| Abstract: | In recent years the welfare sector has encountered numerous and often challenging changes, such as marketisation, New Public Management, and demands for evidence-based practices. These changes can be seen as a shift between the two logics of creating and maintaining authority, and as a movement from occupational towards organizational professionalism. Perhaps the most important difference between these logics is that, in occupational professionalism, authority is built on trust in the professionals’ education and ethics, whilst in organizational professionalism it is grounded in regulation and control expressed, for example, in rules, regulations, and routines. The article focuses on the ways in which two groups of social workers in Swedish social welfare offices orient themselves towards organizational and occupational professionalism in constructing themselves and in the construction of each other, as well as the work that is carried out by each group. The aim is thus to elaborate on what these logics mean at the micro-level. In this respect, pertinent questions such as ‘How are they to be understood?’, ‘Regarded from the point of view of micro politics, what do these logics mean?’ and ‘How are the logics internalized by the social workers?’ are posed. |
