The Public Services under Reconstruction: Client experiences, professional practices, managerial control (Routledge Studies in Management, Organizations and Society)

The Public Services under Reconstruction

This book examines the services in and around the public domain. The author analyses a number of socio-cultural changes that are generally considered relevant to these services, including the rationalizing efforts of the New Public Management (NPM) and the introduction of IT. The book particularly addresses the diversity of services. It focuses on the local complexities of their day-to-day processes of service delivery, and on the diversity of client experiences and professional roles associated with various client relationships. A practical objective of this book is to encourage its readers to ‘redefine’ the services they professionally deal with, and move beyond the standard requirements of the NPM that are so often taken for granted as a starting point. Professional managers are, for instance, invited to reconsider their currently quite dominant ‘technical’ managerial perspective. Service professionals are encouraged to make sense of the risks and responsibilities involved with their day to day negotiations, including the impact of the services on the lives of their clients. Gastelaars adopts an interpretive approach to her subject, combining discourse analysis and ethnographic research to concentrate on the actual practices associated with service delivery, rather than on theories and justifications. A focus on practice over theory is controversial and this book offers new perspectives to students and researchers engaged with public services, the NPM and the primary process of service delivery. Professionals and managers involved with the services in and around the public domain will also find much of interest in this volume. Marja Gastelaars is Assistant Professor at the Utrecht School of Governance in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Routledge Studies in Management, Organization and Society

This series presents innovative work grounded in new realities, addressing issues crucial to an understanding of the contemporary world. This is the world of organized societies, where boundaries between formal and informal, public and private, local and global organizations have been displaced or have vanished, along with other nineteenth-century dichotomies and oppositions. Management, apart from becoming a specialized profession for a growing number of people, is an everyday activity for most members of modern societies. Similarly, at the level of enquiry, culture and technology, and literature and economics, can no longer be conceived as isolated intellectual fields; conventional canons and established mainstreams are contested. Management, organization and society addresses these contemporary dynamics of transformation in a manner that transcends disciplinary boundaries, with books that will appeal to researchers, students and practitioners alike. Gender and Entrepreneurship An ethnographic approach Edited by Attila Bruni, Silvia Gherardi and Barbara Poggio Understanding Organization as Process Theory for a tangled world Tor Hernes Time in Organizational Research Edited by Robert A. Roe, Mary J. Waller and Stewart R. Clegg

Efficiency and Management Guy Callender Values-Based Service for Sustainable Business Lessons from IKEA Bo Edvardsson and Bo Enquist The Public Services under Reconstruction Client experiences, professional practices, managerial control Marja Gastelaars

Other titles in this series: Contrasting Involvements A study of management accounting practices in Britain and Germany Thomas Ahrens Turning Words, Spinning Worlds Chapters in organizational ethnography Michael Rosen

Gender, Identity and the Culture of Organizations Edited by Iiris Aaltio and Albert J. Mills Text/Work Representing organization and organizing representation Edited by Stephen Linstead

Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling Women, power and leadership in agricultural organizations Margaret Alston

The Social Construction of Management Texts and identities Nancy Harding

The Poetic Logic of Administration Styles and changes of style in the art of organizing Kaj Sköldberg

Management Theory A critical and reflexive reading Nanette Monin

Casting the Other Maintaining gender inequalities in the workplace Edited by Barbara Czarniawska and Heather Höpfl

The Public Services under Reconstruction Client experiences, professional practices, managerial control Marja Gastelaars

First published 2009 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

© 2009 Marja Gastelaars All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gastelaars, Marja, 1948The public services under reconstruction : client experiences, professional practices, managerial control/Marja Gastelaars. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Public utilities–Management. 2. Service industries–Management. 3. Organizational change. I. Title. HD2763.G37 2008 363.6068′4–dc22 2008021737 ISBN 0-203-88728-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 978-0-415-47242-5 (hbk) ISBN 978-0-203-88728-8 (ebk)

For Maarten K. (1947–2008)

Contents

Preface and acknowledgements 1

The public services are under debate

xiii 1

What is going on?  1 The Dutch Railways, for example  3 What are ‘organizations’ all about?  5 What is a ‘service’?  6 The permanent debate  7 Diversifying ‘service’  9 This book: the services in and around the public domain  17 2

Meanwhile, in society

21

The outside world is in  21 Rationalization  22 Bureaucratization, state formation and ‘juridical form’  26 Professionalism and professional privilege  29 Individualizing effects  35 Domestic life and ‘normality’  38 The private sphere as the ‘realm of liberty’  42 Conclusion: the production of legitimacy as a permanent concern  44 3

‘Why are we here?’ Core services and client relationships The services should mind their cores!  46 Supplying as a core service: anonymous encounters  46 Processing as a core service: the dominance of procedure  50 Expert intervention as a core service: the inevitability of professional domestication  53 Negotiation and co-production as a core service: performing partnership  57

