Lean social care and worker identity: The role of outcomes,supervision and mission

Abstract

Since the 1980s, many social care jobs have shifted from the public to the nonprofit sector, accompanied by funding cuts, government contracts, managerialism and performance management. Qualitative data collected in Australia, New Zealand and Canada show that agency mission 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 managers and staff), outcome measures were seen by workers to detract 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.

Keywords

managerialism New Public Management nonprofit/voluntary sector resistance work organisation

Contracted-out social care, funded by governments but provided through for- and nonprofit care agencies, has been characterised as lean care, advancing private market-compatible notions of cost savings and efficiency, competitive 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 models have provided the blueprints to remake social care with the putative goal of increasing efficiencies, effectiveness and accountability (Barnes and 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, pace and intensity of work, as well as the reduction or removal of many aspects of care that contributed to the dignity of service users and advanced equity and fairness in the workplace and beyond (Aronson and Neysmith, 1996; Carey, 2008; Cunningham, 2008; Shields et al., 2005; Smith, 2007). Projects that empowered service users to participate in policy debate, community development and mobilisation, planning services and priorities, and practices such as open-ended case assessments and case plans are among the practices that provided service users with greater possibilities for dignity, collective, affirming identities, and access to resources (Carniol, 2010; Dominelli, 2002; Mullaly, 2010). Most managers have found these types of open-ended, process-based practices difficult to quantify or justify within the short timelines of government 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 social justice-oriented practices have been reduced or removed through NPM metrics, while the boundless capacity to care expected of all women has reinforced 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 identities as care workers in the rapidly changing context of lean management, and what factors may come into play to buffer or exacerbate tensions that arise from the imposition of lean care regimes within social agencies. Drawing on qualitative data collected as part of a larger, international study of restructuring nonprofit social service (NPSS) work in four similar, but notably different liberal, welfare states (Esping-Andersen, 1999), this article argues that the outcome measures and targets associated with lean care work are generally felt to detract from NPSS workers’ sense of themselves as caring, social justice-oriented, effective workers. The data also show that the agency’s mission, supportive supervision and workers’ commitment to client populations serve to buffer the negative impacts of NPM and other forms of managerialism, providing spaces in which workers can express their values on the job and reinforce their sense of themselves as linked to larger moral or social 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 hegemony of NPM and to provide workers in this overwhelmingly female and highly gendered sector with opportunities to work in tandem with their social care values (Aronson and Smith, 2010, 2011; Healy, 2002; McDonald and Chenoweth, 2009; Noble and Irwin, 2009; Parry and Keilliher, 2011). These findings suggest that there are important roles for managers and supervisors in resisting managerialism imposed by funding bodies and that managers and front-line staff working together within and against NPM can challenge the hegemony of this near-monolithic system (Noble and Irwin, 2009, in social 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 workplace identity, agency mission and the role of front-line supervisors and 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 conclusions 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 of managerialism; and c) what are some of the strategies managers, supervisors and front-line staff have used to challenge outcome-oriented funding and management models in the NPSS?

