ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how social work professionals are held accountable in the Norwegian social services, by studying how they perceive the impact of management techniques and accountability requirements on discretionary practice. It discusses the survey conducted in 2011 among different groups of front-line workers employed in the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, counting both practitioners and local managers of the different services involved. The primary focus is to assess the impact of both vertical managerial accountability and horizontal professional accountability mechanisms, and to address some potential consequences for social work practice. Social work professionals are often characterised as street level bureaucrats, working in the front-line of public welfare. According to E. Freidson, professional employees possess technical autonomy or the right to use discretion and judgement in the performance of their work within certain limits set by management level resource allocation decisions.