46

x  Providing care and surveillance as a core service: the management of dependence  59 Maintaining individual commitment and collective zeal as a core service: encouraging client ownership  63 Conclusion: the indispensability of the core  65 4

The (re)construction of the services: (re)routing the clients

66

The primary process is under reconstruction  66 Recruiting potential clients  67 Selecting clients: the yes or no at the front door  73 Client classification: ‘what are we going to do?’  75 Client transformation: organizing around the core service  81 Winding up (and starting over again)  89 Conclusion: the inevitable complexity of the service chain  91 5

‘Whatever it takes!’ The organizational relevance of professional responsibilities

93

The service professionals at work  93 First think, then act: knowledge work and cognitive skills  94 Professional expertise: well-considered interventions under a great deal of pressure  99 Managing client relationships: relational skills and relational expertise  102 Managing complexities and power effects: process skills and process expertise  108 The relevance of elementary skills  113 (Re)assembling professional repertoires, (re)negotiating professional responsibilities  113 Conclusion: professional status under debate  119 6

‘What am I doing here?’ The client experience

121

The ultimate ‘other’  121 The relevance of ‘everyday life’  122 The mutual construction of ‘demand’  125 Performing the core service as a client: enduring organizational domestication  132 Winding up (and starting over again) for clients  141 Conclusion: the clients’ experiences matter (or maybe not)  142 7

The new management: about ‘process’ and ‘control’ ‘How do you manage?’  143 Flexible streamlining: delivering services by design  144 Design and redesign  145

143

Contents  xi The impact of standards  148 Managing the services’ accountabilities: evaluative standards-in-use  153 Inventing ‘culture’ to keep ‘people’ under control  154 Conclusion: process skills for managers  159 8

Conclusion: where are we now?

161

Flexible streamlining vis-à-vis the permanent debate  161 Flexible streamlining and the paradoxes of managerial control  162 The (re)production of legitimacy: the inevitability of public debate  163 Manageability for all  165 References Subject and author index

167 176

Preface and acknowledgements

This book sums up more than a decade of experience involving service work. I have been a client to many services. My work as a service professional consisted in teaching and doing research, but that is not what I am talking about. I have been trying to systematically observe the services in and around the public domain as practices-in-context during the past fifteen years. I have tried to make sense of what service professionals have been telling me, and I have also tried to listen, as well as I can, to the accounts of managers and clients. Moreover, in the company of earlier versions of this text in Dutch, I have worked with numerous students. The many service managers among them have been particularly generous in sharing their experiences. It is obvious that this book could not have been written without their contributions and reports. Among the teaching colleagues with whom I shared ‘my’ programme’s development, two in particular should be mentioned: Anton Anthonissen’s and Marianne Dortants’ contributions have been particularly stimulating over the years. In 1989 I arrived at Utrecht University to join the then newly founded Centre for Policy and Management Studies. One of its founding fathers, professor Philip Idenburg, has had the courage to hire a historical sociologist like me. Till then my practical experience in the social sciences had been limited to a PhD on the history of the social sciences in the Netherlands – with Michel Foucault and Bruno Latour as sources of inspiration. Philip, whose friendship I have hugely appreciated ever since, was the first to encourage me to develop an approach of my own in this new field. Another is Paul Verweel. He is also a professor now and, together with Mark Bovens and Peter Leisink, he has managed to turn the former Centre for Policy and Management studies into the Utrecht School of Governance. In doing so, he has provided me (and many others, to be sure) with an institutional context to my liking. I also wish to thank Arie de Ruijter who was one of the scholarly founders of our Management of Meaning research programme. It always has been a pleasure to work with him and I hope that this will never stop. The many debates with my dear colleagues Jeroen Vermeulen, Marleen van de Haar and Loes Berendsen have inspired me as well. Their versions of discourse analysis, ethnographic research and critical linguistics have no doubt affected my repertoire. In this respect, I also owe a lot to some internationally respected

xiv  scholars I was fortunate enough to meet on various occasions during my career: they include Barbara Czarniawska and Annemarie Mol. My institute has provided a generous grant for the translation of this book but Bart Plantenga, an English speaking translator-cum-editor, has actually done the work. So, last but not least, I wish to thank him for his never tiring efforts to improve my manuscript’s legibility. I also wish to thank Kate Reeves for her thorough editing on behalf of Routledge. But, to be sure: the remaining mistakes are mine!  Utrecht/Amsterdam, August 2008

1 The public services are under debate

A cell-phone conversation on the train between The Hague and Rotterdam: ‘This is Bert …’ ‘Hi! Yes, I’m on my way …’ ‘No, by train. Well… . train … Let’s say they rented something in Belgium and they’re now towing it to Rotterdam.’ (de Volkskrant, 14 April 2003)

