

Social work is regarded as a low status job, partly because women are numerically in the majority, and partly the work is regarded as non-skilled, associated with femininity and considered an extension of the kind of work traditionally undertaken by housewives (Berg et al., 2004). The fit between social work practice and culturally prevalent views of femininity may account for the relative attractiveness of a social work career to women as opposed to men, among other factors (Perry and Cree, 2003). In both England and Sweden most social workers in lower and middle positions are women whilst senior management positions in social work are occupied predominately by men – 82 per cent in England and Wales (Harlow, 2002) and 75 per cent in Sweden (Berg et al., 2003). This disparity exists not least because women tend to start their careers in social work from a lower position even before they reach middle management. It is also clear that they are more likely than their male counterparts to have taken care of their children and worked part time before they take on responsibilities as managers (Harlow, 2002; Berg et al., 2003). It would seem, too, that despite the numerical dominance of women in social work, management and managerial careers within social work remain highly gendered with masculinist discursive practices, and social expectations prevailing (Harlow, 2002; Grimwood and Popplestone, 1993). There seems little sign of a decisive challenge to the prevailing, gendered, structuring of careers, and managerialism within social work, and which has, within management and organizations more generally, been identified as setting women at a disadvantage, compared to men (e.g. Acker, 1998; Gherardi, 1996; Kerfoot, 1999; Marshall, 1995; Wilson, 1998). For these reasons, it seems that although women are in a majority at middle manager level, it is less likely that they will become senior managers. Despite the absence of equal chances of advancement social work does nevertheless provide opportunities for some women to pursue managerial careers.

Earlier research has shown that the new public management in both England and Sweden has affected public sector workers, who are predominantly women, in a negative way. In one report, a female social worker from England is quoted as commenting: “There is a constant sort of drive to indicate performances. I think the actual work is suffering because of that (Audit Commission, 2002, p. 23)” (cited in Harlow, 2004, p. 172). Harlow points out that gender is not highlighted as an issue in the Audit Commission report referred to here but that women are nevertheless underrepresented as managers in higher positions in Social Service Departments. Also, she argues, staff are leaving their jobs in social care, whether they are social workers, qualified or unqualified, or care managers, because they feel the work has become more about what can be measured rather than what matters. Earlier research from Sweden has also indicated the same problem, identifying the difficulties in securing another job even at a middle level let alone a higher position. Social Service Departments are regarded as specialised with few career opportunities for social care managers (Berg, 2000).

The research project, from which this paper derives, explores issues such as these concerned as it is with the function of middle management in social work – focussing on managers across a range of social care divisions including those dealing with families as well as those concerned with the elderly and disabled. The implications for the gendered character of work relations are explored, in particular, through an investigation of the experiences of female and male middle-level managers involved in recent managerial reforms in social work provision in Sweden and England.

Our intention with this paper is, therefore, to subject the recent organizational and managerial changes in social work in the two countries in question to critical examination. This will help us to gain a deeper understanding of their impact on the daily lives of those working in middle management positions in social work, to identify the organizational implications, and explore the gendered character of work relations. This is important given further recent research on the topic, which suggests that women's career prospects in social work are severely limited by the balance of their work-life responsibilities and stereotypical views of their “gendered subjectivity” (Harlow, 2002). Our intention is not, in this article, to focus on social work as a gendered profession (see Blättel-Mink and Kuhlmann, 2003 on health professions and gender), rather we focus on social work as an occupation in which women are numerically dominant and which in any event is seen as semi-professional.

