Social Work Paper on mission of an organization and supervision; outcome
Critical Social Policy © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journa\ lsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0261018314538799 csp.sagepub.com 433–453 Lean social care and worker identity: The role of outcomes, supervision and mission Donna Baines McMaster University, Canada sara CharLesworTh University of South Australia, Australia DarreLL Turner University of Auckland, New Zealand Laura o’neiLL McMaster University, Canada Abstract Since the 1980s, many social care jobs have shifted from the public to the nonprofit sector, accompanied by funding cuts, government con- tracts, managerialism and performance management. Qualitative data collected in Australia, New Zealand and Canada show that agency mis- sion and immediate supervisors remain centrally important to workers’ identity and willingness to remain employed in social care. With the exception of one study site (where targets were jointly resisted by man- agers and staff), outcome measures were seen by workers to detract Corresponding author:
Donna Baines, School of Social Work, McMaster University, 1280 Main Stre\ et West, Hamilton, ON L8S 4M4, Canada.
Email: [email protected] 538799 CSP 0 0 10.1177/0261018314538799 Critical Social PolicyBaines et al.
research-article 2014 Article CriticalSocial Policy 434 Critical Social Policy 34(4) from the quality of care and erode social justice. This article argues that agency mission and supportive supervision buffer the impact of poor wages and conditions in the sector, while outcome measures undermine workers’ identities as caring people, in effect making the ‘self’ a site of struggle and discontent. Resistance strategies that agencies, workers and unions have used to challenge the hegemony of outcome-oriented funding and management models are explored.
Key words managerialism, New Public Management, nonprofit/voluntary sector, resistance, work organisation Contracted-out social care, funded by governments but provided through f\ or- and nonprofit care agencies, has been characterised as lean care, advanc\ ing private market-compatible notions of cost savings and efficiency, compet\ i- tive performance measures and other standardising metrics over more open\ - ended, holistic, community-engaged approaches (Baines, 2004; Barnes and\ Prior, 2009; Cunningham, 2008; Lavalette, 2007; McDonald, 2006; Mooney and Law, 2007). While neoliberalism provided the political ideology and contracting-out provided the social policy, managerial models such as New Public Management (NPM) and other ‘high efficiency’ management m\ odels have provided the blueprints to remake social care with the putative goa\ l of increasing efficiencies, effectiveness and accountability (Barnes an\ d Prior, 2009; Harris, 2003; Mooney and Law, 2007). Reflecting on this highly gendered sector, labour process literature asserts that the imposition of NPM, and other private market-like models\ , through government contract requirements has led to increased volume, pa\ ce and intensity of work, as well as the reduction or removal of many aspec\ ts of care that contributed to the dignity of service users and advanced equit\ y and fairness in the workplace and beyond (Aronson and Neysmith, 1996; Carey\ , 2008; Cunningham, 2008; Shields et al., 2005; Smith, 2007). Projects th\ at empowered service users to participate in policy debate, community devel\ op- ment and mobilisation, planning services and priorities, and practices such as open-ended case assessments and case plans are among the practices that \ pro- vided service users with greater possibilities for dignity, collective, affirming identities, and access to resources (Carniol, 2010; Dominelli, 2002; Mu\ llaly, 2010). Most managers have found these types of open-ended, process-base\ d practices difficult to quantify or justify within the short timelines of\ govern- ment funding contracts, and in the context of increasing pressure to meet outcome targets of cost saving (Aronson and Smith, 2011; Baines et al.,\ 2012; Eikenberry, 2009). The literature confirms an increasing concern that s\ ocial Baines et al. 435 justice-oriented practices have been reduced or removed through NPM met- rics, while the boundless capacity to care expected of all women has rei\ nforced the gendered ethos of altruism and long hours of paid and unpaid work in\ this sector (Carniol, 2010; Dominelli, 2002; Ross, 2011; Smith, 2007).