The contexts: Managerialism, identity, mission and supervision

Interchangeably referred to as the voluntary, community, third and nonprofit social services, in most ‘western’ countries, this sector found 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 specialised 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 provide greater flexibility and capacity to interpret, respond to and mobilise around 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 levels of service 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 to the private and nonprofit sectors (Barnes and Prior, 2009; Carniol, 2010; Harris, 2003; Ross, 2011). Contracting-out public services meant that the nonprofit sector expanded significantly as governments were quick to take advantage of lower wage and benefit packages (Davies, 2008; Shields et al., 2005). Compliance with contract requirements ushered in NPM, and in particular, quantitative metrics such as competitive performance targets and outcome measures aimed at reducing costs and compelling efficiencies (Barnes and Prior, 2009; Clarke, 2004; McDonald and Marston, 2002; Smith, 2007). In the public and nonprofit sector, these metrics have been associated with systems of lean work (Harley et al., 2007; O’Neill, forthcoming) which draws on work organisation models first implemented in auto manufacturing, particularly the ‘Toyota model’. Sawchuk (2009) argues that lean work organisation is a new incarnation of the ‘seemingly endless morphology of Taylorism’ as capital continues to respond to changing contexts, technologies and resistance (pp. 325 and 331). Certainly, lean holds strong appeal for those committed to the neoliberal, residual welfare state as lean has been explicitly linked to cutting costs (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 ‘Fordism’ were characterised by repetitive, standardised and de-skilled labour, contemporary lean forms of work organisation feature: tighter managerial control 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 monitoring of all aspects of work; and a greater reliance on contracting-out (Armstrong and Armstrong, 2002; Harley et al., 2007; Lewchuk and Robertson, 1996, 1997; O’Neill, forthcoming; Rinehart, 1999; Schenk and Anderson, 1999; Shadur et al., 1995). In care organisations, lean work is characterised by these 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, mainstream literature on the voluntary sector tends to argue that outcome measures fail to capture the full contributions of social advocacy, community planning 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 shifting 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 easy quantification are eliminated from ‘best practices’, making it easier to increase the pace and volume of the work and replace the majority-female, higher credential/higher pay staff with less skilled, lower pay staff or even volunteers (McDonald, 2006; Parry and Keilliher, 2011). The workplace practices that are eliminated often include those closest to the heart of the ‘voluntary ethic’ such as those with inclusive and open-ended goals such as mobilising communities around their own issues or advocating for holistic social, policy and cultural change for those marginalised and made vulnerable in today’s global market (Baines, 2010; Smith, 2007). Many have noted that the managerialised metrics associated with NPM and other ‘high efficiency’ models place the voluntary ethos in jeopardy and warn of the dangers of ‘mission drift’ in which nonprofit agencies lose the participatory and social justice practices 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 nonprofit sector are more aspirational than something that is seen in everyday practice and service users consciously express frustration with the care they receive (Hasenfeld, 2000; Hasenfeld and Powell, 2004; McDonald and Marston, 2002). However, the opportunity to work in tandem with one’s values, for and with a particular client population is thought to somewhat compensate 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 supervisors who frequently saw their roles shift from a focus on programme development, trouble shooting and case support for front-line staff to major responsibilities for: coaching staff to meet competitive performance goals; documenting the outputs of care and community mobilisation practices that do not easily lend themselves to quantification; and enforcing policy agendas with which they did not agree (Carey, 2008; Healy, 2002; Lavalette, 2007; Noble and Irwin, 2009). As Aronson and Smith (2010: 531) note, the work of managers is ‘characterized by constant change, excess of paper and technical work, dwindling resources and the strain of being positioned as buffers between funders, 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, 2009; in social work see also Lavalette, 2007). This critical management literature views these practices as forms of resistance, sharing many characteristics in common with workplace resistance at the front-lines of care and community work including the complexity of tactics, discourses and identities mobilised 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 including those noted above such as: increased pace and volume of work; decreased autonomy and discretion; and increased reliance on the unpaid overtime work 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/blaming, self-correcting and performance over-achieving non-gendered self; however, 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, 2005a). Hsieh et al. (2012) argue that burn-out is a frequent outcome when workers must fake their feelings in social care situations. Clarke (2004), Ball (2003) and others note that workers struggle to maintain the integrity of a sense of self within the ‘terrors of performativity’ and workplace requirements that often seem to impose more harm than good. Mooney and Law (2007: 2) assert that significant opportunities exist for resistance and subversion in the ‘welfare industry’ which they see as comprised of front-line and ‘backroom’ 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 subversion and resistance lying in the contradictions between care (or personal/professional ethics and values) and control, and potentially involving workers, administration, service users and communities. Barnes and Prior (2009) note that in many 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, hence 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 practices at numerous levels within the self, the workplace and larger society, undertaken 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 resistance 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 the gendered circumstances of their home, community and work lives and is often more incremental and focused on sustaining dignities and communities, than the 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 majority of workers, service users and volunteers (Themudo, 2009). Gendered practices such as the expectation that women have a boundless capacity to provide care regardless of wages or working conditions, overlap with the voluntary sector’s altruistic ethos, generating a situation where unpaid overtime is epidemic, self-sacrifice on behalf of service users is the norm and strategies to improve conditions and terms of work are rarely successful unless they include ways that service users’ lives will also be made better. In this 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).