Context, issues, and methodology

The methodology adopted in this paper is designed to acknowledge and explore the perceptions of middle-level social work managers (Berger and Luckman, 1967). Our methodological approach is thus social constructionist, accepting that the experiences of our interviewees are real for them. In this process, we have been seeking to examine: their understanding of and practice of management; the strategies they have developed to implement the recent reforms; the reasons for any difficulties they have encountered; and the implications for the gendered character of work. A fuller analysis might have explored their careers in broader terms, examining how and why they came to occupy the positions they now do and where, when, and how they are likely to move on. Here, however, we take more of a cross-sectional approach, hoping to bring about a fuller understanding of the dynamics of work at a particular level, although we do give some attention to our respondents” perceptions of their career prospects. We have begun by drawing out similarities and differences in social work arrangements in Sweden and England through interviews and secondary sources. These have helped us to locate our research investigation in social, political, and economic context, aware that, despite being categorized as front runners in the new public management endeavour, these countries have also been designated as representative of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon models of welfare architecture (Esping-Andersen, 2002, p. 176), reflecting by turn earlier social-democratic and neo-liberal policy arrangements, respectively. As a consequence, the understanding and practice of management and the strategies they have developed to implement the recent reforms are likely to have been affected accordingly, as are any difficulties they may have encountered including potential impact on work-life balance and the gendered character of work.

We have interviewed 22 experienced members of staff in different positions in social welfare organizations in Sweden and England. In this paper, we have selected interviews with six managers in middle positions, three from each country, their position in the organization being social work managers with a manager above them who in turn reports to the top of the professional hierarchy. These six managers, five women and one man, are thus in middle positions with views similar to the majority of others in our interviewee population. They were chosen because they have the same educational background, are between 40 and 55 years old, and have worked between 15 and 25 years in different positions at all levels in Social Service Departments. They manage qualified social workers who have subordinated staff responsibilities. These six middle managers have virtually no contact with clients. They are in charge of the budget for their district and personnel; in Sweden they are sometimes referred to as unit managers. Our approach to sampling could be described as “purposive sampling” (Robson, 2002, p. 265), selecting a sample from a broad range of social work units and specialisms. The predominance of women broadly reflects the gender balance (or perhaps rather imbalance) among middle managers in social work. Given the small sample size and qualitative approach, we would not claim that this is a representative sample in the statistical sense. Rather we are looking to this sample to provide a rich picture and provide important insights into the work situation of those at middle level.

To this end, we have sought to draw out similarities and differences in social work arrangements in Sweden and England through an examination of the workings of a Social Service Department in each country, located in social, political, and economic context, aware that, despite being categorized as leaders in introducing the new public management reforms, these countries have also, as noted earlier, been labelled as illustrative of Nordic and Anglo-Saxon models of welfare architecture (Esping-Andersen, 2002, p. 176). We consider that our examination of recent shifts in the organization and management of social work, through the experiences of female and male public sector middle managers in two countries portrayed at the forefront of managerial change, will result in a contribution to the literature informed by the voices of those women and men who are most closely involved in the implementation of change.

Management and social work in Sweden and England

The arrangements for welfare provision were shown, in both Sweden and England, to be inadequate during the 1970s, leading to reorganization. In the latter case, three different departments – Welfare, Mental Health, and Children's – were rearranged into one Social Services Department, with the intention of reducing specialisation. Although the reorganization solved this dilemma for some time, specialisation reasserted itself in social welfare provision (Harlow, 2004). Soon after, there were changes for social work managers in England as legislation, such as the Children's Act (1989) and the National Health Service (NHS) and Community Care Act (1990), was introduced. These provided clearer definitions of social work tasks, enabling procedures to be followed more closely (Carey, 2003, p. 122). This brought significant changes for qualified social workers, now called care managers, when they undertook management tasks, such as the assessment of a person's needs, the arrangement of care, and the monitoring and reviewing of care (Social Services Inspectorate and SWSG 1991).

In Sweden, the government decided, through the vehicle of legislation in 1982 (Social Services legislation) and 1983 (Health legislation), that staff with a social services education would be responsible for social services whilst staff with a medical education would take responsibility for health issues, based on a principle of what was termed competence. Still, this reorganization did not function in the way the government had hoped, leading to further changes in 1992 and 1993 when the local authorities (municipalities) took over part of the Health County Councils” responsibilities for those elderly and disabled with special needs and who were in need of medical treatment in their own or specified nursery homes. This is the policy context into which the new management reforms were introduced, though their suitability and appropriateness was never accepted uncritically. The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden have suggested an outline of competence for qualified social workers working with children and youth in vulnerable situations, something that nurses and occupational therapists, for instance, have had for some time. In addition, the education for qualified social workers is set to change from a specialised to a more generalist education in 2007 (The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education, SFS 2006:1053). In England and Wales too there have been moves to develop general standards and descriptions of competence, as reflected in the recent requirements for social work degrees (Department of Health, 2002).