What is going on? What on earth has happened to the services in and around the public domain? We all know the stories about hospitals that keep you on a waiting list for ages and then, just as your surgery is due, they postpone it. And about call centres that pretend to all be there for you, but confront you with their automated replies or with their standard apologies for the inconvenience whenever you try to contact them. It could be easily argued that the so-called client-centeredness which was introduced to many of these services about a decade ago, under such labels as ‘Service Management’ (Grönroos 1990; Normann 1991) and ‘New Public Management’ (McLaughlin et al. 2002) has, to say the least, been quite counter-productive. Quite a few people appear to believe it is the new managers who are to blame. But rather than providing yet another critique of the New Public Management (NPM), this book will focus on another side of the story. It is taken as a starting point, here, that the new managers cannot be held responsible for most of the socio-cultural changes that are currently taking place and that may to a large extent, in fact, account for the many changes that affect the various services, at this point in time. For instance, it was not the managers, themselves, who invited their clients to ‘make a difference’ as individuals, or who invented the world-wide migration movements of the past few decades, or the global impact of the Internet, to mention only a few of these changes. As a matter of fact, one could even argue that the new managers are actually there to help their organizations keep up with these changes, and prevent them from getting out of control. Moreover, one should also realize that the services in and around the public domain are permanently under debate. Of course, this has always been the case, if

2  The public services under debate only because the services in and around the public domain are often endowed with public responsibilities such as ‘justice’, the ‘monopoly of violence’ or ‘public decency’; they are even involved in matters that affect ‘life and death’ and ‘the future of our children’. What did change, however, is the role of the contemporary media. They are, for instance, more inclined than ever before to invite their audiences to actually identify with individual clients – ‘Would you like this to happen to your old father?’ And again, this media behaviour has always been encouraged by the fact that, with services, the clients by definition take part in the processes of service delivery. In fact, many of these services are part of our everyday lives. When we get up, go to the bathroom and take a shower, put the kettle on and prepare breakfast, we may not realize that there are already services performing for us, until something goes wrong. The human interest associated with such failures, however, has become ever more prominent in media debates. However, one should not generalize about ‘the’ services, even in this respect. The various services are each expected to handle quite different client relationships, and, accordingly, they may also be required to answer to quite different values. For instance, professional services such as hospitals, should never allow the new attention to both cost effectiveness and the client experience to interfere with the professional quality of their daily work (Freidson 2001). The same is true for the selection bureaucracies that manage our social security system. Such new considerations should never be allowed to interfere with the equity that these services are expected to perform – even if they now are permanently under reconstruction. Accordingly, this book will develop a conceptual framework in which these differences are given a proper place. Moreover, it is assumed, here, that the socio-cultural changes mentioned above – as well as the new management – can certainly be expected to have an effect on all of these services. They may, however, have an essentially different impact on the different services that are available in and around the public domain. So, accordingly, the starting point of the book provides a number of sociocultural changes that are generally considered relevant to the services in and around the public domain. Among them are the rationalizing efforts of the New Public Management and the introduction of IT and all of the other aspects of contemporary rationalization. Moreover, the various individualizing tendencies of our society are considered particularly relevant to the development of these services, as well. The book’s ultimate aim, however, is to make sense of what is actually going on inside these various services in and around the public domain. In particular, it proposes to show how their day-to-day activities are affected by these general societal changes, but that during these various reconstructions these services had better continue their ‘business’ uninterrupted. The book will first and foremost try to make sense of the many changes that affect the day-to-day activities of the clients and service professionals who are expressly expected to negotiate the actual performance of the core services that these services are to deliver. As a consequence, it proposes to take a multi-perspective approach that does not only include the perspective of the (new) service managers but also those of the service professionals and their clients. Accordingly, the

The public services under debate  3 book criticizes those who argue that ‘the ultimate truth’ concerning the changes affecting the services in and around the public domain is provided by the New Public Management. It also criticizes those who oppose these arguments with the proposition that ‘the truth’ is ultimately found with the service professionals and their specific ‘professional logic’. But the same is true for those who argue that it is ‘ultimately’ the client experience (or client satisfaction) that counts.