Though much has now been written about differences between and among restructured welfare states (Bach and Bordogna, 2011; Bach and Givan, 2011; Clarke, 2004; Hood and Peters, 2004), less is known about \ the ways that those on the front-line of service provision construct their i\ denti- ties as care workers in the rapidly changing context of lean management,\ and what factors may come into play to buffer or exacerbate tensions that ar\ ise from the imposition of lean care regimes within social agencies. Drawing\ on qualitative data collected as part of a larger, international study of r\ estructur- ing nonprofit social service (NPSS) work in four similar, but notably \ differ- ent liberal, welfare states (Esping-Andersen, 1999), this article argu\ es that the outcome measures and targets associated with lean care work are gene\ r- ally felt to detract from NPSS workers’ sense of themselves as caring\ , social justice-oriented, effective workers. The data also show that the agency’s mis- sion, supportive supervision and workers’ commitment to client popula\ tions serve to buffer the negative impacts of NPM and other forms of manageria\ l- ism, providing spaces in which workers can express their values on the j\ ob and reinforce their sense of themselves as linked to larger moral or soc\ ial justice projects. Consistent with the critical management literature on \ lean care work, this article also analyses ways that front-line workers, supervisors and managers have worked together, individually, collectively with other\ groups in the larger community, and with unions to challenge the hegemon\ y of NPM and to provide workers in this overwhelmingly female and highly gendered sector with opportunities to work in tandem with their social c\ are values (Aronson and Smith, 2010, 2011; Healy, 2002; McDonald and Che- noweth, 2009; Noble and Irwin, 2009; Parry and Keilliher, 2011). These \ findings suggest that there are important roles for managers and supervi\ sors in resisting managerialism imposed by funding bodies and that managers a\ nd front-line staff working together within and against NPM can challenge t\ he hegemony of this near-monolithic system (Noble and Irwin, 2009, in soci\ al work, see also Lavalette, 2007). This article begins with an overview of the literature on managerialism \ and NPM in the NPSS, including critical management literature on work- place identity, agency mission and the role of front-line supervisors an\ d senior managers in buffering the impacts of managerialism on their staff and the larger agency. This is followed by a discussion of the study from which \ the data are drawn, before moving on to findings. Discussion of findings and\ con- clusions form the last part of the paper and address the following: a) \ do NPM- associated outcome metrics affect NPSS workers’ sense of self; b) do\ agency mission, supervision and client population buffer possible negative impacts 436 Critical Social Policy 34(4) of managerialism; and c) what are some of the strategies managers, supe\ rvi- sors and front-line staff have used to challenge outcome-oriented fundin\ g and management models in the NPSS?
The contexts: Managerialism, identity, mission and supervision Interchangeably referred to as the voluntary, community, third and non- profit social services, in most ‘western’ countries, this sector f\ ound its roots in volunteerism among faith-based and other groups wishing to address particular community needs. The expansion of public services in the post\ - World War Two era permitted many nonprofit services to deepen their roles as advocates for those with less voice, and to act as a provider of spec\ ialised services for those whose needs were not met by public provision (Jones,\ 2007; McDonald and Marston, 2002). Generally, nonprofit services were thought to extend public services rather than displace them, and to prov\ ide greater flexibility and capacity to interpret, respond to and mobilise a\ round new and emerging needs (Cunningham, 2008; Frumkin and Andre-Clark, 2000; Hasenfeld and Powell, 2004). The nonprofit sector prides itself on having a unique ‘voluntary ethic’ of social participation at all l\ evels of ser- vice delivery, policy development and programme planning (participation\ ), service to others (care) and frequently, social justice (Baines, 2010\ ; Smith, 2010; Van Til, 2000).
The 1980s saw Anglo-American governments increase reliance on the private market for meeting social and individual needs, concomitantly retrenching and restructuring welfare states, and off-loading services t\ o the private and nonprofit sectors (Barnes and Prior, 2009; Carniol, 2010; H\ arris, 2003; Ross, 2011). Contracting-out public services meant that the nonpr\ ofit sector expanded significantly as governments were quick to take advantag\ e of lower wage and benefit packages (Davies, 2008; Shields et al., 2005). \ Compli- ance with contract requirements ushered in NPM, and in particular, quant\ ita- tive metrics such as competitive performance targets and outcome measure\ s aimed at reducing costs and compelling efficiencies (Barnes and Prior, \ 2009; Clarke, 2004; McDonald and Marston, 2002; Smith, 2007). In the public a\ nd nonprofit sector, these metrics have been associated with systems of lea\ n work (Harley et al., 2007; O’Neill, forthcoming) which draws on work org\ anisation models first implemented in auto manufacturing, particularly the ‘Toy\ ota model’. Sawchuk (2009) argues that lean work organisation is a new \ incarna- tion of the ‘seemingly endless morphology of Taylorism’ as capital\ continues to respond to changing contexts, technologies and resistance (pp. 325 a\ nd 331). Certainly, lean holds strong appeal for those committed to the ne\ olib- eral, residual welfare state as lean has been explicitly linked to cutti\ ng costs Baines et al. 437 (O’Neill, forthcoming). As the Institute for Healthcare Improvement\ (2005:
2) asserts, ‘lean means using less to do more’.