The study

Our larger study undertakes comparative, international intensive case studies of changing work relations and the experience of front-line workers in the nonprofit sector in four restructured, liberal welfare states (Esping-Andersen, 1999), namely Canada, Australia, Scotland and New Zealand. Liberal welfare states feature few universal programmes, most ‘social’ benefits and insurances are delivered through workplace programmes and include a ‘mixed economy’ of public, for-profit and nonprofit services. The agencies studied in our larger project were selected after meeting the criteria of being a large-sized, multi-service, multi-site agency, providing a range of community social services including some or most of the following: housing; addictions services; food; budgeting and income support; child and family services; elder supports; policy analysis; and referrals. All agencies received funding through government contracts but also raised funds privately. One New Zealand agency (the one discussed in this article) had also developed a commercial arm to subsidise the costs of other services. In compliance with government funding requirements, all agencies have adopted ‘high efficiency’, competitive performance management models though they are implemented to a lesser and greater degree across agencies and even within programmes within the same agency. Twelve case studies have been completed to date – four in Canada, three in each 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 to date, 4 participant observations or a total of 52, and a review of publicly available documents. Like the sector, overall the sample was predominantly female (around 75%). Interviews and observation sites were selected through both criterion sampling (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) and snowball sampling (Glesne, 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; and 2) suggested to us by those we interviewed and observed. In the latter case, suggestions were triangulated for their potential contribution to data collection, seeking similarity and difference or what Patton (2005) calls ‘predictable 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 participants were asked to comment on changes they had experienced in the last few years, reasons for working and staying in the NPSS, changes they would like to see, advice they would give to others and their experience of working in this environment.

The 52 participant observations were naturalistic and involved a mixture of interaction and informal discussions with agency workers, service users and others present at the project (DeWalt, 2007). Data analysis took place 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 collected prior to the general financial crisis, which is regarded by many in the social sector as a significant turning point and after which Scotland underwent 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 analysed 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 part 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-line and 2 union representatives – and 4 observations) for a total of 50 interviews and 11 observations/elongated programme tours. All three agencies were recognised 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 number of agencies across the country, while the agencies in Canada and Australia provided a broad range of services in a single, large metropolitan environment. The agency in New Zealand was involved in a multi-year process of far reaching restructuring while the Canadian and Australian agencies were focused on organisational continuity despite tightened funding and a general 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-line and management levels of nonprofit social service work.

Findings

This section will discuss four themes: impact of outcome measures; mission; relationship to supervisor; and various resistance strategies pursued by front-line staff, managers and supervisors. Although these themes overlap significantly 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.

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 documentation required from them for outcome databases was formidable and got in the way of providing support to and face-to-face interactions with service 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, female). 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 manager in the Australian agency, which employs around eight hundred staff, told us that her agency has more than forty funding contracts, all with different 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 year I probably have to provide now, I reckon close to twelve different reports and we have multiple, multiple databases. My staff are so data fatigued, database fatigued – it’s just incredible’ (Australia, supervisor, female).

Some workers worried that tight resources meant that once documentation 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 [social justice], consuming our scarce discretionary resources in just doing direct service is actually not fulfilling our mission and our purpose’ (Canada, social policy analyst, 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 elimination of community activism and social change work (Canada, senior manager, male).

