Policy Alienation and the Power of Professionals

Policy Alienation and the Power of Professionals

Author: Lars Tummers

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2013-01-01

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 1781954038

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ÔTummersÕ book resurfaces alienation as an established and useful concept, but also as a forgotten and ignored reality. Shifts in policies affect the meaning of these policies, and reforms affect power balances. The analyses in this book are crucial to help understand why policies fail and why there is resistance to change. Tummers coins Òpolicy alienationÓ as an increasingly indispensable concept. Reforms would have been different if TummersÕ analysis on powerlessness and meaninglessness was more taken into account.Õ Ð Geert Bouckaert, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium and former President of the European Group for Public Administration ÔLars Tummers has written a must-read book! While systemic changes ushered in by market-oriented reforms have received attention, little is known about the plight of the individual in modern bureaucracies. Tummers presents a masterful and authoritative account of policy alienation that public service professionals experience. The breadth and depth of TummersÕs scholarship is impressive! This book has something of value for everyone from the casual reader to public management scholar.Õ Ð Sanjay K. Pandey, The State University of New Jersey, US ÔWhy do pubic sector professionals resist change? Tummers offers a compelling account of the alienation of professionals following new public management reforms. This timely and methodologically innovative book shows public managers how to implement organisational change, and provides scholars with a set of new measurement scales. Policy Alienation and the Power of Professionals is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand how professional organisations operate, and why professionals resist some changes, while embracing others.Õ Ð Steven Van de Walle, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands Professionals often have problems with governmental policies they have to implement. This ranges from Israeli teachers striking against school reforms, via British civil servants quitting their jobs as they have problems with New Public Management reforms focused on cost cutting, to US healthcare professionals feeling overwhelmed by a constant flow of policy changes, resulting in tensions, conflicts, and burn-outs. This eloquent book by Lars Tummers develops a framework to understand these important issues with policy implementation, using the innovative concept of Ôpolicy alienationÕ. Policies in healthcare, social security, and education are analyzed. The conclusions challenge the common assertions regarding the reasons why professionals resist policies. For instance, the impact of professional influence, often viewed as an end in itself, is nuanced. Lars Tummers reveals that it is far more important for professionals that a policy is meaningful for society and for their clients, than they have an influence in its shaping. Policy Alienation and the Power of Professionals is essential for public administration scholars, policymakers, change managers and professionals. To improve its academic and practical significance, a Ôpolicy alienationÕ questionnaire is developed to measure the degree of policy alienation felt by implementers. This instrument can be used to first understand and then improve policy performance in various settings.


Marx and Digital Machines

Marx and Digital Machines

Author: Mike Healy

Publisher: University of Westminster Press

Published: 2020-10-16

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1912656809

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This book explores the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the digital environment: technology offers all manner of promises, yet habitually fails to deliver. This failure often arises from numerous problems: the proficiency of the technology or end-user, policy failure at various levels, or a combination of these. Solutions such as better technology and more effective end-user education are often put into place to solve these failures. Mike Healy argues that such approaches are inherently faulty drawing upon qualitative research informed by Marx’s theory of alienation. Using Marx’s theory, he considers participants in three distinct settings: the workplace of information and communications technology (ICT) professionals; university scholars researching the ethical and societal implications of our digital environment; and a group of pensioners living in South London, UK, undertaking ICT training. By delving beneath the surface of how digital technologies are created, researched and experienced, this study illustrates the contradictory nature of our digital lives, as they directly arise from the needs of capitalism. The book also places Marx’s theory in contrast to the mainstream approaches derived from Seaman and Blauner. In researching and comprehending ICT, this book reaffirms the superior explanatory power of Marx’s theory of alienation.