The routines and procedures of Social Services Departments in both England and Sweden are, as in other public sector organizations, based on legislation and rules, operationalised through bureaucratic regimes and bureau-professional organizations (Clarke and Newman, 1993), with social work regarded in both countries as semi-professional or bureau-professional (Harlow, 2004; Hellberg, 1995) and associated with moderate levels of autonomy. The new management has intervened to heighten the profile of efficiency and accountability:

Being a care manager is very different from being a social worker as I had always thought of it. Care management is all about budgets and paperwork and the financial implications for the authority, whereas social work is about people. That's the crucial difference (Care manager quoted by Jones, 2001, p. 553 in Harlow, 2004, p. 171).

With new rules for professionals, the work of care management shifted from administration to management, with implications for the professionalism and autonomy of care managers (Harlow, 2004; see also Dent, 1993). Whilst qualified social workers have always had managerial responsibilities whether or not they are viewed as semi-professionals or have bureau-professional status, prior to the introduction of the new public management care managers were able to define and prioritise clients” problems. This changed with the appearance of the new management, one reason for this being that they became more personally accountable for budget and performance targets (see also Wolmesjö, 2005).

This hierarchical situation occupied by social care managers is not always very popular, with Carey's (2003, p. 128) ethnographic study reporting care managers who described their middle managers “as being ‘strict’ or ‘incompetent”’. Lawler (2005, p. 5) offers a view of the new managerialism as follows:

[managerialism] … stresses the role, power and accountability of individual managers and accentuates their positions as managers rather than as administrators, officers or senior professionals. Accountability for success or otherwise lies at the door of each individual manager, operating within strategic guidelines and being responsible for the achievement of organizational objectives (Lawler, 2005, p. 33).

According to Lawler, the term leadership has more and more superseded the term management in the public sector; yet, he contends they need not be seen as synonymous. Leadership he argues focuses on change and motivation, management on efficiency, and regulation (Lawler, 2005). This, however, might be viewed as controversial with many writers arguing that leadership is an aspect of management (e.g. see Hales, 2001), though it has also been contended that management is invariably linked to a formal hierarchical position whilst leadership is an informal and collective phenomenon, associated with a person who has followers (Holmberg, 2003). Certainly managers often need to be concerned with change and motivation as well as efficiency and regulation. As we have seen, according to published literature, the public sectors in Sweden and England have been undergoing major shifts in recent years, with the changing function of management being discussed in both countries, particularly in relation to social work (Lawler, 2005; Kirkpatrick and Ackroyd, 2003; Holmberg and Henning, 2003). What this literature has identified is a series of problems linked principally to management and leadership functions, with managers and leaders often seen as lacking in competence and sensitivity to public sector concerns (Holmberg and Henning, 2003). Indeed, so acute has the problem of leadership become in the public sector, that a number of organizations have been referring their managers to a multitude of leadership courses (Holmberg and Henning, 2003; Berg et al., 2004). There appear to be two issues of importance here: sensitivity to public sector concerns and competence.

The issue of sensitivity to public sector concerns has much to do with the context in which public sector organizations are located, with notions of public service and the meeting of need important priorities that affect the professionals working within them very directly. The notion of managerial (and leadership) style reflects this, with the techniques, practices and discourses of the private sector sitting oddly in public sector organizations in the eyes of many public sector professionals, especially where pursued in ideological ways for which the term manageralism seems more appropriate. One reason for this is that the literature of organization and management studies reflects the twin bedrock of modern management: scientific management, otherwise know as Taylorism, and Human Relations. The former is associated with varieties of authoritarian or harsh dictatorial style, the latter manifesting more participative orientations. Yet whilst representing variations on an underlying theme of control, harshness can matter to at least some professionals on the receiving end (Barry et al., 2001).

