Excerpt
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................ 1
Governance as a term................................................................................................. 1
Governance of social work........................................................................................ 2
Which forms of governance can be found in social work and how “successful” are they?........................................................................................................................... 2
What can be governed in social work and what can be expected from it?................ 4
Conclusion................................................................................................................. 5
References.................................................................................................................. 6
Introduction
The term governance today, is used in many areas of politics, business,and society and at all levels, both in science and in practice. The following chapters are an attempt to see what forms of governance can be found in the field of social work in Germany, to which extent social work can be "governed” and what can be expected from it. Should a social field be supported more by the state or more by the market or should it lead to more civil society? How can the orientation of the social work offers be decided not only through, but also together with its clients? These are the main questions which will be answered in the following chapters. To give a small overview, I first explain the term governance in general and its understanding for this paper.
Governance as a term
The term governance today, is used in many areas of politics, business, and society and at all levels, both in science and in practice. The reason for the spread of the term is by no means that it would have invented a new form of government, a model of organization or a model of social self-government, although this claim is linked in part to governance. In fact, it is based on the realization that well-known forms that are generally expected to solve collective problems in modern society, the state or the hierarchical model in politics, administration and companies, the market or associations and social communities, have become problematic. And it is precisely to this fact that the spread of the term governance refers. (cf. Benz, et.al., 2008, w.p.)
A simple definition of the term governance is to describe “the act or manner of governing” (Benz, 2007, p.9-10). One could say that governance is an abbreviation for the complex forms of organization, decision-making, control and regulation in economy, politics, and society. Only by using a clear and analytically defined term of governance one can hope to gain new insights into the functioning of social services and the potential impact of reform concepts. This often raises the question of the distribution of sponsorship and responsibility as Frank Nullmeier states in his article. The governance perspective attempts to capture the totality of collaborative structures underlying the delivery of social services. A basic three-way typology of competition (market), hierarchy and network usually emerge (cf. Nullmeier, 2011, p.284-296). In the next chapters we will see if we can find these forms in the field of social work.
For the understanding of the term governance in this paper, it is important to mention at this point that whenever terms like control, coordination or guidance emerge, they refer to the term of governance.
Governance of social work
Summarizing the text of Sascha Weber there has been both privately and publicly organized social work in Germany since industrialization. With the institutionalization of neo-corporatism in the 1920s, the model of market-based provision of social services became influential. The respective regional and substantive peculiarities of the action coordination required control through negotiations between the actors. With the introduction of service contracts since the 1990s, negotiations were standardized through elements of competition (cf. Weber, 2018, p.27-30). Together with the different tasks and the increasing plurality in the provider landscape, control requirements for social work became more necessary. At the same time, no uniform understanding of governance can be identified in this development. On the contrary, many expectations, approaches, and impulses with a view to governance can be identified in the various levels and fields of social work. In this respect, it is important to question the extent to which social work can be governed, what forms of governance are used and what can be expected through it. Whether a social field should be supported more by the state or more by the market, or whether the balance is shifting from the state to the market or vice versa, or to civil society. Since in most fields, and this also applies to social services, it is not one sector or one institution that assumes the overall financing and overall responsibility, one often finds a financing mix and a division of responsibility. This has been prominently captured in the literature with the term “welfare pluralism” (cf. Nullmeier, 2011, p.284-296).
Which forms of governance can be found in social work and how “successful” are they?
In his article, Simon Mohr talks about the entry of competition into social work. In this course of entry, private-commercial sponsors have established themselves, management instruments from the private sector have been transferred to the social sector, and social institutions have been restructured into companies. With this restructuring, managerialism has become established as a mechanism or form of governance. The term managerialism refers to the widespread belief in the rational controllability of organizational processes in management theory and the assumption that systematic use of the superior techniques of management opens effective and sustainable solutions to economic and social problems. Protagonists of social work hope that this will increase efficiency, but also see opportunities for quality improvement and greater recognition of the work to be achieved through evidence of impact (cf. Mohr, 2018, p.14-17). Nevertheless, a high degree of uncertainty, uncontrollability and non-controllability remains. “Social workers, too, are not "do-gooders" but "crooks" whose self-interested behavior must be channeled in favor of the common good with the help of the right incentive systems, above all through the market and competition.” (Mohr, 2018, p.15) Sascha Weber deals with another steering mechanism that social work must deal with today in his article. The empirical findings on the control of social work show that wherever the legislator has introduced a system of service contracts, we find varying degrees of economization today. Economization by Weber means not only that service providers are in competition with each other, but also that where management is not based on competition but on hierarchy, namely in the organizations, the pressure is passed on to the employees (cf. Weber, 2018, p.27-30).