While earlier models of manufacturing work organisation known as ‘Ford- ism’ were characterised by repetitive, standardised and de-skilled labour, con- temporary lean forms of work organisation feature: tighter managerial co\ ntrol of the labour process; ongoing intensification of the work; reduction of\ costs and waste; increased standardisation; the use of targets, outcomes, just\ -in- time deliverables; flexible practices and labour forces; close monitorin\ g of all aspects of work; and a greater reliance on contracting-out (Armstrong a\ nd Armstrong, 2002; Harley et al., 2007; Lewchuk and Robertson, 1996, 1997;\ O’Neill, forthcoming; Rinehart, 1999; Schenk and Anderson, 1999; Shad\ ur et al., 1995). In care organisations, lean work is characterised by the\ se same aspects and accompanied by an array of quantitative metrics (Armstrong and Armstrong, 2002; O’Neill, forthcoming). Though not entirely opposed to lean work or quantitative metrics, main- stream literature on the voluntary sector tends to argue that outcome measures fail to capture the full contributions of social advocacy, community pla\ nning and development efforts (Benjamin, 2012; LeRoux and Wright, 2010; Smith\ , 2010). The aforementioned authors provide technical models to improve and strengthen outcome measures, rather than question their role in the shif\ ting relations of workplace control. In contrast, labour process theory, particularly feminist labour process\ theory, views NPM and managerialism as forms of work standardisation in \ which work practices that do not contribute to efficiencies and elude ea\ sy quantification are eliminated from ‘best practices’, making it eas\ ier to increase the pace and volume of the work and replace the majority-female, higher \ cre- dential/higher pay staff with less skilled, lower pay staff or even volu\ nteers (McDonald, 2006; Parry and Keilliher, 2011). The workplace practices that are eliminated often include those closest to the heart of the ‘volun\ tary ethic’ such as those with inclusive and open-ended goals such as mobilising com\ - munities around their own issues or advocating for holistic social, poli\ cy and cultural change for those marginalised and made vulnerable in today’s\ global market (Baines, 2010; Smith, 2007). Many have noted that the manageri- alised metrics associated with NPM and other ‘high efficiency’ mod\ els place the voluntary ethos in jeopardy and warn of the dangers of ‘mission drift’ in which nonprofit agencies lose the participatory and social justice pract\ ices that differentiate them from the private and public sector (Eikenberry,\ 2009; Frumkin and Andre-Clark, 2000; Jones, 2007; Shields et al., 2005; Van Til, 2000). A number of critics argue that the ethos and missions of the non\ profit sector are more aspirational than something that is seen in everyday pra\ ctice and service users consciously express frustration with the care they rec\ eive (Hasenfeld, 2000; Hasenfeld and Powell, 2004; McDonald and Marston, 2002). However, the opportunity to work in tandem with one’s values,\ for 438 Critical Social Policy 34(4) and with a particular client population is thought to somewhat compensat\ e for lower wages and difficult working conditions (Burt and Scholarios, \ 2011; Cunningham, 2008; Nickson et al., 2008) and is consistently reported as\ the key aspect of work that draws and retains staff in the nonprofit sector \ (Parry and Keilliher, 2011; Van Til, 2000).
The introduction of NPM and similar metrics by government funders in the 1990s also increased the pace and workload of managers and superviso\ rs who frequently saw their roles shift from a focus on programme developme\ nt, trouble shooting and case support for front-line staff to major responsibilities for: coaching staff to meet competitive performance goals; documenting t\ he outputs of care and community mobilisation practices that do not easily \ lend themselves to quantification; and enforcing policy agendas with which th\ ey did not agree (Carey, 2008; Healy, 2002; Lavalette, 2007; Noble and Irw\ in, 2009). As Aronson and Smith (2010: 531) note, the work of managers is\ ‘characterized by constant change, excess of paper and technical work, dwin- dling resources and the strain of being positioned as buffers between fu\ nders, more senior management, front line staff and service users’. A small critical management literature asserts that supervisors play an \ important role in mediating impacts of managerialism on front-line staff\ and service users by using their organisational and discretionary power to challenge and destabilise the overarching dominance of NPM (Aronson and\ Smith, 2010, 2011; Bradley et al., 2010; Healy, 2002; Noble and Irwin, 2\ 009; in social work see also Lavalette, 2007). This critical management literature views these practices as forms of resistance, sharing many characteristi\ cs in common with workplace resistance at the front-lines of care and communit\ y work including the complexity of tactics, discourses and identities mobi\ lised in pursuit of social change (Aronson and Smith, 2010, 2011; Bradley et \ al., 2010; Healy, 2002; Lawler, 2007; McDonald and Chenoweth, 2009). By the \ same measure management can intensify the worst features of NPM includ- ing those noted above such as: increased pace and volume of work; decrea\ sed autonomy and discretion; and increased reliance on the unpaid overtime w\ ork of the majority-female staff (Parry and Keilliher, 2011). Within the NPM model, the preferred identity for front-line workers in managerialised workplaces is one of a self-monitoring, self-critiquing/b\ lam- ing, self-correcting and performance over-achieving non-gendered self; h\ ow- ever, a number of critical studies assert that rather than embrace these\ values passively, identity or the self often becomes a site of struggle and resistance (Baines et al., 2012; Carey, 2008; Clarke, 2004; Thomas and Davies, 200\ 5a).