The growing emphasis on documenting interventions rather than undertaking them and the curtailment of social justice practices impacted on workers’ sense of themselves, their effectiveness on the job and their sense of integrity. A senior community worker asserted,

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 by 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 worker told us, ‘I feel totally gagged and totally suffocated’ (New Zealand, shelter worker, female). Another worker voiced a similar degree of alienation and frustration, ‘At best I was just a piece of machinery in a factory. Just churn out the work’ (New Zealand, child and family worker, female).

Mission

Cutting back on their socially-engaged work in order to meet outcome measures and narrowed concepts of care and service made workers and managers feel frustrated and ineffectual in their work. This tension also extended to the agencies’ missions or their stated reason for existence. Agency mission and reputation for promoting equity and fairness in the community was a key aspect of attracting and retaining workers, ‘I came to [the agency] because of its reputation for social justice’ (Canada, counsellor, female). Contradictions between the mission or ethos of the agency and its everyday application contributed to reasons for contemplating job change for many. For example, one worker who was thinking of leaving her employment noted that restructuring in her agency was ‘harsh and destabilising’ for staff and service users, and ‘seemed to fundamentally undermine the [agency] ethos’ (New Zealand, family worker, female). Another worker who expressed deep dissatisfaction with the agency referred to the same restructuring as ‘cut throat and quite 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 senior manager in the Canadian case study put it, social justice work is ‘not a distraction from actually delivering on our mission. The mission is the empowering stuff and the community development stuff’ (Canada, executive director, female). Another senior worker agreed, ‘We need to get back to what our mission 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 the Australian agency, and consciously nurtured through a number of agency policies. Policies that helped to enculture and maintain these values included: training and further education opportunities; benefits including family–work balance; cooperation with unions on social justice initiatives; participation 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 emphasis on developing good supervision for front-line staff. For example, in the Australian agency, according to management data, following the introduction of supervisory development staff turnover had fallen slightly below sector norms. In addition, many of the predominantly female staff in all three agencies studied were overqualified, over credentialed and had been offered employment by other agencies but remained in their current jobs because of their strong affiliation for their supervisor, their team and the work. In one agency, almost everyone noted that wages were very poor, even within a sector where wages are consistently low, but individual workers explained 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 between managers/supervisors and front-line staff that challenged the debilitating impacts of high performance management models. The first strategy involves buffering the impact of managerialism by reconceptualising outcome measures to reflect aspects of community practice seen as pivotal and important to workers. In the Australian agency studied, when workers expressed frustration with funder imposed outcome targets, the agency developed a second set of measures in close consultation with the staff, in effect mediating government demands. This strategy helped make workers feel that, if used consciously 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] can actually 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 they can also document the extra efforts workers undertake for clients and social justice, ‘we can actually document what we really do and what we really 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 just getting lost in … “Oh God, I’ve got to fill out this 24-page document.” 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 your 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 permeable ways, as do the values and emotions behind them, often containing different aspects than resistance in other, less gendered contexts. For example, community employees often blame governments and ‘wider, uncaring society’ (Canada, elder care worker, female) rather than their employers for problems 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, 2011; Smith, 2007).

In an example of improving the social value and wage levels of the predominantly female workforce, management in the Australian agency discussed 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 in the sector (Meagher and Cortis, 2012). Crossing the boundaries between workers and management, this same management group and the largest union in the sector also joined together on a number of sector-wide campaigns to lobby government for worker dignity, fairer wages and funding. As the executive 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 unions as a vehicle for promoting social and policy change, seems to draw in the altruistic community workforce. In turn, the spirit of social unionism was used by the NPSS workforce in innovative ways to pursue changes at the level of the workplace and larger society including: collective bargaining to set caps on caseloads and improve the quality of care (see also, LaRose, 2009; Lavalette, 2007); drawing unions and managers together in joint coalition and mass movement work, working within and beyond their collective agreements; and 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 worker noted, ‘we’ve lost our ability to have a voice in workplace decisions so naturally, 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, female).