Policy Entrepreneurship at the Street Level

Policy Entrepreneurship at the Street Level

Author: Nissim Cohen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-05-13

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1108875238

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This Element aims to connect the literature of street-level bureaucrats with that of policy entrepreneurship in order to analyze why and how bureaucrats operating at the street level can promote policy change in public administration at the individual level. I demonstrate how street-level bureaucrats act as policy entrepreneurs in different contexts around the globe to promote policy change and analyze what they think of policy entrepreneurship and what they do about it in practice. For this purpose, I use multiple research methods: a survey, in-depth interviews, focus groups and textual analyses. I also offer recommendations to decision-makers to promote street-level policy entrepreneurship, highlighting the benefits of doing so. Lastly, I critically discuss the normative aspects of street-level policy entrepreneurship: ultimately, is it desirable?


Professionals Under Pressure

Professionals Under Pressure

Author: Mirko Noordegraaf

Publisher: Care & Welfare

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 9789089645098

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Over the past decade, public services have come under increasing pressure to perform like private-sector organisations. This study demonstrates that professionals have much leeway in coping with changes caused by IT developments, distributed knowledge and more demanding public which have all created new pressures on public services. The authors conclude that rather than demanding more autonomy and space, public service professionals need renewed and workable professional standards.


Research Handbook on Street-Level Bureaucracy

Research Handbook on Street-Level Bureaucracy

Author: Peter Hupe

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 537

ISBN-13: 1786437635

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When the objectives of public policy programmes have been formulated and decided upon, implementation seems just a matter of following instructions. However, it is underway to the realization of those objectives that public policies get their final substance and form. Crucial is what happens in and around the encounter between public officials and individual citizens at the street level of government bureaucracy. This Research Handbook addresses the state of the art while providing a systematic exploration of the theoretical and methodological issues apparent in the study of street-level bureaucracy and how to deal with them.


Lacan and Education Policy

Lacan and Education Policy

Author: Matthew Clarke

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-06-13

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1350070564

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Lacan and Education Policy draws on the rich conceptual resources of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Using Lacan's four discourses Matthew Clarke offers a sophisticated critique of recent education policy and the neoliberal model of political economy within which it sits, including the ways in which education has been diminished and trivialised through the economistic and depoliticising moves of policy. Clarke articulates possibilities for thinking differently about education and education policy beyond the reductive narratives of neoliberalism. He argues that psychoanalytic theory is valuable, not so much for allowing us to see what education 'really is', but for offering insights into what prevents education from 'being', enabling us to shift our focus instead into the possibilities education offers as a space of 'becoming'. The book suggests possibilities for conceptualising and creating 'the other side' of education.


Innovating in Practice

Innovating in Practice

Author: Tiziana Russo-Spena

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-11-13

Total Pages: 523

ISBN-13: 3319433806

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The purpose of the book is to devise an alternative conceptual vocabulary for studying innovation by stressing the role of social, contextual and cultural perspectives. This vocabulary is drawn on a service and on sociological perspectives on innovation based on the ontological assumption that innovation is a value co-creation matter and that it takes place in a reality that is multiple, constructed and socially embedded. The aim is to tackle key issues such as social construction, service innovation, knowledge and learning processes, value (co) creation, innovating and innovation activities networking and collaborative innovation.


Theory and Practice of Public Sector Reform

Theory and Practice of Public Sector Reform

Author: Steven Van de Walle

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-06-10

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1317500121

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Theory and Practice of Public Sector Reform offers readers differing theoretical perspectives to help examine the process of public sector reform, combined with an overview of major trends in the core areas of the functioning of the public sector. The book consists of three parts, the first addresses a number of conceptual and theoretical perspectives on public sector reform. It shows how different ways of looking at reform reveal very different things. The second part addresses major changes in specific areas of public sectors – 'objects of reform.’ Part three focuses on the study of public sector reform. Aimed at academics, researchers and advanced students; this edited collection brings together many of the most eminent academics in the area of Public Policy and Management seeking to link to theory in part one and insights into specific thematic areas in part two, offering readers a display of theoretical perspectives to look at public sector reform.


