Abstract
In recent years a good deal has been written on the subject of organisation in the personal social services, much of it responding to the recommendations of the Seebohm Committee Report and the subsequent reorganisation of the service in accordance with the terms of the Local Authorities Social Services Act of 1970. Much of what has been written has tended to accept the ‘inevitability’ of bureaucratic orgainsation for the service, and to consider the extent to which organisation on these principles will either produce conflict with professional principles or prove acceptable to a profession (of social work) which may have founded itself on a consonant ‘rationality’. Writers like Rowbottom1 and Kogan and Terry2 conclude that the tensions likely to arise are so marginal or peripheral that they can be reduced easily enough by attention to management or organisational style, devoted to the creation of maximum devolution and maximum flexibility in the definition of work roles. Implicitly, therefore, the bureaucratic organisation and the professional organisation coincide at the point where bureaucracy is at its most flexible, and professional organisation (perhaps) at its most structured.
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Notes and References
R. Rowbottom, ‘Organising Social Services: Hierarchy or …?’, Public Administration, vol. 51 (Autumn 1973) pp. 291–305.
M. Kogan and J. Terry, The Organisation of a Social Services Department: A Blue-Print (London: Bookstall Publications, 1971).
C. I. Barnard, The Functions of the Executive (Harvard University Press, 1968);
H. A. Simon, Administrative Behaviour (New York: The Free Press (paperback edn), 1965);
and A. Cochrane, Effectiveness and Efficiency (Nuffield Provincial Hospitals Trust, 1972).
E. L. Trist et al., Organisation Choice (London: Tavistock, 1963).
T. Caplow, The Sociology of Work (University of Minnesota Press, 1954);
E. C. Hughes, Men and Their Work (New York: The Free Press, 1959);
and H. L. Wilensky, ‘The Professionalisation of Everyone?’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. LXX (2) (September 1904) pp. 137–58.
A. Etzioni, Complex Organisations (New York: The Free Press, 1961) p. 12.
Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Report of a Committee on the Management of Local Government, Chairman: Sir John Maud (London: H.M.S.O., May 1967);
Department of the Environment, The New Local Authorities: Management and Structure, Chairman: M. A. Bains (London: H.M.S.O., 1972).
F. X. Steggert, ‘Organisation Theory: Bureaucratic Influences and the Social Welfare Task’, in Common Elements in Administration, ed. E. W. Reed (National Conference on Social Welfare, Columbus, Ohio, 1965)
quoted in H. A. Schatz (ed.), Social Work Administration (New York: Council on Social Work Education, 1970).
F. Katz, ‘The School as a Complex Social Organisation’, Harvard Educational Review, vol. 34 (Autumn 1964) p. 431.
See G. F. Thomason, Improving the Quality of Organisation (London: Institute of Personnel Management, 1973).
Brunei University, Working Papers on the Reorganisation of the National Health Service (Brunei University: Health Services Organisation Research Unit, October 1973).
M. Dalton, Men Who Manage (New York: Wiley, 1959).
N. W. Chamberlain, The Union Challenge to Management Control (New York: Harper, 1948).
F. W. Taylor, Scientific Management (New York: Harper, 1947).
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© 1977 Helmuth Heisler, John Carrier, Bleddyn Davies, Neil Fraser, Howard Jones, Peter Kaim-Caudle, Ian Kendall, Thomas McPherson, Della Adam Nevitt, Muriel Nissel, Barbara Rodgers, J. D. Stewart, George F. Thomason
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Thomason, G.F. (1977). The Organisation of Professional Work in the Social Services. In: Heisler, H. (eds) Foundations of Social Administration. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86159-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-86159-0_11
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