British Journal of Social Work (2004) 34, 437–442

DOI: 10.1093/bjsw/bch046

CRITICAL COMMENTARY

Gone with the Wind: The Impacts of

Managerialism on Human Services
Ming-sum Tsui and Fernando C. H. Cheung

Dr Ming-sum Tsui is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Applied Social Sciences, the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include: supervision, human service
management, social work theory and practice, and substance abuse. He is the author of many
articles and his most recent work is Social Work Supervision: Contexts and Concepts (Sage,
2004). He is also the editor or reviewer of 15 international academic journals.
Dr Fernando Cheung is Lecturer at the Department of Applied Social Sciences, the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University. He has extensive experience in human service management and social
advocacy. His research interests include: social policy and administration, programme planning
and evaluation, and social security. His works have been published in Social Work, Families in
Society, and International Social Work.

Correspondence to Dr Ming-sum Tsui, Senior Lecturer, Department of Applied Social

Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon. E-mail: ssmstsui@
polyu.edu.hk

In a special issue of Hong Kong Journal of Social Work on managerialism,

Tropman (2002) made the argument that managerialism, which he equates
with good management, is much needed in the field of human services due to
rising expectations, shrinking budgets and increased competitions. In this he
differs from Morgan and Payne (2002), O’Connor (2002) and Leung (2002),
who also contributed articles in the same issue of the journal, who take a
critical, or at least mixed view of managerialism. Is managerialism the solution
or the cause of the problems now besetting human services? What do we mean
when we use the term ‘managerialism’? What are its unique features? In this
short commentary, we will outline managerialism’s main characteristics and
consider its impact on human services.
Managerialism is a set of beliefs and practices that assumes better
management will resolve a wide range of economic and social problems
(Alford, 1997; Davis, 1997). Managerialism itself is a reflection of the powerful

British Journal of Social Work 34/3 # BASW Trading Ltd 2004 all rights reserved.
438 Critical Commentary

dominance of market capitalism over the world. The 1989 Gulf War, a real-life
demonstration of the revolution of information technology, revealed the
excellent control and flexibility of postmodern capitalism. Transnational
corporations demonstrate how capitalists can share their power with
professional managers and customers in order to exercise control over labour.
In a global market, the wind of managerialism is shaping the political and
economic order of the world in the new century (Fergusson, 2000; Tsui et al.,
2000). Through mass media, trade and the interchange of human resources,
managerialism has become a dominant ideology for public policy making,
business administration practice and human service management (Zifcak,
1994). Arguably, managerialism is a form of manifestation of the ‘Empire’ as
described by Hardt and Negri (2001). It has become a part of our life, not only
in the workplace but everywhere. The impact of managerialism can be
summarized by the following points.

1 The client is a customer (not service consumer)

In the service delivery process, service receivers are identified according to

three views: first, the beneficiary of the service (the client); second, the person
who uses the product or service (the consumer); third, the person who pays the
bill (the bill payer). Customers are service consumer and bill payer since they
use the product and pay the bill. In the business sector, customers are always
right because they pay the bill. Under managerialism, clients are viewed as
customers, not only in the business sector but also in the human service sectors
such as medical services, education and social welfare. According to this view,
clients are encouraged to define the quality of service.

2 The manager (not the front line staff) as the key

Under the influence of managerialism, managers rather than front line staff are
viewed as the key persons in an organization (Pollitt, 1993). The proponents of
managerialism believe that improvements in efficiency can be achieved by the
appointment of an effective manager (or even an efficient manager). Staff
simply implement what the manager thinks, plans and decides. Greater
efficiency can be attained by cutting costs. In most cases, cost-cutting is
achieved by layoffs and contracting out. Staff are not only managerialized, but
also marginalized in the era of managerialism.

3 The staff are employees (not professionals)

Professional autonomy is not respected in the age of managerialism. The

proponents of managerialism believe that managers without professional
 Critical Commentary 439

training can still get things done by delegation and control. Expertise in a
specialized area is not indispensable in management practice. Professional
front line workers are no longer treated as experts; they are simply employees
of an organization. Their work is just a job (no longer a career). Their identity
as members of a specific profession is not an asset. Professional workers are
required to do a great deal of managerial work (for example, planning,
budgeting, performance appraisals, and management audits); they often feel
more like alienated bureaucrats than professional practitioners in the
organizational context.