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 their staff, wanted to open up new ways of empowering themselves and their communities. Pointing to her management of more than 40 funding contracts and managing the frustration of her staff with scarce resources and heavy workloads, 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 players in the sector worked together towards social equity goals (Canada, union representative, female). Commenting wistfully, one senior manager argued, ‘we still need that coalition but unfortunately, there just wasn’t any energy left 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 work were introduced to NPSS agencies through the requirements of government funding contracts as governments downsize and privatise services and programmes which were previously the purview of the public sector. Contracting-out is one of a number of social policies aimed at reducing the welfare state to its most residual form consistent with neoliberal political ideology and remaking social care as low cost, highly efficient and accountable. Our data show that the workplace identities of workers and managers became conflicted and a site of struggle as NPM models of work organisation restructured work in such a way that social justice and care content were reduced 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. Consistent with other labour process theory-informed analysis, the discussion above and our data confirm that, though NPM requires a shift in control from workers to management, community front-line workers appreciated management’s efforts to mitigate the impacts of restructuring and NPM and experienced constructive relationships with well-trained, supportive supervisors, especially when managers took the initiative to challenge aspects of competitive performance management and outcome measures. These factors made it more possible for staff to feel an affiliation with the agency’s mission and reputation as an organisation that provided quality service, cared about social justice and was not prepared to uncritically embrace the entirety of neoliberal 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 emphasise broad participation, collective problem solving, and giving back – examples of working across the dichotomy of management control and worker resistance, blurring boundaries and building everyday democracy. These alternate practices are aspects of what Briskin (2011) sees as a more women-based set of practices which she terms post-heroic leadership in which power is shared, relationships are built and authority is downplayed. Though these practices may also appear to be consistent with the teamwork aspects of lean management, in actuality, given their emphasis on building relationships of respectful 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 practices are fully consistent with the idealised nonprofit values of full social participation, equity and care (Van Til, 2000). Indeed, Lewchuk and Robertson (1996, 1997) and others (Rinehart, 1999; Rinehart et al., 1997; Schenk 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 contributing 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 organisational resistance should be understood as a dialectic overlap of control and resistance rather than a dichotomy of the two. They also underscore Aptheker’s (1989) philosophical notion that women’s resistance reflects 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 predominantly female managers and female front-line staff focused on the care of service users and communities and support to and for each other’s resistance to systems of work in which mutual care, equity and social justice are less than an afterthought to cost saving, efficiency and the individualising mantras of NPM and neoliberalism. Totally entwined with care and with an emphasis on sustaining helpful relationships, these practices are highly gendered and difficult to unravel from assumptions concerning women’s ‘natural’ predisposition to care endlessly regardless of the conditions 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 subversion and resistance continue to exist and will continue evolve and take on new forms within the changing realities of managerialised social service workplaces and delivery systems.

On a practical level, our data also show that there is much that supervisors and management can do to improve the front-line experience of NPSS work, particularly for those seeking opportunities to work in tandem with their personal and social values. Further, strong supervision and an agency mission 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 societies such as those studied in this research, which feature growing demands for social care and decreasing resources.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the contributions of the research participants and the research assistants.

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from SSHRC Canada.

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, Fernwood, 2011). Her articles have appeared in Work, Employment and Society, Economic and Industrial Democracy and the British Journal of Social Work.

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 University. She works as a clinical social worker and part-time social work instructor, and writes on managerialism and health care.

References

Ackroyd

Thompson

(1999) Organizational Misbehaviour. London: SAGE.

Aptheker

(1989) Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness, and the Meaning of Daily Experience. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

Armstrong

(2002) Thinking it Through: Women, Work and Caring in the New Millennium. Halifax: Atlantic Centre of Excellence in Women’s Health.

