From pure to hybrid professionalism in post-NPM activation reform: The institutional work of frontline managers

Knowledge and Position: How to Manage Ambiguous Public Welfare Work

“…The findings demonstrate that despite the dominance of bureaucratic perspectives in public welfare services such as Nav (Breit et al 2017;Gjersøe 2016a;Øvrelid 2018), employees and managers of semi-professional welfare work appreciate managers with know-that, know-about, and know-how of the work. Acting with knowledge appears to support manager-employee interactions, as it enabled managers to interact with employees and acknowledge their contributions.…”

“…Tensions between bureaucratic routines, rules, and accountability (Weber 2012(Weber /1904 further complicate public bureaucracies by creating uncertainty about what decisions public servants are empowered to make. Nav as a semi-professional organization in an ambiguous context is particularly relevant after the 2006 'Nav-reform' that merged municipal welfare, state welfare, and employment services into one organization. (for discussions on the insitutional logics behind this, see Breit et al 2017). The Nav reform intended departments to be general and cross-disciplinary (Andreassen & Aars 2015, p. 93-94), not necessarily led by managers with professional degrees or having employees with specific professional educations.…”

“…The Nav reform intended departments to be general and cross-disciplinary (Andreassen & Aars 2015, p. 93-94), not necessarily led by managers with professional degrees or having employees with specific professional educations. Despite efforts to 're-specialize' these offices (p. 94), they remain semi-professional, as professionally educated managers and employees with and without professional degrees work together in teams of generalists (Breit et al 2017;Fossestøl et al 2016a, p. 35). These employees make decisions based on individual discretion within the limits of rules and regulations.…”

“…Research on this situation has been concerned with the tensions between competing institutional logics, which describe different ways of thinking and doing in an organization (Friedland & Alford 1991), mostly seen as a question of identity and sense-making among managers and employees (Breit et al 2017;Buch & Andersen 2013;Croft et al 2015;Currie & Spyridonidis 2016;Noordegraaf 2015;Olakivi & Niska 2017). Curiously, little research exists on managers in this situation act and how employees consider them knowledgeable from these acts.…”

“…The assumption is that managers of discretionary work gain authority from their practical knowledge of the tasks performed (Empson & Langley 2015;Mintzberg 1979). However, semi-professional public welfare organizations such as Nav break with this assumption in that they do not require a professional education, experiences of professional logics are weakened, and managers do not necessarily possess a professional degree (Breit et al 2017;Fossestøl et al 2016a, p. 35;Øvrelid 2018).…”