There is a spectre stalking social work in many countries of the world. That spectre is the belief that social work needs to be reshaped in the image of capitalist business enterprises, what we might term business ideology or ‘businessology’. Within that belief, the explicit or implicit assumption is that social work should, as far as possible, function as though it were a commercial business concerned with making profits. In those countries most affected, the culture of capitalism has colonised social work as business thinking and practices have been introduced. The embrace of businessology in social work is presented as a neutral trend, to which all social workers can be committed, namely, the modernisation of social work and making it more efficient through the application of distinctive and valuable expertise.

Here are two examples of the impact of businessology taken from the UK:

►Can you work out what is being discussed in these examples? (Answers at the end of this essay!)

(a) ‘Mapping supply will involve an analysis of the market within which the service is operating. Within this analysis there will be four key areas for enquiry:

(b) ‘Our interest is in best practice in terms of what works why and how at the business level when customer-facing technologies are introduced. We have a services transformation practice and want to learn more about the art of the possible in order to help our clients solve their problems’.

These two extracts illustrate the extent to which, not just in the UK but also in an increasing number of other countries, ‘strategies’, ‘visions’, ‘missions’, ‘business plans’, ‘performance indicators’, ‘devolved budgets’, ‘customer care’ and so on ooze from every nook and cranny of social work. Far from being a neutral trend, businessology is a resource in a struggle for power. It is a strategy through which politicians and managers lay claim to power over social work. In many countries, business expertise has been used to rearrange and consolidate new sets of power relations in social work. The intention underpinning this power struggle has been the drive to cut the costs of social work, usually expressed in the language of businessology as ‘doing more for less’ or ‘achieving value-for-money’. The overarching claim is that businessology has the solutions to any country’s social and economic problems and that in pursuing those solutions politicians and managers have the right to claim authority and power over social work and to undermine professional and other sources of power. (Businessology regards professionals as potential villains, standing in the path of progress.) Social work regimes in which professionalism is prominent stand in the way of establishing new power relations, premised on the predominance of the exercise of managerial control.

Lest this be interpreted as a view of businessology as deterministic, it is important to stress that businessology does not have a single or fixed character. It is flexible and contingent; it is shaped by the national context in which it is located because here is significant variation in policy and in the organisational arrangements of social work in different countries. In any country that embraces businessology, there has to be motive and opportunity. For example, in the UK, the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments had both the motive and the opportunity for imposing businessology on social work. The motive was their commitment to welfare state reform, influenced by New Right ideas. The opportunity was provided by an economic crisis, the high degree of centralisation of the British state and the lack of a written constitution stipulating the limits of central government powers. These three factors provided the opportunity for Conservative governments to be highly interventionist in pushing businessology into social work, provided through Social Services Departments in local government and through non-governmental organisations. (The centralised state and absence of a written constitution enable New Labour governments to continue to do so.)

Drawing on the experience of countries that have experienced substantial onslaughts from businessology, is it possible to assess the extent to which it has penetrated social work in particular national contexts? Perhaps we can construct a ‘businessology impact index’. Here are nine indicators that might make up such an index:

►How does your country measure up against the indicators in this ‘businessology impact index’?

Businessology may have been introduced into social work in many countries of the world but dilemmas, problems and contradictions remain. When managers exercise the power accorded to them by businessology, they do so in the face of continuing challenges, for example professionals will sometimes try to use their knowledge and skills to push businessology objectives and their implementation in particular directions. There is also the question of how the voices of the users of social work are to be heard. Great stress is placed on ‘customers’ by businessology and there is the potential for service users to take the businessology rhetoric seriously and insist on more meaningful participation in service provision. In other words, there is (at least limited, and more so in some countries than others,) space for struggles from professionals and service users in attempting to determine the forms which businessology takes. For example, talk by politicians and managers of making services more effective or improving their quality opens up spaces for professional and user groups, or alliances of interests between them, to argue about what ‘effectiveness’ or ‘quality’ means. In this sense, businessology creates sites for conflict between different interests through which claims to power can be pressed. This might not appear to be much of a radical thought in countries in which the impact of businessology has not been strongly felt, but it’s a fairly radical thought in those countries in which businessology is well advanced. In any case, for the foreseeable future it may be all we have with which to work in those countries where social work has experienced the full force of businessology.

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The examples of businessology:

(a) A senior manager writing about expanding the number of foster parents available to social workers to be used for placements of children and young people.

(b) A management consulting company explaining its interest in introducing telephone call centres into social work to replace initial contact with social workers.

Author´s Address:
Prof Dr John Harris
University of Warwick
School of Health and Social Studies
UK-Coventry CV4 7AL
United Kingdom
Tel: ++44 024 7652 3504
Email: j.harris@warwick.ac.uk