Even so, as Harlow (2002, pp. 174-5) has argued, the culture of competitive masculinity and intensified deskilling work regimes that are associated with the new managerialism, along with a likely requirement for managerially qualified generalist social work managers, may come to render experience of less value. If this becomes the case then women, who dominate in more junior positions and who carry heavy domestic responsibilities in contrast to their male counterparts, may find that their participation in the resulting workaholic organizations becomes hindered, as they suffer marginalisation and exclusion from more senior positions. It is difficult of course to be sure what the future will hold, and we certainly share with Harlow serious misgivings. However, we also acknowledge a space for agency and, at this relatively early stage of our own research, do not entirely share Harlow's apparent pessimism. In order to explore this in more detail we turn to a consideration of current changes in the direction of budget-led practice.

Changes to a budget-led practice

As middle managers our respondents were responsible for the budget for their service and geographical area, with finance becoming one of the most crucial issues on their daily agenda. As a consequence, the involvement of social workers in budget issues has become an important and necessary part of their work. This is because middle managers, in both England and Sweden, are responsible for their budget to their manager. But to keep within budget they have to involve their staff, a strategy used to solve or head off any problems in meeting client needs that might arise:

Yes, three statements of account [each year], it changes over time depending how concerned the politicians are; we did one in February and now in June, and the third will come in the end of the year (Swedish middle manager, man).

The budget has become one of the most important issues over the last ten years for middle managers according to this Swedish respondent. It transpired that they would feel as if they had failed if they did not manage to remain within their budget. As a result they kept their staff informed about budget issues and involved in decisions. Yet at the same time budget issues could not figure precisely in social work since financial demands were often unpredictable. This was because it was not possible to control who was going to need social services provision or how much was likely to be required. One of the Swedish middle managers, a woman, had overrun her budget by over one million Swedish Crowns (approximately ∈108,000 or £73,000). She acknowledged that the sum involved was quite large, but indicated that she was not worried as she expected that her manager would cover for her:

I started too many projects this year, but my manager is very supportive and believes I know what I'm doing”. When asked if this would affect her clients adversely, she replied, “No, this is a political organization and the deficit is shared by everyone.

The English middle managers described similar experiences, with budget issues a significant part of their everyday work:

I have a new budget – my team – biggest cost is staffing expenditure. Finance is a big part of the job, I have to write a budget every month and I quite like that. (English middle manager, woman).

But when one of the middle managers was asked what would happen if there were a deficit, the answer was: “I cannot give the service they need, so the clients will be put into a queue to wait until there are staff who can help them”. If a deficit arose she would not employ additional staff. Instead clients would have to wait until there was sufficient funding to employ new staff, or existing staff found time to step in. The move from a needs-led to budget-led organization has been emphasised in earlier research, with Postle (2002) describing an increasingly bureaucratic financial process, something that throws up many difficulties for the managers involved: “Everything feels almost completely budget-driven. It feels very much, Finance first. Clients last” (Postle, 2002, p. 341).

Budget issues in Sweden as we have seen have also increased in importance in recent years, not least from 1992 when the government decided that local authorities were going to take over the care of the elderly and disabled from Health County Councils, leaving hospitals responsible for the health care of those requiring medical treatment from doctors. This put middle managers under considerable pressure, especially if they had insufficient staff, a factor that could vary throughout the year, exacerbated during summer and festive breaks. But these changes of organizational function also led to increased labour market flexibility, especially for nurses, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists, who found that they were now able to apply for management jobs within local authorities, something that had been denied them prior to the reform (Wolmesjö, 2005). As women dominated in these occupations, they enjoyed enhanced job prospects as a result.

The Swedish reforms were similar to those implemented by the English NHS, one result being that medical staff found themselves processing patients through and out of the system as quickly as possible. This has put pressure on managers, social workers, and care assistants:

We adopted the system from Sweden, we have to get them [patients] out as soon as possible and I have to say [to the managers for the health department] that we are not dealing with animals – we are dealing with humans – the patients get frustrated and this frustration they take out on the social workers (English middle manager woman).

This is one of the changes that has put pressure on middle managers who have to ensure that users receive a service. One way to deal with this – in line with the comments of one of the English middle managers interviewed – is to delay the service prescribed in favour of a waiting list. Indeed, this kind of decision about prioritising care in the face of limited resources is often one discussed with their senior managers who are consulted when it comes to more difficult decisions. But as one middle manager put it, this: “does not mean [that] they [senior managers] always take the right decision, it depends how much information they have about the case”.