Armstrong

(2011) Wasting Away: The Undermining of Canadian Health Care. Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Aronson

Neysmith

(1996) ‘“You’re Not Just in There to do the Work”: Depersonalizing Policies and the Exploitation of Home Care Workers’ Labour’, Gender and Society 10(1): 59–77.

Aronson

Smith

(2010) ‘Managing Restructured Social Services: Expanding the Social?’, British Journal of Social Work 40(1): 530–547.

Aronson

Smith

(2011) ‘Identity Work and Critical Social Service Management: Balancing on a Tightrope?’, British Journal of Social Work 41(3): 432–448.

Bach

Bordogna

(2011) ‘Varieties of New Public Management or Alternative Models? The Reform of Public Service Employment Relations in Industrialized Democracies’, International Journal of Human Resource Management 22(11): 2281–2294.

Bach

Givan

(2011) ‘Varieties of New Public Management? The Reform of Public Services Employment Relations in the UK and USA’, International Journal of Human Resource Management 22(11): 2349–2366.

10.

Baines

(2004) ‘Caring for Nothing: Work Organization and Unwaged Labour in Social Services’, Work, Employment and Society 18(2): 267–295.

11.

Baines

(2010) ‘Neoliberal Restructuring/Activism, Participation and Social Unionism in the Nonprofit Social Services’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 39(1): 10–28.

12.

Baines

Cunningham

(2011) ‘White Knuckle Care Work: Working on the Edge with the Most Excluded’, Work, Employment and Society 25(4): 760–776.

13.

Baines

Cunningham

(2013) ‘Using Comparative Perspective Rapid Ethnography in International Case Studies: Strengths and Challenges’, Qualitative Social Work 12(1): 73–88.

14.

Baines

Charlesworth

Cunningham

Dassinger

(2012) ‘Self-monitoring, Self-blaming, Self-sacrificing Workers: Gendered Managerialism in the Non-profit Sector’, Women’s Studies International Forum 35(5): 362–371.

15.

Ball

(2003) ‘The Teacher’s Soul and the Terrors of Performativity’, Journal of Education Policy 18(2): 215–228.

16.

Barnes

Prior

(2009) ‘Examining the Idea of Subversion in Public Services’, pp. 3–16 in Barnes

Prior

(eds) Subversive Citizens’ Power: Power, Agency and Resistance in Public Service. Bristol: The Policy Press.

17.

Benjamin

(2012) ‘Nonprofit Organizations and Outcome Measurements: From Tracking Program Activities to Focusing on Frontline Work’, American Journal of Evaluation 33(3): 431–447.

18.

Bradley

Engelbrecht

Höjer

(2010) ‘Supervision: A Force for Change? Three Stories Told’, International Social Work 53(6): 773–790.

19.

Briskin

(2011) ‘Union Renewal, Postheroic Leadership and Women’s Organizing: Crossing Discourses, Reframing Debates’, Labour Studies Journal 36(4): 508–537.

20.

Burawoy

(1979) Manufacturing Consent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

21.

Burt

Scholarios

(2011) ‘Recruiting for Values in Charitable Organizations: A Comparative Perspective’, pp. 104–122 in Cunningham

James

(eds) Voluntary Organisations and Public Service Delivery. London: Routledge.

22.

Carey

(2008) ‘The Quasi-Market Revolution in the Head’, Journal of Social Work 8(4): 341–362.

23.

Carniol

(2010) Case Critical: Social Services and Social Justice in Canada. Toronto: Between the Lines.

24.

Charlesworth

(2010) ‘The Regulation of Paid Care Workers’ Wages and Conditions in the Non-profit Sector: A Toronto Case Study’, Relations Industrielles/Industrial Relations 65(3): 380–399.

25.

Clarke

(2004) ‘Dissolving the Public Realm? The Logics and Limits of Neo-liberalism’, Journal of Social Policy 33(1): 27–48.

26.

Cunningham

(2008) Employment Relations in the Voluntary Sector. London: Routledge.

27.