This also means that strengthening competition in social work markets is not the only facet of the problem. In terms of strengthening competitive elements, social work markets are still characterized by incomplete markets. On the side of the demanders, there are in part statutory associations or health insurance funds up to pure monopolies, for example youth welfare offices as the only demanders of youth welfare services in a region. On the provider side, the market is influenced by similar distortions. Depending on the field of work and the region there are close and, in some cases, legally prescribed forms of cooperation, but also almost completely atomized provider markets. Depending on the structure of the market, the possibilities for influencing the actors and groups of actors are either extensive or highly modest. Since most social work markets focus on negotiation as the coordination of action, only more or less administrated prices can be observed here, with corresponding welfare losses on the weaker side. He concludes that the market will not fix this problem (ebd.).
The authors Klaus Grundwald und Stefan-Paul Roß are giving another perspective on the different forms of governance used in the field of social work in their article. They explain that, within the German welfare state regime, it has long been a matter of course for social services and institutions to assign themselves primarily to a social sub-sector, its logic of action and its guiding objectives. Organizations of the social economy, for example, have seen themselves either as public or as free' providers and have accordingly oriented themselves predominantly to the logic of action of the state (hierarchical control) or to that of the field of associations (control via opinion-forming of the members) (cf. Grundwald, Roß, 2018, S.165-172). In view of the changes in the welfare regime, since the mid-1980s at the latest, social economy organizations have increasingly been faced with the challenge of combining resources, objectives, and decision-making modes from different sectors of society in a wide variety of mixtures. Important demands behind this reorientation are, to be more open to economic ways of thinking and instruments, to involve local resources and civic engagement, and to focus on the increasingly individualized needs of potential addressees. Another major challenge is the increase in private-sector providers of social services. This is described with terms such as “organizational governance”. In this case, one speaks of social management with a view to the four dimensions of “resources”, “targets”, “influence and decision-making structures” and “identities”. Against this background, a management of network that takes up the theoretical concepts of “welfare mix” and organizational governance is required to realize this mix of specific, by no means always compatible and occasionally contradicting functional logics or guiding values of the four sub-areas mentioned (ebd.).
As shown above we can find the three-way typology of competition (market), hierarchy and network when it comes to the question of what forms of governance are used in the field of social work. But it seems that every type of governance has no guarantee or solutions for its contradictions. Is there an alternative form of governance concentrating the needs of its clients? This will be discussed in the next chapter.
What can be governed in social work and what can be expected from it?
The special features of social work are, above all, the need for co-production by the clients and a lack of causal knowledge about the connection between cause and effect. Special organizational requirements arise for social service production only through the setting of certain normative professional goals. Since bureaucracy has been stylized as a general bogeyman and is considered unsuitable for controlling social work, the question of an appropriate alternative arises. Ideally, in the professional type of organization, the specialists are at the center. Because of their academic training and internalized professional ethics, they are trusted and allowed to direct and control their work themselves. Specifically, this is accompanied by a high degree of autonomy in the practice of the profession. In addition, decisions tend to be made jointly based on professional knowledge and oriented toward the best interests of the client (cf. Mohr, 2018, p.14-17).
