Pragmatic professionalism: micro-level discourse in social work

In recent years the welfare sector has encountered numerous and often challenging changes, such as marketisation, New Public Management, and demands for evidence-based practices. These changes can be seen as a shift between the two logics of creating and maintaining authority, and as a movement from occupational towards organizational professionalism. Perhaps the most important difference between these logics is that, in occupational professionalism, authority is built on trust in the professionals’ education and ethics, whilst in organizational professionalism it is grounded in regulation and control expressed, for example, in rules, regulations, and routines. The article focuses on the ways in which two groups of social workers in Swedish social welfare offices orient themselves towards organizational and occupational professionalism in constructing themselves and in the construction of each other, as well as the work that is carried out by each group. The aim is thus to elaborate on what these logics mean at the micro-level. In this respect, pertinent questions such as ‘How are they to be understood?’, ‘Regarded from the point of view of micro politics, what do these logics mean?’ and ‘How are the logics internalized by the social workers?’ are posed.     

(Un)Gleichheit durch soziale Schlie?ung

The concept of social closure is frequently used in recent debates about wage inequality. The following article shows that social closure generates not only inequality but equality, as well. Economic, segmentational and closure theoretical arguments shed light on the different relations of an employee to his employer in different labour market structures. Properties of the employee like vocational training, seniority or gender lose their impact on wages the more closed a labour market is. These hypotheses are tested with the 2006 BIBB/BAuA-Employment-Survey. Results support a deep effect of social closure in the German labour market.     

Die Anderen als sozialer Kontext. Zur Bedeutung strategischer Interaktion

An action is defined as “strategic” when the consequences of ego’s action depend on the action of alter. Situations of strategic interaction are numerous in daily life, business, and politics. Pioneers like Erving Goffman or Raymond Boudon recognized the importance of strategic interaction in sociological analysis long ago. Other peoples’ opportunities of actions form ego’s strategic context. The dynamics of the impact of the strategic context on ego’s action can be modeled and analyzed by means of game theory. We will discuss three examples of strategic interaction models: “Diffusion of responsibility”, Boudon’s “logic of relative frustration”, and the problem of social exchange and trust. We demonstrate the effects of the strategic context on the opportunities and beliefs of actors. In contrast to non-strategic rational choice theory, beliefs and opportunities are not assumed as exogenous. The analysis of the strategic context contributes to a better understanding of the micro-level effects and the macro-level implications. However, the strict rationality requirements of game models are often violated. In these situations, evolutionary models based on principles of learning and adaptions are more adequate than models based on assumptions of strict rationality.     

Discourses of service user involvement in meeting places in Norwegian community mental health care: a discourse analysis of staff accounts

In previous research, meeting places have been favourably addressed by service users, but they have also been contested as exclusionary. In this participatory explorative study, we sought to perform a contextual analysis of meeting places in Norway based on a discourse analysis of three focus group discussions with 15 staff members. We asked the following question: how do meeting-place employees discuss their concrete and abstract encounters with service users and their experiences? We focused on service user involvement, which was largely analysed as neoliberal consultation and responsibilisation. Service users were positioned as resisting responsibility trickling down and defending staffed meeting places. Social democratic discourse was identified in the gaps of neoliberal discourse, which is noteworthy given that Norway is a social democracy. This relates to global concerns about displacements of democracy. We suggest that meeting places appear to hold the potential for staff and service users to collaborate more democratically.