The focus on budget issues has thus changed the function of social work in both England and Sweden. It has gone from a needs-led practice to more of a budget-led practice (Carey, 2003; Berg, 2000). Keeping within budget is presently one of the main goals of middle managers even though they still describe the main goal as to “ensure that all the service is appropriate” as an English middle manager explained it; with another articulating the aim as “to work with the social worker and thereby be able to give service”.

The Swedish middle managers described their goal as giving good service to the clients and also making the work situation of their social workers manageable; even if the budget tended to dominate their everyday work they still felt that they had their line manager as a buffer. They did not feel isolated and vulnerable as there was someone they could turn to.

Social work managers: generalists or specialists?

The organizational context is constantly changing in social work, with public sector managers becoming generalists rather than specialists (Wolmesjö, 2005; Clarke and Newman, 1993). As specialists, social workers acted as practitioners who worked with one or a few systems, but when they were promoted to middle management positions they found themselves working with many systems and dealing with general issues. They became, therefore, more generalist (Blomberg, 2004). Although Blomberg suggests that managers in social work should mediate between these two paradigms – social work and management – a group is required to provide leadership that manages through constantly reminding the practitioners to “start from the clients’ needs, instead of beginning with the financial framework”, as this is more in keeping with the humanistic principles of their work (Blomberg, 2004, p. 6).

But the question arises as to whether or not predominantly administrative and bureaucratic tasks provide middle managers with the kind of general knowledge that can be transferred to other parts of the organization or indeed other organizations, private and public alike. Professionals in Social Services have a training that has been and still is focused on social problems for different groups in society, with the education they receive structured in favour of particular work requirements, as with nurses, physical therapists, and occupational therapists. Lymbery (2003) sees the education of social workers as following a new competence-based model, itself an extension of managerialism, and endorsing approaches to social work that are inadequate to meet complex social needs. The idea of a social worker as a lone figure providing assistance according to their best judgment to a user is, according to the managerial paradigm, in contrast to the objectives of organization(s). Indeed, it seems that the new competence-based education is producing a new breed of social workers seen as managerial flag bearers (Lymbery, 2003).

In interviews with middle managers from both England and Sweden managerial decisions are described in similar ways. Daily work is constantly changing it seems, day-by-day, and never becoming routine:

No ordinary days – no such things as ordinary days – I [only] have an idea what happens a typical week … (English, middle manager, woman).

One Swedish manager, however, thought that a morning without a meeting would be a pleasant surprise:

An ordinary week means a lot of different meetings, it can be meetings with, for instance, group leaders, or the new superintendent, and we meet once every week. Then it can be meetings with my colleagues, sections managers” group, and other managers; we also meet once every week. And then it can be meeting with other staff in certain areas, like youth or about drug problems – when we have specific issues to discuss.

In these meetings, in both England and Sweden, information is exchanged about management issues, questions concerning how they are going to solve different problems, and how they are going to interpret legislation or political decisions. They do not have simple answers to the problems; they cannot just consult a book to find out how they are going to work, they always have to discuss and reflect on the rules, legislation, policies, and resources related to client or staff problems. Taylor (2005) points out that management decisions about appropriate or suitable social care are concerned more with avoiding risk than the needs of service users. According to Taylor the rights of citizens in a democracy to have opportunities and influence over decisions made by publicly funded bodies, in an environment marked by increasing litigation and consumerism, has produced an uneasy blame culture in England. He suggests that fear of reprisals may drive practitioners to favour safe decisions that do no harm, and to avoid positive approaches that involve greater risk yet promote better results.

The character of social work suggests that social workers face unpredictable work situations, which are difficult to plan for in a rational way. Furthermore, the difficulties they experience in coping with this unpredictability means that they maintain continual contact with their staff in order to keep them informed of developments related not least to budgetary matters. Worthy of note is that the middle managers we interviewed did not describe social workers as their subordinates. Rather they saw them as professionals and colleagues, describing themselves as more experienced but still in a position where they were the ones who advised rather than gave orders:

The importance for me is not to be a manager [in itself], and I would not like to be a manager in an area I do not know about … the importance for me is to work with something I find interesting (English middle manager, woman).