4 Management knowledge (not common sense or professional

knowledge) as the dominant model of knowledge

Management knowledge has become the dominant mode of knowledge in the

operations of organizations and their services. Management jargon has
replaced common sense and professional knowledge as the core technology.
The proponents of managerialism believe that efficient management will
produce good results. Hence, many newly created, complicated, and unfamiliar
managerial positions and measures have emerged. The management technol-
ogy has become the guiding principle for actions. Managers believe that the
quality of service and performance in human service organizations can be
improved through the use of managerial skills.

5 The market (not society or the community) as the environment

Managerialism views society as a market with competing interests, not a

community with a common goal. In a market, the important elements are
supply, demand and price; not support, dignity and peace. Market value is the
ultimate standard for decision making. Managers care about the profit of the
enterprise, not the benefit of clients. Their pursuit is market share, not sharing.
They work for being well, not for the well-being of others. The spirit of
community and the value of society have been shelved and replaced by
commercial principle—the maximization of profits.

6 Efficiency (not effectiveness) as the yardstick

Efficiency, the ratio of output to input, has become the primary yardstick for
measuring the performance of an organization and its staff members. This may
explain why managers are not overly concerned about the effectiveness (goal
attainment) of services. Quality is greatly emphasized under managerialism.
However, quality is often equated with standards. Managers tend to count
instead of judge, measure instead of think, and care about the cost instead of
the cause.
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7 Cash and contracts (not care and concern) as the foundation of

relationships

As a result of the dominance of managerialism, the major components of the

relationship between human beings have changed from care and concern
(direct, primary motivations) to cash and contracts (indirect, secondary
motivations). Relationships are legal, time-limited, and task-oriented entities
with clearly stated responsibilities. They have become obligatory and short-
term. Care and concern for others in a communal network have been replaced
by contractual relationships between strangers in the commercial market. At
the same time, mutual trust has gone with the wind of managerialism.

8 Quality is equated with standardization and documentation

Despite the dominance of managerialism, quality of service is still cited as the

top priority of organizations. In fact, managerialism promises to raise the
performance of all services to new heights. Quality, however, is usually defined
according to a set of standards that are difficult to apply to human services.
These standards inevitably omit those elements of the process that are not
quantifiable. Quality is also equated with documentation. Human service
professionals are required to take time from direct service and devote it to
paperwork. Thus the adoption of quality control and quality assurance systems
from the manufacturing industry by human services may not result in higher
output, nor in better outcomes (Tsui, 1998).

Conclusion

The advocates of managerialism believe that social problems can be solved by

more effective and efficient managerial measures within the structural,
budgetary and operational mechanism of organizations. This may be true in
cases where existing problems are related to the waste of resources or
deficiencies in the production process. However, to understand and deal with
social problems at an intra-organizational level instead of at a societal level is
to overlook the roots of social problems. This strategy also enables the
government to shift their responsibility to the workforce, including profes-
sional front line workers in the human service sector.
Executives and board members in the non-profit sector need training in
management skills (Healy, 2002; Tsui et al., 2004). However, leadership,
commitment and humanistic principles are not easily taught. More managerial
monitoring and more performance indictors cannot raise low staff morale,
which may be the consequence of unfair practices. After all, the domain of
human service organizations is the third sector; it is the instrument of civil
 Critical Commentary 441

society rather than the market (Tsui and Cheung, 2000). While some of the
methods and skills developed in the private sector are useful to many value-led
and mission-based organizations (Fabricant and Burghardt, 1992; Osborne and
Gaebler, 1993), human service organizations are based on values and principles
that are fundamentally different than those of the market. Managerialism—the
imposition of market values on an organization—is of limited use. It should be
handled with ‘care’ in the third sector.
Perhaps the most effective way to fight the trend towards managerialism in
human services is to recognize its pitfalls and to resist its most romantic and
egoistic appeal—that a brilliant manager is the answer to almost all the
problems within, and outside of, the organizational context. We certainly agree
that better management is much needed in the human service sector. But
management, after all, is a means not an end. To elevate management to the
level of an ‘-ism’ is to give it a comprehensive power that is beyond its
appropriate function—to assist and facilitate the delivery of human services.

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