Hsieh et al. (2012) argue that burn-out is a frequent outcome when workers must fake their feelings in social care situations. Clarke (2004), Bal\ l (2003) and others note that workers struggle to maintain the integrity of a sense of self within the ‘terrors of performativity’ and workplace requirem\ ents that often seem to impose more harm than good. Mooney and Law (2007: 2) ass\ ert Baines et al. 439 that significant opportunities exist for resistance and subversion in th\ e ‘wel- fare industry’ which they see as comprised of front-line and ‘back\ room’ staff across the public, private and voluntary sectors. Similar to Lavalette (\ 2007) who writes specifically on social work, Mooney and Law, who write more generally on the ‘welfare industry’ see the potential for subversi\ on and resis- tance lying in the contradictions between care (or personal/professiona\ l ethics and values) and control, and potentially involving workers, administration, service users and communities. Barnes and Prior (2009) note that in ma\ ny ways the managerialist state can be seen as a response to workers’ resistance to tensions within state provision in earlier eras and though management control has increased under NPM, workers and citizens tend to resist and subvert power collectively and individually, wherever it is exerted on them, hen\ ce while different than at the height of the welfare state, the possibility\ for and expression of resistance/subversion remains strong.
Consistent with these more structuralist arguments as well as with post-\ stucturalist arguments that identity in the workplace is formed, in part\ , by the micro politics of resistance or everyday individual actions (Thomas\ and Davies, 2005b), our data reveal a myriad of resistance/subversion pract\ ices at numerous levels within the self, the workplace and larger society, un\ der- taken by supervisors, managers and front-line staff (hereafter referred\ to as resistance, consistent with workplace and labour process literature which forms the backbone of analysis in this article). To analyse this continuum of resistance practices and players, we draw on Mumby’s (2005) reminder to look for the dialectic and dynamic overlap between control and resistanc\ e in workplace practices, rather than stark dichotomies. Taking into account \ the highly gendered nature of the NPSS sector (Charlesworth, 2010) we also\ draw on Aptheker’s (1989) argument that women’s resistance reflects t\ he gendered circumstances of their home, community and work lives and is often more \ incremental and focused on sustaining dignities and communities, than th\ e workplace and political sphere resistance practices commonly associated with men in the workplace resistance literature (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999;\ Burawoy, 1979; Edwards, 1986). The NPSS is a highly gendered sector with women comprising the major- ity of workers, service users and volunteers (Themudo, 2009). Gendered\ prac- tices such as the expectation that women have a boundless capacity to provide care regardless of wages or working conditions, overlap with the volunta\ ry sector’s altruistic ethos, generating a situation where unpaid overtime is epidemic, self-sacrifice on behalf of service users is the norm and stra\ tegies to improve conditions and terms of work are rarely successful unless the\ y include ways that service users’ lives will also be made better. In t\ his context, resistance takes on a gendered nature in which care is generally central\ and the lines between self-exploitation and resistance are permeable and messy (Baines, 2010; Shields et al., 2005). 440 Critical Social Policy 34(4) The study Our larger study undertakes comparative, international intensive case st\ ud- ies of changing work relations and the experience of front-line workers in the nonprofit sector in four restructured, liberal welfare states (Esping-A\ ndersen, 1999), namely Canada, Australia, Scotland and New Zealand. Liberal welfare states feature few universal programmes, most ‘social’ benefits an\ d insurances are delivered through workplace programmes and include a ‘mixed econo\ my’ of public, for-profit and nonprofit services. The agencies studied in ou\ r larger project were selected after meeting the criteria of being a large-sized,\ multi- service, multi-site agency, providing a range of community social servic\ es including some or most of the following: housing; addictions services; f\ ood; budgeting and income support; child and family services; elder supports;\ pol- icy analysis; and referrals. All agencies received funding through gover\ nment contracts but also raised funds privately. One New Zealand agency (the \ one discussed in this article) had also developed a commercial arm to subsi\ dise the costs of other services. In compliance with government funding requireme\ nts, all agencies have adopted ‘high efficiency’, competitive performan\ ce manage- ment models though they are implemented to a lesser and greater degree across agencies and even within programmes within the same agency. Twelv\ e case studies have been completed to date – four in Canada, three in e\ ach of New Zealand and Australia, and two in Scotland.