During the interview it became apparent that she took pride in her status as manager. Nonetheless, her style of management was geared towards helping staff to understand the context they were working in, and to work with them as a team where different skills, knowledge, and experiences were mixed. Another English woman middle manager when discussing the way she managed her staff identified a similar approach:

The social workers are professionals, and I rely on their knowledge about the situation for the clients; I can advise them but it does not mean they follow my advice.

The middle managers interviewed indicated that they liked to work as managers, with the position enabling them to be in touch with and meet colleagues. But not to give orders, that was not their leadership style. They were in a frequent dialogue with their staff and it was unusual for them to encounter confrontation, as when staff might ignore or refute their suggestions. They worked hard to avoid the kind of situation where their suggestions were not discussed or supported by the staff; rather they tried to reach consensus when they took a decision. Moreover, they stressed the importance of staff respecting them, their knowledge, and their experience. Indeed, they saw social workers as experts who decided what kind of service was needed by clients, with social work managers managing them. One of the English women middle managers emphasised the importance of managing social workers as professionals:

When it comes to social workers, it is a very dangerous concept, very dangerous concept, to imagine the social workers as subordinated. They are independent practitioners in their own ways. They have been trained in their profession, a lot of the decisions they have to make I'm not there, they are making decisions on behalf of our clients. And those decisions have to be right, I cannot say to them when they carry out an assessment that this is what I want them to do. They make a decision based on their own professional judgement …

In all our interviews, it was clear that middle managers treat social workers as respected individuals and team members, and not as subordinated in a hierarchical organizational structure. Qualified social workers and middle managers were seen as part of a team, with each depending on others” knowledge and expertise. Even though they were managers they did not talk at their staff, or give them orders or directions, rather they saw themselves as colleagues who had more experience, information, and knowledge that could be of help for them as social workers. The discussions they had in their regular meetings were more about how they were going to deal with different issues rather than what they were going to deal with, since that was regulated through legislation and policy. This is in line with Gregory and Holloway's (2005, p. 48) discussion about professionalism “once deriv[ing] from “special” knowledge, skill and theoretical application turning into claims of “special know-how” as social work stakes its claim to be the profession pre-eminently suited to delivering care management”. Lawler (2005) makes the point that managerialism provides directives that contrast with established working practices, and although the practitioners possess the skills needed for the work, or “what” they should do, “how” it is to be done remains a point of contention, including the type of leadership required.

Management (and managers) is seen as a fundamental part of organizational life and activity, to the extent that it cannot be considered a neutral activity (McLaughlin and Thorpe, 2000). And for these middle managers, who have their position because of their experience, knowledge, and education, we find a job market characterised by opportunity:

My assumption is that it is my competence from work with drug related problems that gave me this job, not because I have worked as a manager (Swedish middle manager, man).

Their job as manager, operationalised through a leadership style close to that advocated by Blomberg (2004), is based on the encouragement of team spirit, trust, and confidence, rather than any attempt to extract or otherwise engineer greater output from individual social workers. It provides them with general knowledge of management that opens up wider career opportunities in the contemporary labour market.

The English middle managers portray both a public and private sector where they can apply for other jobs seeing, it would appear, their “generalist” credentials as qualifying them to undertake a variety of managerial jobs, whether in social work or in other contexts. The Swedish middle managers are more focused on pursuing a career within the public sector, partly because social work is not privatised to the extent it is in England. All six middle managers from Sweden and England who are reported here have worked in other organizations. However, the Swedish middle managers had – although in the same age as those in England, 40-55 years – worked for the same organization longer than their English counterparts. There are some differences between them. One English middle manager, for example, intended to change job if she were not able to achieve the six-month goals she had set herself. Another middle manager, this time from Sweden, referred to colleagues who had found new jobs in other organization not related specifically to social work or social services, jobs such as managers in education, the Red Cross, and the County Administrative Board. But they all saw more advantages than disadvantages with the organizational changes affecting management and leadership, as well as opportunities for qualified social workers to find new jobs outside social service departments, suggesting a rather more optimistic reading of the opportunities for career advancement for women than the post-structuralist reading of Harlow (2002) with its emphasis on positioning within existing discourses. Perhaps in this it is more in keeping with the guarded optimism of those such as Burke and Mattis (2005) who note the continuing obstacles to women's career advancement but also opportunities for further progress, as well as with the analysis of Simpson (2000) who draws attention to the importance of gender imbalance at different levels of the organization and suggests that women may feel greater “fit” within the organization when men are not in the majority at all levels.