Nobody's Law

Nobody's Law

Author: Marc Hertogh

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-06-14

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1137603976

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Nobody’s Law shows how people – who are disappointed, disenchanted, and outraged about the justice system – gradually move away from law. Using detailed case studies and combining different theoretical perspectives, this book explores the legal consciousness of ordinary people, businessmen, and street-level bureaucrats in the Netherlands. The empirical research in this study tells an original and alternative narrative about the role of law in everyday life. While previous studies emphasize the law’s hegemony and argue that it’s ‘all over’, Hertogh shows that legal proliferation makes it harder for people to know, and subsequently identify with, the law. As a result, official law has become increasingly remote and irrelevant to many people. The central finding presented in this highly topical text is that these developments signal a process of ‘legal alienation’— a gradual and mundane process with potentially serious consequences for the legitimacy of law. A timely and original study, this book will be of particular interest to scholars in the fields of law and society, socio-legal studies and legal theory.


Restructuring Welfare Governance

Restructuring Welfare Governance

Author: Tanja Klenk

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2015-10-30

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1783475773

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This volume brings together cutting-edge scholarship on an under-researched and topical issue. Quasi-marketization and managerialization of welfare organizations are found to constitute common reform trends in many European countries and across social policy domains, following similar timings albeit with different intensities. The analysis, carried out at the meso and micro levels, reveals that ex-post control by states has been strengthened, managers are becoming relevant or even central actors, while professionals in public welfare institutions are seeing their role and autonomy challenged.' - Ana M. Guillén, University of Oviedo, Spain 'In the contemporary welfare state public management has become a profession of its own. At the same time professionals in public welfare bureaucracies have incorporated market considerations and managerial objectives in their daily work. This current evolution of welfare governance, path dependent as it is, has been documented thoroughly in this book, both in depth and from a comparative perspective. It makes the book a must read for all who are interested in the welfare state and care about its future.' - Peter Hupe, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands 'This edited collection on welfare governance across Europe will prove itself invaluable for research and teaching purposes. It usefully brings together the whole range of social sciences in a series of well organized, evidenced and argued chapters. The book is organized into two parts, the first focusing on the impact of marketization and managerialization across Europe and across sectors within the welfare state, while the second half focuses on the professions and the emerging human resource management issues. Both are crucial aspects of the new governance and together deliver a coherent and comprehensive set of papers addressing a highly pertinent set of questions for policymakers, analysts and managers for the next decade and will become recommended reading for the students, the welfare state, social and health policy as well as public sector management and administration.' - Mike Dent, Staffordshire University, UK Quasi-markets and managerial steering techniques have spread in the provision of welfare state services and are now a salient feature. This innovative book explores the introduction and impact of marketization and managerialism in social policy by adopting a dual perspective - one on regulation and governance, the other on human resources - covering five fields of social service delivery. Welfare governance (for example, welfare mix, regulation, employment conditions and customer involvement) has changed significantly in the past decade. In particular, the new governance models not only clash with traditional ideas of bureaucratic regulation but also with the norms and standards of professional service delivery. The fact that the labor force in welfare organizations is made up of 'professionals' implies that the introduction of new modes of welfare governance often results in organizational conflicts. The editors and contributors collectively assesses these processes not only by comparing different policy fields and countries, but also by taking a close look inside organizations, examining the coping strategies of professionals, and how they adapt to new models of governing welfare organizations. An ideal compliment to undergraduate and postgraduate study, Restructuring Welfare Governanceis essential reading for scholars in the fields of social policy, public administration and comparative welfare state analysis. Contributors: K. Baadsgaard, V. Burau, F.A. Ceravolo, B. Jantz, H. Jørgensen, T. Klenk, E. Kuhlmann, R. Moscati, M. Noordegraaf, I. Nørup, E. Pavolini, T. Peetz, M. Rostan, U. Schimank, A. Stanchi, C. Teelken, H. Theobald, M. Thunnissen, M. Turri