Across the twelve case studies, we have undertaken an average of 19 interviews per agency (range 16 to 24) for a total of 230 interviews t\ o date, 4 participant observations or a total of 52, and a review of publicly av\ ailable documents. Like the sector, overall the sample was predominantly female (around 75%). Interviews and observation sites were selected through b\ oth criterion sampling (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) and snowball sampling (\ Gle- sne, 2005) in which sites and research participants were: 1) selected \ by the researchers based on their potential contribution to the data keeping in\ mind our goal of richest possible data and widest possible viewpoints; a\ nd 2) suggested to us by those we interviewed and observed. In the latter \ case, suggestions were triangulated for their potential contribution to data c\ ol- lection, seeking similarity and difference or what Patton (2005) calls\ ‘pre- dictable contrasts’. The 230 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Interviews were conducted with a variety of players including: executive directors (usually 1), managers (usually 4–6)\ , front-line staff (usually 10–12) and union representatives (usually 2–3).\ Research par- ticipants were asked to comment on changes they had experienced in the l\ ast few years, reasons for working and staying in the NPSS, changes they wou\ ld like to see, advice they would give to others and their experience of working in this environment. Baines et al. 441 The 52 participant observations were naturalistic and involved a mixture of interaction and informal discussions with agency workers, service use\ rs and others present at the project (DeWalt, 2007). Data analysis took p\ lace through a constant comparison method of open coding until themes were identified and patterns discerned (Kirby et al., 2005). We have not included data from Scotland in this article as these were co\ l- lected prior to the general financial crisis, which is regarded by many \ in the social sector as a significant turning point and after which Scotland un\ derwent rapid and far reaching restructuring. This makes the Scottish pool of data markedly different from more recent case studies. We will be undertaking\ case studies in Scotland in the near future to remedy this and have anal\ ysed our existing Scottish data in earlier articles (Baines and Cunningham, 2011, 2013; Baines et al., 2012). Instead, the bulk of the discussion in this\ article will focus on interview and participant observation data collected as pa\ rt of three case studies that took place between 2010 and 2012 in each of New \ Zealand (17 interviews – 1 executive director, 4 managers, 10 front-\ line and 2 union representatives – and 4 observations/elongated programme tours), Australia (16 interviews – 1 executive director, 4 managers, 9 front\ -line and 2 union representatives – and 3 observations/elongated programme tours) and Canada (17 interviews – 1 executive director, 4 managers, 10 front-l\ ine and 2 union representatives – and 4 observations) for a total of 50 interviews and 11 observations/elongated programme tours. All three agencies were recognis\ ed in the wider community as leaders in social justice and progressive practice.
The agency in New Zealand is a national agency, providing services in a \ num- ber of agencies across the country, while the agencies in Canada and Aus\ tralia provided a broad range of services in a single, large metropolitan envir\ on- ment. The agency in New Zealand was involved in a multi-year process of \ far reaching restructuring while the Canadian and Australian agencies we\ re focused on organisational continuity despite tightened funding and a gen\ eral context of constraint. Though the case studies and the national contexts\ are somewhat different, there are enough similarities that broad themes can \ be developed, shedding light on the similarity of experience at the front-l\ ine and management levels of nonprofit social service work. Findings This section will discuss four themes: impact of outcome measures; missi\ on; relationship to supervisor; and various resistance strategies pursued by\ front- line staff, managers and supervisors. Although these themes overlap sign\ ifi- cantly in the data, they are separated here for analytic purposes. Owing\ to space constraints, we draw on exemplar quotes though substantially more \ data exist to substantiate these claims. 442 Critical Social Policy 34(4) Impact of outcome measures on front-line staff’s sense of themselves Consistent with the literature (Cunningham, 2008; McDonald and Marston,\ 2002; Van Til, 2000), most research participants felt that the volume of docu- mentation required from them for outcome databases was formidable and go\ t in the way of providing support to and face-to-face interactions with se\ rvice users. One worker reported ‘hating’ the way that outcome measures require workers to remake their work as ‘snapshots’, ‘We know we don’\ t measure what we really do – we know that’ (Canada, settlement worker, female). A youth worker argued likewise, ‘You become a processor … processing\ young people rather than engaging with them’ (Australia, youth worker, fem\ ale).
Addressing workload issues, one worker in a large office told us she was\ ‘drowning in paperwork’, while her co-worker noted that if she did\ all the paperwork correctly, instead of cutting corners and leaving some undone,\ she would ‘spend more time on paperwork than visiting clients’ (New Zealand, anti-violence worker, female).
Most managers were keenly aware of the negative impact statistics- keeping and other forms of performance-monitoring metrics had on their employees. This was exacerbated by managing multiple funding contracts typical of government contracting-out where funding is project-based and\ time limited, requiring constant reapplication and reporting. A senior m\ an- ager in the Australian agency, which employs around eight hundred staff,\ told us that her agency has more than forty funding contracts, all with \ differ- ent reporting requirements and outcome measures, and prepared more than \ 150 funding reports per year. A team leader of a five-person youth work \ team told us, ‘We have lots of little pockets of funding; so through the y\ ear I prob- ably have to provide now, I reckon close to twelve different reports and\ we have multiple, multiple databases. My staff are so data fatigued, databa\ se fatigued – it’s just incredible’ (Australia, supervisor, femal\ e). Some workers worried that tight resources meant that once documenta- tion was completed, in the time remaining in their days, direct care to \ service users took priority over more community-engaged, social justice-directed\ practices, ‘If we’re actually trying to do something different [so\ cial justice], consuming our scarce discretionary resources in just doing direct service is actually not fulfilling our mission and our purpose’ (Canada, social\ policy ana- lyst, female). A senior manager agreed arguing that funding contracts rarely cover the costs of the documentation they demand, resulting in shortfalls for the agency, cutbacks in direct service to clients and the near eliminati\ on of community activism and social change work (Canada, senior manager, male\ ). The growing emphasis on documenting interventions rather than under- taking them and the curtailment of social justice practices impacted on \ workers’ sense of themselves, their effectiveness on the job and thei\ r sense of integrity. A senior community worker asserted, Baines et al. 443 I would argue that if there isn’t a ‘value-added’ to what we do, if we’re just doing direct service, we are, in a sense, part of the structural problem and b\ y agreeing to accept funding that we know is gonna be impossible to that kind of work [social justice] isn’t necessarily in our long term interests. (Canada, community worker, female) Noting that advocacy and policy work were no longer considered part of the outcome targets she was required to meet, a senior anti-violence wor\ ker told us, ‘I feel totally gagged and totally suffocated’ (New Zealand, shelter worker, female). Another worker voiced a similar degree of alienation a\ nd frustration, ‘At best I was just a piece of machinery in a factory. J\ ust churn out the work’ (New Zealand, child and family worker, female). Mission Cutting back on their socially-engaged work in order to meet outcome mea\ - sures and narrowed concepts of care and service made workers and manager\ s feel frustrated and ineffectual in their work. This tension also extende\ d to the agencies’ missions or their stated reason for existence. Agency missi\ on and reputation for promoting equity and fairness in the community was a key \ aspect of attracting and retaining workers, ‘I came to [the agency] b\ ecause of its reputation for social justice’ (Canada, counsellor, female). Co\ ntradictions between the mission or ethos of the agency and its everyday application \ con- tributed to reasons for contemplating job change for many. For example, \ one worker who was thinking of leaving her employment noted that restructur- ing in her agency was ‘harsh and destabilising’ for staff and serv\ ice users, and ‘seemed to fundamentally undermine the [agency] ethos’ (New Zealand, fam- ily worker, female). Another worker who expressed deep dissatisfaction \ with the agency referred to the same restructuring as ‘cut throat and quit\ e hard to get our heads around’ (New Zealand, child advocate, female). Other staff and managers used the agency mission as a rallying point for\ resisting changes thought to harm the social justice mandate, as one sen\ ior manager in the Canadian case study put it, social justice work is ‘no\ t a distrac- tion from actually delivering on our mission. The mission is the empower- ing stuff and the community development stuff’ (Canada, executive di\ rector, female). Another senior worker agreed, ‘We need to get back to what \ our mis- sion really means for us and the whole community’ (Canada, manager, \ female).
Supervision Workers were not alone in holding social justice values, this same ethic\ was present within the value set of most senior managers, particularly in th\ e 444 Critical Social Policy 34(4) Australian agency, and consciously nurtured through a number of agency policies. Policies that helped to enculture and maintain these values in\ cluded:
training and further education opportunities; benefits including family–\ work balance; cooperation with unions on social justice initiatives; particip\ ation in policy change efforts at the state and national level in conjunction with other agencies and organisations; and a deliberate emphasis on building strong\ supervisors to provide supports, improve performance and quality of work\ life, and build strong teams.
These strategies seemed to have a positive effect, particularly the emph\ a- sis on developing good supervision for front-line staff. For example, in\ the Australian agency, according to management data, following the introduc- tion of supervisory development staff turnover had fallen slightly below\ sec- tor norms. In addition, many of the predominantly female staff in all th\ ree agencies studied were overqualified, over credentialed and had been offe\ red employment by other agencies but remained in their current jobs because \ of their strong affiliation for their supervisor, their team and the wor\ k. In one agency, almost everyone noted that wages were very poor, even within\ a sector where wages are consistently low, but individual workers explai\ ned that their supervisor was ‘really great to work with’ (Australia,\ youth worker, female), ‘always finds ways to make the work more interesting’ (\ Australia, youth worker, female), ‘takes care of us and keeps the upper admin off our backs’ (Australia, youth worker, male), and ‘makes it worth coming to work every day’ (Australia, youth worker, female). Other workers told us\ explicitly that they took or stayed in jobs because of the immediate supervisor and\ a ‘chance to work with [her]’ (Canada, counsellor, female).
Strategies for resistance Our data show the existence of three kinds of collective strategies betw\ een managers/supervisors and front-line staff that challenged the debilitati\ ng impacts of high performance management models. The first strategy involv\ es buffering the impact of managerialism by reconceptualising outcome mea- sures to reflect aspects of community practice seen as pivotal and impor\ tant to workers. In the Australian agency studied, when workers expressed frustr\ ation with funder imposed outcome targets, the agency developed a second set o\ f measures in close consultation with the staff, in effect mediating gover\ nment demands. This strategy helped make workers feel that, if used consciousl\ y and critically, even outcome measures could promote social justice. Commenting on the dual system of measures, a senior worker noted that ‘people have been quite excited about it in the fact that they [the government funders] ca\ n actu- ally realise what they [the social justice-oriented workers] are trying \ to do’ (Australia, brain injury community worker, female). Another senior worker agreed that though outcome measures often just confirm that which workers have long been doing, when used carefully the\ y Baines et al. 445 can also document the extra efforts workers undertake for clients and social justice, ‘we can actually document what we really do and what we real\ ly want to be doing’ (Australia, disability worker, female). If used critically in these ways, the worker argued that meeting and exceeding outcome measures can be a way of ‘making every day more worthwhile because you’re not j\ ust get- ting lost in … “Oh God, I’ve got to fill out this 24-page docum\ ent.” You can actually see what the end result could be’ (Australia, case manager,\ female).