Conclusion

This paper has considered recent organizational and managerial changes in social work in Sweden and England. The intention has been to: gain an insight into their impact on the daily lives of those working in middle management positions; identify the organizational implications; and explore the gendered character of work relations. This is important given recent research on the topic, which suggests that women's career prospects in social work are severely limited by the balance of their work-life responsibilities and stereotypical views of their “gendered subjectivity”. Even so, we make no claim for generalisability from our interview sample of six managers, three from each country, reported here.

McLaughlin and Thorpe (2000) propose that because management and managers are seen as an intrinsic part of life, and have become an indispensable part of organizational activity, the resulting managerial discourse is changing society. In taking into account the context of recent government changes, which have seen the implementation of budget cuts, marketisation especially in England, the encouragement of private sector managerial techniques to intensify and control public sector workers, it is argued that the consequences have included work specialisation, a high degree of surveillance, an increasing involvement in finance issues, the resolution of staffing problems, and increasing administration. An analysis of our findings suggests that the consequence of this is that social work middle managers are becoming more generalist than specialist in performing their daily work activities, increasingly separated as they are from work with clients, their managerial positions more budget-led rather than needs-led. This new situation, with its focus on management and leadership in the public sector under pressure from New Public Management reforms, has opened up job opportunities for women in social work where they are numerically dominant at lower and middle levels. It looks as if earlier ideas that recognise stability and the building of knowledge and experience within an organization are being replaced with an ideology constructed through a new managerial and leadership discourse where generalised management and leadership knowledge is negotiable, even marketable, in a flexible labour market.

Similarities between the countries have dominated, even if there seems to be a perception of higher mobility for English managers and a wider private sector to turn to, in contrast to Sweden that has a bigger public sector and nascent private sector for the care professions. There seems to be a collective approach to budget issues among our sample, where in Sweden the whole Department are responsible for the budget whilst in England it is presented as more individualised, with more responsibility for each manager. One reason why there are many women (Harlow, 2004) that leave social work can be that they actually have options to choose among. This may change in the future, with Harlow arguing that the new managerial regimes may come to favour inexperienced but managerially qualified men at the expense of women in these female-dominated organizations, as the commodification and intensification of work regimes reaches new heights.

However, managers in social work are not, on the evidence of this research, presently passive victims of the imposition of managerialism, and the future seems uncertain. Even so, it may be that our sample is unrepresentative. After all we have reported only a small number of interviews here and our interviewees may have wanted, for whatever reason, to present a good impression of themselves or their organizations; and the local authority in England where we conducted interviews is relatively successful, according to official performance measures (no such measures exist for the Swedish organization). However, there is a consistency of response between interviewees in these two countries. In particular, it seems that, in seeking to retain control of their daily routines and work activity, generalised management skills have provided many of them with opportunities to apply for managerial positions elsewhere; this may change in the future should male colleagues from outside the profession be permitted to enter, though given acknowledgement of the importance of competence this may not be accepted uniformly, at least for a while. Moreover, while we do not doubt that there are some challenges and negative consequences of managerialism as well as hostility from some of those most closely affected, our evidence also provides a counterpoint in respect of women's prospects. For there does seem to be evidence of some appreciation of the opportunities that managerialism provides, by at least some women and men in social care. And for women who are numerically dominant in middle-level positions in social work, in particular, this would seem to be potentially significant.

References

Acker, J. (1998), "The future of ‘gender and organizations’: connections and boundaries", Gender, Work & Organization, Vol. 5 No.4, pp.195-206.