Davies

(2008) ‘Contracting Out Employment Services to the Third and Private Sectors: A Critique’, Critical Social Policy 28(2): 136–164.

28.

DeWalt

(2007) Participant Observation: A Guide for Fieldworkers. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

29.

Dominelli

(2002) Anti-Oppressive Social Work Theory and Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

30.

Edwards

(1986) Conflict at Work: A Materialist Analysis of Workplace Relationships. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

31.

Eikenberry

(2009) ‘Refusing the Market: A Democratic Discourse for Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 38(4): 582–596.

32.

Esping-Andersen

(1999) Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economics. London: Oxford University Press.

33.

Frumkin

Andre-Clark

(2000) ‘When Missions, Markets, and Politics Collide: Values and Strategy in the Nonprofit Human Services’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 29(1): 141–163.

34.

Glesne

(2005) Becoming Qualitative Researchers: An Introduction, 3rd edn. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

35.

Harley

Allen

Sargent

(2007) ‘High Performance Work Systems and Employee Experience of Work in the Service Sector: The Case of Aged Care’, British Journal of Industrial Relations 45(3): 607–633.

36.

Harris

(2003) The Social Work Business. London: Routledge.

37.

Hasenfeld

(2000) ‘Organizational Forms as Moral Practices: The Case of Welfare Departments’, Social Service Review 74: 329–351.

38.

Hasenfeld

Powell

(2004) ‘The Role of Nonprofit Agencies in the Provision of Welfare to Work Services’, Administration in Social Work 28: 91–120.

39.

Healy

(2002) ‘Managing Human Services in a Market Environment: What Role for Social Workers?’, British Journal of Social Work 35(5): 527–540.

40.

Hood

Peters

(2004) ‘The Middle Ageing of NPM: Into the Age of Paradox?’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 14(3): 267–282.

41.

Hsieh

Myun

Guy

(2012) ‘Consequences of Work-related Emotions: Analysis of a Cross-Section of Public Service Workers’, American Review of Public Administration 42(1): 39–53.

42.

Institute for Healthcare Improvement (2005) Eliminating Waste in Health Care. Washington, DC: Institute for Healthcare Improvement.

43.

Jones

(2007) ‘The Multiple Sources of Mission Drift’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 36(2): 299–307.

44.

Kirby

Greaves

Reid

(2005) Experience Research Social Change: Methods beyond the Mainstream. Toronto: Garamond Press.

45.

LaRose

(2009) ‘One Small Revolution: Unionization, Community Practice, and Workload in Child Welfare’, Journal of Community Practice 17(1–2): 223–246.

46.

Lavalette

(2007) ‘Social Work Today: A Profession Worth Fighting For?’, pp. 189–208 in Mooney

Law

(eds) New Labour/Hard Labour: Restructuring and Resistance Inside the Welfare Industry. Bristol: The Policy Press.

47.

Lawler

(2007) ‘Leadership in Social Work: A Case of Caveat Emptor?’, British Journal of Social Work 37: 123–141.

48.

LeRoux

Wright

(2010) ‘Does Performance Measurement Improve Strategic Decision Making? Findings from a National Survey of Nonprofit Social Service Agencies’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 39(4): 571–587.

49.

Lewchuk

Robertson

(1996) ‘Working Conditions under Lean Production: A Worker-based Bench Marking Study’, Asia Pacific Business Review 2: 60–81.

50.

Lewchuk

Robertson

(1997) ‘Production without Empowerment: Work-reorganization from the Perspective of Motor Vehicle Workers’, Capital and Class 21(3): 37–64.

51.

McDonald

(2006) Challenging Social Work: The Institutional Context of Practice. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

52.

McDonald

Chenoweth

(2009) ‘Leadership: A Crucial Ingredient in Unstable Times’, Social Work and Society 7(1): 102–112.

53.

McDonald

Marston

(2002) ‘Fixing the Niche? Rhetorics of the Community Sector in the Neo-liberal Welfare Regime’, Just Policy 26 September, pp. 14–28.

