scholarly journals Resistance-driven Innovation? Frontline Public Welfare Workers’ Coping with Top- down Implementation

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gry Høiland ◽  
Elisabeth Willumsen
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Frontline Employees ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
New Public ◽  
Resis Tance ◽  
Welfare Workers

Employee-based innovation researchers point to the important role of welfare workers in public service innovations. Bureaucratic and New Public Management inspired managerial agendas, still widely present in Nordic welfare organizations have been tied to an increase in feelings of inau- thenticity and use of coping strategies by welfare workers. At the same time, post-NPM principles of collaboration and service tailoring are more in line with professional values of welfare workers. Drawing on a critical realist informed case study comprising qualitative interviews and observations in the Norwegian public welfare and employment services, we describe types of revision and resis- tance practices used by frontline employees when faced with top-down implementation instructions, linking them to different types of innovations. The article adds to literatures on employee-based innovation by conceptualizing resistance practices as value-motivated resistance-driven innovation that may have a function of calibrating public value creation in welfare organizations submerged in bureaucratic and NPM-inspired managerial regimes

scholarly journals Client Abuse to Public Welfare Workers: Theoretical Framework and Critical Incident Case Study

Sociology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 762-777 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pernille S Stroebaek ◽  
Marek Korczynski
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Critical Incident ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Social Market Economy ◽  
New Public ◽  
Social Market ◽  
Welfare Workers

We analyse a case study of workers’ experience of client abuse in a Danish public welfare organisation. We make an original contribution by putting forward two different theoretical expectations of the case. One expectation is that the case follows a pattern of customer abuse processes in a social market economy – in which workers are accorded power and resources, in which workers tend to frame the abuse as the outcome of a co-citizen caught in system failure and in which workers demonstrate some resilience to abuse. Another expectation is that New Public Management reforms push the case to follow patterns of customer abuse associated with a liberal market economy – in which the customer is treated as sovereign against the relatively powerless worker, and in which workers bear heavy emotional costs of abuse. Our findings show a greater match to the social processes of abuse within a social market economy.

scholarly journals ‘It’s a Profession, it Isn’t a Job’: Police Officers’ Views on the Professionalisation of Policing in England

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 4-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Top Down ◽  
New Public ◽  
Government Reforms ◽  
Evidence Based Policing

This article focuses on police officers’ views on the professionalisation of policing in England against a backdrop of government reforms to policing via establishment of the College of Policing, evidence-based policing, and a period of austerity. Police officers view professionalisation as linked to top-down government reforms, education and recruitment, building of an evidence-base, and ethics of policing (Peelian principles). These elements are further entangled with new public management principles, highlighting the ways in which professionalism can be used as a technology of control to discipline workers. There are tensions between the government’s top-down drive for police organisations to professionalise and officers’ bottom-up views on policing as an established profession. Data are presented from qualitative interviews with 15 police officers and staff in England.

"Jedes starre Konzept ist schlecht und passt net' in diese Welt"

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (148) ◽  
pp. 369-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Ludwig-Mayerhofer ◽  
Ariadne Sondermann ◽  
Olaf Behrend
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
Staff Members ◽  
Public Employment Service ◽  
New Public ◽  
Recent Reform ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
New Procedures

The recent reform of the Bundesagentur fijr Arbeit, Germany's Public Employment Service (PES), has introduced elements of New Public Management, including internal controlling and attempts at standardizing assessments ('profiling' of unemployed people) and procedures. Based on qualitative interviews with PES staff, we show that standardization and controlling are perceived as contradicting the 'case-oriented approach' used by PES staff in dealing with unemployed people. It is therefore not surprising that staff members use considerable discretion when (re-)assigning unemployed people to one of the categories pre-defined by PES headquarters. All in all, the new procedures lead to numerous contradictions, which often result in bewilderment and puzzlement on the part of the unemployed.

Australian welfare workers and street-level discretion when working with clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds

2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tran Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Culturally And Linguistically Diverse ◽  
Welfare To Work ◽  
Cultural Understanding ◽  
Street Level ◽  
New Public ◽  
Welfare Workers

This article explores street-level discretion of Australian welfare workers when working with clients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. The research is situated within the context of New Public Management (NPM) and neoliberalism in the welfare sector. Findings suggest that workers’ discretion oscillates between extra support for clients, or further scrutiny and sanction. Such contradictory patterns of discretion highlight workers’ capacity to resist neoliberalism while concurrently upholding it. The article argues that cultural understanding, recognition of the limitations in welfare-to-work policies and neoliberalism, and how those factors, together with ethnicity, may influence street-level discretion are necessary for welfare workers to support CALD clients effectively.

scholarly journals Parametrische Steuerung — ein neuer Steuerungsmodus für die Raumplanung?

