ABSTRACT
Managerial reforms have been closely associated with rigorous budgetary control and the development of policies and procedures guiding practice. This chapter considers these strategies as techniques of remote control by senior managers. The findings suggest that most practitioners and local managers occupy a different assumptive world from that of senior managers; but this is not uniform. Some practitioners clearly share the view of social work as a care management role, operating with management skills and priorities within a mixed economy of care. Local managers use their own discretion to allow practitioners to stake their role in a wider professional manner than official policy would suggest in the case. Managerialist reforms over the past two decades in Oldshire/Newunit have involved classic strategies in the form of resource management and proceduralisation of practice to bridge the gap.