54.

Meagher

Cortis

(2012) ‘Recognition at Last: Care Work and the Equal Remuneration Case’, Journal of Industrial Relations 54(3): 377–385.

55.

Mooney

Law

(2007) ‘New Labour, “Modernisation” and Welfare Worker Resistance’, pp. 1–22 in Mooney

Law

(eds) New Labour/Hard Labour: Restructuring and Resistance Inside the Welfare Industry. Bristol: The Policy Press.

56.

Mullaly

(2010) Challenging Oppression and Confronting Privilege. London: Oxford University Press.

57.

Mumby

(2005) ‘Theorizing Resistance in Organizational Studies: A Dialectical Approach’, Management Communication Quarterly 19(1): 19–44.

58.

Nickson

Warhust

Dutton

Hurrell

(2008) ‘A Job to Believe In: Recruitment in the Scottish Voluntary Sector’, Human Resource Management Journal 18(1): 20–35.

59.

Noble

Irwin

(2009) ‘Social Work Supervision: An Exploration of the Current Challenges in a Rapidly Changing Social, Economic and Political Environment’, Journal of Social Work 9(3): 345–358.

60.

Parry

Keilliher

(2011) ‘Shaping HRM in the Voluntary Sector: The Influence of Government’, pp. 73–87 in Cunningham

James

(eds) Voluntary Organisations and Public Service Delivery. London: Routledge.

61.

Patton

(2005) Qualitative Research. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

62.

Rinehart

(1999) ‘The International Motor Vehicle Program’s Lean Production Benchmark: A Critique’, Monthly Review 5(8): 19–27.

63.

Rinehart

Huxley

Robertson

(1997) Just Another Car Factory? Lean Production and its Discontents. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

64.

Ross

(2011) ‘Social Work Activism amidst Neoliberalism: A Big, Broad Tent of Activism’, pp. 251–264 in Baines

(ed.) Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice: Social Justice Social Work. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

65.

Sawchuk

(2009) ‘Informal Learning and Work: From Genealogy and Definitions to Contemporary Methods and Findings’, pp. 319–331 in Maclean

Wilson

(eds) International Handbook of Education for the Changing World of Work. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

66.

Schenk

Anderson

(1999) ‘Introduction’, in Schenk

Anderson

(eds) Reshaping Work 2: Labour, the Workplace and Technological Change. Toronto: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Garamond Press.

67.

Shadur

Rodwell

Bamber

(1995) ‘Factors Predicting Employee’s Acceptance of Lean Production’, Human Relations 48: 1403–1425.

68.

Shields

Evans

Richmond

(2005) ‘Structuring Neoliberal Governance: The Nonprofit Sector, Emerging New Modes of Control and the Marketization of Service Delivery’, Policy and Society 24(1): 73–97.

69.

Smith

(2007) ‘Social Work, Restructuring and Resistance: “Best Practices” Gone Underground’, in Baines

(ed.) Doing Anti-Oppressive Practice: Building Transformative, Politicized Social Work. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.

70.

Smith

(2010) ‘Nonprofits and Public Administrations: Reconciling Performance Management and Citizen Engagement’, American Review of Public Administration 40(2): 129–152.

71.

Strauss

Corbin

(1998) Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, 2nd edn. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.

72.

Themudo

(2009) ‘Gender and the Nonprofit Sector’, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 38(4): 663–683.

73.

Thomas

Davies

(2005a) ‘Theorizing the Micro-politics of Resistance: New Public Management and Managerial Identities in the UK Public Services’, Organization Studies 26(5): 683–706.

74.

Thomas

Davies

(2005b) ‘What Have the Feminists Done for Us? Feminist Theory and Organizational Resistance’, Organization 12(5): 711–740.

75.

Van Til

(2000) Growing Civil Society: From Nonprofit Sector to Third Space. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.