ABSTRACT
There is nothing new about the idea of managing welfare services. There is always a need for activities to be co-ordinated, budgets allocated, staff supervised, control exercised. The focus of this chapter, however, is the change in the organization and delivery of social welfare that took place in the UK through the 1980s and 1990s. That is, the chapter is primarily about changes to the organizational settlement that was discussed in Chapters 1 and 2 of this book. The aims of the chapter are to:
Identify themes in the unravelling of the organizational settlement of the post-war years (section 2).
Unpack the languages and practices of managerialism by studying different managerial discourses (section 3).
Explore the interaction of managerial, professional and bureaucratic power (section 4).
Suggest some of the paradoxes and tensions within managerial regimes (section 5).
Suggest different standpoints from which managerialism might be evaluated (section 6).
Raise questions about the interaction between social policy and management in the new institutions of social welfare, and ask how far managerialism can be said to form the basis of a new organizational settlement (section 7).
Enable you to trace the languages and practices of managerialism through your own experience of welfare organizations as a manager, practitioner or service user.
organizational settlement