Not all workers found comfort in two sets of outcome measures. A case worker noted, ‘there isn’t time to invest in documenting where you\ r hours are going and the extra hours you are putting in’ (Australia, mental\ health worker, female).
The second strategy focused on management, staff and unions joining together in legislative and policy change. As noted earlier, Aptheker (1989) argues that for many women, resistance flows from the social conditions and spaces that are available to them. In the community sector, resistance, \ paid and unpaid/volunteer work spill over into other spheres in messy and per\ me- able ways, as do the values and emotions behind them, often containing d\ if- ferent aspects than resistance in other, less gendered contexts. For exa\ mple, community employees often blame governments and ‘wider, uncaring soci- ety’ (Canada, elder care worker, female) rather than their employer\ s for prob- lems in the workplace and workplace resistance, including union demands,\ often targets multiple and somewhat abstract powers rather than focusing on specific employers as the exclusive or even the primary target (Ross, 2\ 011; Smith, 2007). In an example of improving the social value and wage levels of the pre- dominantly female workforce, management in the Australian agency dis- cussed here joined with the union and community groups to participate actively in the Equal Pay Case in the community sector in Australia. The\ case recently won significant pay increases for almost 150,000 workers i\ n the sector (Meagher and Cortis, 2012). Crossing the boundaries between wor\ kers and management, this same management group and the largest union in the \ sector also joined together on a number of sector-wide campaigns to lobb\ y government for worker dignity, fairer wages and funding. As the executiv\ e director noted, in some instances, the management group ‘stepped up and signed on to campaigns before any of our staff’ or ‘other unions’\ (Australia, executive director, male; confirmed by union representative). In a similar vein, in Canada, the model of social unionism, or using uni\ ons as a vehicle for promoting social and policy change, seems to draw in th\ e altru- istic community workforce. In turn, the spirit of social unionism was us\ ed by the NPSS workforce in innovative ways to pursue changes at the level of \ the workplace and larger society including: collective bargaining to set cap\ s on caseloads and improve the quality of care (see also, LaRose, 2009; Lavalette, 2007); drawing unions and managers together in joint coalition and mass 446 Critical Social Policy 34(4) movement work, working within and beyond their collective agreements; an\ d using unions as a vehicle through which to have a voice on agency-level \ and larger social issues (Baines, 2010). Referring to workplace restructuring and the elimination of general staff meetings in order to save costs, one wo\ rker noted, ‘we’ve lost our ability to have a voice in workplace decisi\ ons so natu- rally, we turned to the union as a place where our concerns could be heard and we could still try to fight back’ (Canada, anti-violence worker, fem\ ale).
The examples noted just above overlap with the third strategy which involved management and unions joining together in community coalitions \ to challenge underfunding and social inequities. Many managers, like the\ ir staff, wanted to open up new ways of empowering themselves and their com\ - munities. Pointing to her management of more than 40 funding contracts and managing the frustration of her staff with scarce resources and heavy work- loads, a senior manager noted, ‘this isn’t what I thought I would \ be doing at this point in my career’ (Canada, manager, female). In one example, in Canada, a joint coalition of nonprofit social service employers, staff, \ service users and unions formed to challenge funding inequities and identify and\ take action on new challenges in the community. The coalition was consensus- based and while, as the union representative noted, ‘it was hard for \ many of the staff to trust the employers and some employers were not comfortable\ with the unions’ presence’, during the months that it existed, the\ coalition was viewed as ‘a model of what could be achieved’ if multiple play\ ers in the sector worked together towards social equity goals (Canada, union repre\ sen- tative, female). Commenting wistfully, one senior manager argued, ‘w\ e still need that coalition but unfortunately, there just wasn’t any energy l\ eft for it and it hasn’t met for ages’ (Canada, manager, female).
Discussion and conclusions At the beginning of this article, we note that NPM and lean models of wo\ rk were introduced to NPSS agencies through the requirements of government \ funding contracts as governments downsize and privatise services and pro\ - grammes which were previously the purview of the public sector. Contract\ - ing-out is one of a number of social policies aimed at reducing the welfare state to its most residual form consistent with neoliberal political ide\ ology and remaking social care as low cost, highly efficient and accountable. \ Our data show that the workplace identities of workers and managers became c\ on- flicted and a site of struggle as NPM models of work organisation restru\ c- tured work in such a way that social justice and care content were reduc\ ed or removed. This made workers and managers feel like they were part of a\ machinery of documenting outcomes that seemed to have a questionable connection to the values that drew them to work in the community sector.\ Baines et al. 447 Consistent with other labour process theory-informed analysis, the discu\ ssion above and our data confirm that, though NPM requires a shift in control \ from workers to management, community front-line workers appreciated manage- ment’s efforts to mitigate the impacts of restructuring and NPM and e\ xpe- rienced constructive relationships with well-trained, supportive supervisors, especially when managers took the initiative to challenge aspects of com\ peti- tive performance management and outcome measures. These factors made it \ more possible for staff to feel an affiliation with the agency’s miss\ ion and reputation as an organisation that provided quality service, cared about\ social justice and was not prepared to uncritically embrace the entirety of neo\ liberal management systems and ideologies.