In the following, such specific forms as part of the professional type of governance, used in the field of social work on a daily base, will be introduce: Case management means, bringing the various processes of individual case processing (problem interpretation, consideration of possible help, communication processes with different participants) into a factual context and chronological sequence as well as observing and evaluating the course of the process and the effects in the further implementation of the help. When it comes to cost control, especially in fields of activity in which there is an individual legal entitlement to benefits and in which utilization and the development of needs can only be calculated to a limited extent, measures are sought to "control" the development of budgetary burdens through cost limitation measures. The control of organizational processes is the focus of efforts to influence the behavior of employees regarding organizationally desirable behavior. Examples of this are work instructions, anchoring of action programs (concepts, methodical procedures, etc.), specification of forms, standardization of procedures (process descriptions, checklists, etc.) and their anchoring in “quality management manuals”. For these effects to be achieved, the development of the cooperation (network control) must not be left to chance but must be repeatedly stimulated and maintained through targeted and continuous control impulses (cf. Machel, 2018, p.1-8).
The socio-political control aims to define benefit claims or to influence the infrastructural supply constellations in a certain direction (e.g., towards inclusion or prevention) by deciding on legal requirements, formulating priorities in the allocation of resources, or using political incentive programs. This concept of governance addresses the various social constellations, so decisions and modes of action should be geared towards a specific projected result. The probability of control success increases with the ability to recognize the conditions of the social field as precisely as possible and accordingly to configure the control impulses according to the constellation and in a goal-oriented manner (ebd.). But as Joachim Merchel states out in his conclusion, it must be considered too that this form of governance is not based on technical, but on social systems that develop their own logic and process the control impulses according to its own logic. The inherent logic of social (and psychological) systems must always be reckoned with. People (as psychological systems and as part of social systems) have a free will to behave according to a control impulse or not, to accept, process or modify this control impulse according to their own interests, habits, perceptions, or interpretations (ebd.).
Conclusion
This paper was an attempt to show what forms of governance can be found in the field of social work in Germany, to which extent social work can be governed and what can be expected from it. In the main part of this paper, it was shown that the question if a social field should be supported more by the state or more by the market or if it should lead to more civil society is not to be answered clearly. What can be answered, is that the most common forms of governance, competition, hierarchy, and network can be found in the field of social work. But every type has its downsides too there always parts which can’t be “governed” or controlled. Especially the professional type of governance focusing on the social workers as specialists of their profession gives an insight of what can be controlled by using specific methods like case management or cost control as explained in the previous chapter. Still, one must always take in consideration that this form of governance relies on individuals, and human can always fail no matter what intention they have or as mentioned there will always be an uncertainty because social workers are dependent on the co-production of their clients who have their own will. In summary this means that the concept of governance has established itself in the field of social work in Germany and is developing continuedly. This perspective attempts to capture the totality of collaborative structures underlying the delivery of social services. Different forms of governance are used in each specific field to describe mechanisms of interrelationships between each other. Since in most fields, and this also applies to social services, it is not one sector or one institution that assumes the overall control or responsibility, one often finds a mixture and a division of responsibility as shown in the main part.
References
Benz, Arthur et.al. (2007) Handbuch Governance: Theoretische Grundlagen und Empirische Anwendungsfelder. Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Grunwald, Klaus, Roß, Paul-Stefan (2018) Governance in der Sozialen Arbeit: Dilemmatamanagement als Ansatz des Managements hybrider Organisationen. Wiesbaden, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, p. 165-181
Merchel, Joachim (2018) Steuerung in der Sozialen Arbeit: eine rätselhafte Formel. Deutsches Zentralinstitut für soziale Fragen/DZI, Vol. 43 (9-10), p. 6-13
Mohr, Simon (2018) Illusionen des Managements und ihre praktischen Konsequenzen. Empirische Gründe gegen den Steuerungsoptimismus in der Sozialen Arbeit, Wiesbaden, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Vol. 42 (1), p. 14-17
Nullmeier, Frank (2011) Governance sozialer Dienste. Wiesbaden, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. In: Evers, Adalbert, Heinze, Rolf G., Olk, Thomas (Hrsg.) Handbuch Soziale Dienste, p. 284-298
Weber, Sascha (2018) Nach der Ökonomisierung kommt die…Möglichkeiten der Steuerung Sozialer Arbeit aus Sicht der Governance-Theorie. Wiesbaden, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, Vol. 42 (5), p. 27-30