2002 ◽  
Vol 60 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 219-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Cools ◽  
Holger Gnest ◽  
Dietrich Fürst
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Top Down ◽  
New Public

Kurzfassung Unter „Parametrischer Steuerung” wird im Folgenden eine Form der Steuerung verstanden, bei der die steuernde Instanz operationalisierte Ziele vorgibt, der umsetzenden Stelle aber überlässt, wie diese Ziele zu erreichen sind. Bezogen auf Raumplanung bedeutet das beispielsweise, dass die Landesplanung keine Gebietsabgrenzungen vorgibt, sondern lediglich zu erreichende Zielmarken (z.B. „Eignungsgebiete für x MW Windenergie”). Der Ansatz entspricht neueren Steuerungsmodellen, die den dezentralen Umsetzungs-Stellen mehr Spielraum geben wollen, um problemspezifischere, situationsangepasstere und akzeptanzfähigere Lösungen zu erzeugen als traditionelle „Top-down-Lösungen” erreichen würden. Er korrespondiert beispielsweise mit dem Konzept der „Zielvereinbarungen” in den sog.„Neuen Steuerungsmodellen” (new public management). In dem Beitrag wird versucht, die Relevanz der „Parametrischen Steuerung” für die Raumplanung abzuschätzen und durch Vergleich mit ähnlichen Ansätzen in anderen Politikfeldern/Handlungzusammenhängen Hinweise zu bekommen, was den Einsatz der Parametrischen Steuerung verbessern könnte und wo Probleme liegen könnten.

scholarly journals Management of Civil Liberties During Pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 001955612110359
Author(s):  
Tanushka Sharma ◽  
Arunima
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Public Health Emergency ◽  
Public Welfare ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
Primary Responsibility ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Government

The degree of infection and consequent deaths have differed vastly, but Covid-19 pandemic has spared no country. The focus of this article is not to analyse India’s success in responding to this global pandemic but rather to draw lessons from this experience for effective public management in other fields of development. There seems to be an emerging consensus that civil liberties and public management matters. In a public health emergency, the primary responsibility of the government is to balance the foundation which paves way for equity, public welfare, individual and group rights, and a smooth functioning of democratic processes. Specific to the global crisis, the article focuses on how crucial it is to have a broad and free dialogue about civil liberties. Several countries are imposing some or the other form of problematic restrictions on civil liberties of an individual during the Covid-19 pandemic, leading to changing societal scenarios in a negative manner. Therefore, the article highlights the expertise of new public management and deployment of enhanced role of society stakeholders defence of civil liberties, especially in the area of social justice and misinformation.

scholarly journals Non-Governmental Childcare Centres in a Neoliberal Environment: the Case of Lithuania

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-86
Author(s):  
Ilona Tamutienė
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
Public Management ◽  
Financial Support ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Management Tools ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
Socially Excluded

Abstract The article examines how nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) working with children from poor and socially excluded families operate in the neoliberal environment. The case of non-governmental school-age childcare centres (SACCs) in Lithuania was analysed. SACCs provide social services to children from poor and socially excluded families. The study is based on 62 qualitative interviews with experts working in non-governmental SACCs. Results indicate that financial support from ministry and municipalities enables SACCs to survive. From the perspective of SACCs it has been observed that government uses new public management tools in a modern fashion to transfer the responsibility onto the shoulders of non-governmental SACCs, while the government reduces its contribution to symbolic financial support and the request for accountability. The current government–NGOs relationship, based on neoliberal ideology and new public managements tools, has negative consequences and does not ensure social services for socially excluded target groups, especially in a country with a sizable welfare gap.

scholarly journals What Is a Good Workplace? Tracing the Logics of NPM among Managers and Professionals in Swedish Elderly Care

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britt-Inger Keisu ◽  
Ann Öhman ◽  
Birgit Enberg
Keyword(s):  
Working Conditions ◽  
Public Management ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Elderly Care ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Occupational Therapists ◽  
Working Relationships ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
New Public

Neoliberal policies such as new public management (NPM) have been pivotal to the Swedish elderly care system for two decades. This article explores the discourses of NPM and work by focusing on how a good workplace is represented by professionals and managers in Swedish elderly care. Using qualitative interviews with 31 managers, nurses, physiotherapists, and occupational therapists at nine workplaces, we identified four competing meanings (‘storylines’) of how a good workplace is constructed among the interviewees within an ongoing struggle between two discourses. Three storylines, i.e., striving to achieve the mission, a desire to work in elderly care, and striving for good working relationships, are linked to the neoliberal discourse of organizational effectiveness. In contrast, the fourth storyline, support and better working conditions, is related to a welfare-state discourse of traditional labor relations with strong historical roots. Four subject positions available to the managers and professionals were identified: the bureaucrat, the passionate, the professional, and the critic. We conclude that NPM is translated on top of existing discourses, such as those of traditional labor relations, care ideals, and practices, that are already established in elderly care workplaces and that counteract the new policy.

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