A wide variety of resistance practices seemed to have arisen in reaction\ to funder-instigated reductions in social justice-engaged work practices\ .
The three loose groupings of resistance strategies discussed above empha\ sise broad participation, collective problem solving, and giving back – ex\ amples of working across the dichotomy of management control and worker resis- tance, blurring boundaries and building everyday democracy. These altern\ ate practices are aspects of what Briskin (2011) sees as a more women-base\ d set of practices which she terms post-heroic leadership in which power is sh\ ared, relationships are built and authority is downplayed. Though these practi\ ces may also appear to be consistent with the teamwork aspects of lean manag\ e- ment, in actuality, given their emphasis on building relationships of re\ spect- ful care and everyday democracy rather than on locating the cost savings\ and efficiencies characteristic of lean work (Armstrong and Armstrong, 2002\ ; Lewchuk and Robertson, 1997; Shadur et al., 1995), these alternate prac\ - tices are fully consistent with the idealised nonprofit values of full s\ ocial par- ticipation, equity and care (Van Til, 2000). Indeed, Lewchuk and Rober\ tson (1996, 1997) and others (Rinehart, 1999; Rinehart et al., 1997; Schen\ k and Anderson, 1999) note that the ‘empowerment’ aspects of team work \ within lean production are largely ideological, rarely filtering through to those on the front-lines of manufacturing, or in our case, care work (Armstrong \ and Armstrong, 2002, 2011; Baines, 2004; Smith, 2010) and often contributin\ g to staffing cuts and other reductions. In contrast to the unfulfilled promises of lean management, the porous, social justice-oriented practices undertaken by managers and workers in \ this case study serve as examples of Mumby’s (2005) argument that organi\ sa- tional resistance should be understood as a dialectic overlap of control\ and resistance rather than a dichotomy of the two. They also underscore Apth\ ek- er’s (1989) philosophical notion that women’s resistance reflect\ s their social positioning in the worlds of work, home, state and community and the issues on which they are already active. In this case, resistance from the pre- dominantly female managers and female front-line staff focused on the ca\ re of service users and communities and support to and for each other’s \ resis- 448 Critical Social Policy 34(4) tance to systems of work in which mutual care, equity and social justice\ are less than an afterthought to cost saving, efficiency and the individuali\ sing mantras of NPM and neoliberalism. Totally entwined with care and with an emphasis on sustaining helpful relationships, these practices are hig\ hly gendered and difficult to unravel from assumptions concerning women’s\ ‘natural’ predisposition to care endlessly regardless of the condi\ tions under which it takes place. As such their sustainability in the work intensive\ , fast- paced NPSS work environment is hard to predict. However, as Barnes and Prior (2009) note and we cited earlier in this article, opportunities \ for sub- version and resistance continue to exist and will continue evolve and ta\ ke on new forms within the changing realities of managerialised social serv\ ice workplaces and delivery systems.
On a practical level, our data also show that there is much that supervi\ sors and management can do to improve the front-line experience of NPSS work,\ particularly for those seeking opportunities to work in tandem with thei\ r personal and social values. Further, strong supervision and an agency mi\ ssion that is replete with social justice values and which management appears \ to be struggling to achieve, separately or with other groups in the community,\ also buffer the demoralising aspects of lean care work and may contribute to \ staff remaining in and contributing to the strengthening of the care work in s\ ociet- ies such as those studied in this research, which feature growing demand\ s for social care and decreasing resources.
Acknowledgements The authors are grateful for the contributions of the research participa\ nts and the research assistants.
Funding The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from SSHRC Canada.
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Author biographies Donna Baines is Professor of Labour Studies and Social Work, McMaster University. She\ recently published Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice: Social Justice Social Work (second edition, Fern- wood, 2011). Her articles have appeared in Work, Employment and Society, Economic and Industrial Democracy and the British Journal of Social Work. Baines et al. 453 sara Charlesworth is Associate Professor and Senior Research Fellow, University of South Australia. She recently published in the Australian Journal of Labour Law, the Journal of Sociology and Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations.
Darrell Turner is working on his PhD at the University of Auckland. He teaches in the Tuakana programme and the sociology department, and writes on nudism as \ moral panic in the context of neoliberalism.
Laura o’neill recently completed her PhD in social work and social justice at McMaster\ Uni- versity. She works as a clinical social worker and part-time social work\ instructor, and writes on managerialism and health care.