The Dutch Railways, for example Some of the recent developments at the Dutch Railways (NS) may serve as an illustration of what this book will cover. It is observed from the perspective of a client who is trying to make sense of her own experiences, as well as those of the other parties present. When presented from another perspective, this story may turn out quite differently, indeed. The ‘I’ presented here is the author of this book. I have been a commuter for some decades now. I don’t drive a car, so I am dependent on the train and take it four to five times a week from A to B, and vice versa. I am a regular traveller, so I only need to access the Railways’ website to plan my trips to other destinations. They also have a call centre with an automated female voice: ‘if you would like more information about … please press …’ But it is very inefficient, most of the time, and I have to pay for these calls! I am glad that I usually don’t have to buy tickets. I have an annual ticket, as they call it. So I do not have to use the vending machines. The NS has also diversified my options, one could say. Not only are there many destinations and departure times to choose from, there are also different types of tickets available, depending on one’s age, travelling behaviour and one’s budget. There are discount tickets for the old; first-class and second-class tickets; discount tickets for people travelling outside of peak periods; and special tickets for the young. But there are very few ticket windows open these days. They are easier to find in Station B. So that’s where I pick up my small stock of first-class tickets, every once in a while, which I buy in case the second class compartments get too crowded during rush hour. That is also where I buy my ‘detour’ tickets (the NS’s vocabulary is still bureaucratically precise, sometimes I fail to call the tickets by their proper names …) in case I end up wanting to travel to another destination, before going to point B and then back, again, to point A. I don’t know whether other people have similar experiences, but I had to get used to the transformations of large railway stations like A and B. They have been turned into shopping malls which are, of course, quite convenient for our daily shopping needs. But now it’s even more difficult to find open ticket windows and the departures board, never mind finding the trains! Moreover, and apart from the few NS employees in uniform who offer information on and around the train platforms, face-to-face contact with NS representatives has become a rare experience. ‘The railways’ have disappeared behind the scenes.

4  The public services under debate The real journey has become an exercise in diversity, one might say. NS advertisements focus on middle-class people, and particularly those who drive a car. But there is an incredible variety of people on the trains. There are some middle-class people, of course, but also the volunteers who collect fruit for the homeless (and also ‘do not mind accepting some cash’). There are mothers with children in prams as well as migrants and tourists from all over the world who sit next to elderly Dutch people. And, of course, there are many students and commuters like me. There are also the petty criminals, whom the NS intercom warns us against in a number of languages: ‘There are pickpockets on the train!’ But fortunately, I haven’t seen many of them, at least till now. And, apart from some quarrels involving paying fines for those not in possession of a ticket, most of the passengers keep to themselves. They appear to be mainly interested in reaching their destination, and so am I. During rush hour, however, the physical experience of travelling turns into quite an adventure, indeed! The apparent shortage of equipment often forces us into fairly outdated compartments where we hope to find a seat. And we also hope the train will actually make it to its destination. It often doesn’t because of delays caused by obstructions or wet leaves on the rails or snowdrifts or a malfunctioning switch, or an accident or a fire or a power failure or a computer network failure or because the NS has gone on strike. It is during moments like these as we’re left waiting on a platform somewhere that we actually experience the power the NS has over us. Its standard apologies for the delay only seem to aggravate the situation. Meanwhile, the media attempts to further aggravate our problems. The train appears to belong to the everyday experiences of many people. Serious delays are always news. And so are strikes or accidents or dangerous situations or confrontations on a train. The media also pays a lot of attention to the ongoing conflicts between management and employees. Thanks to them we know all about management’s intentions to enhance the NS’s performance with teams that are responsible for specific routes. These routes have come to be called ‘laps around the church’ by the employees, a metaphor that refers to the local cycling races that are otherwise very popular in Dutch villages, but that, in this context, meant the curbing of these workers’ freedoms on the rails. We are also confronted in the media by an upper management which persistently presents itself as a group of heroic entrepreneurs encouraging ever further privatization. They propose the introduction of high speed trains and other projects, to ‘put the Dutch Railway system on the European map’. But, as a matter of fact, they have toned down their speeches of late, although this doesn’t necessarily mean that they have actually changed these plans. As far as our everyday transport is concerned, their promise of ‘seamless service from door to door’ including bus transport and so-called train taxis appears to have totally vanished. At present, the management seems quite satisfied when – ‘with a margin of a maximum of five per cent’ – about 85 per cent of the trains are on time, and, according to its regular reports on ‘client

The public services under debate  5 satisfaction’, the average client does not appear to mind. And, as a matter of fact, I don’t. Unless my own train is delayed, of course. (field notes) This example demonstrates how the NS appear to be permanently under reconstruction. It also demonstrates, however, that these changes cannot entirely be reduced to the ‘managerial efforts’ that are put in place. Moreover, it demonstrates that these changes may affect its essential client relationship only to an extent: the railways remain a mass service involving large numbers of clients. It also shows how the clients may often be presented as the ultimate alibi for the changes, but are not always the winners. But most of all it demonstrates that services like this have become quite complex, indeed, and, even more importantly, that this complexity can be argued from a variety of perspectives. The NS may have become complicated in the eyes of its clients but the example also shows that it may have become just as complex for the professional service workers who are involved. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that even its managers may end up feeling that they are losing control.

What are ‘organizations’ all about? To start with, it should be assumed that services – public and private services alike – are ‘organized’ in ways that make them similar to other organizations. This means that, like any other organization, they can be seen as constructions that are intentionally produced, and that are also expected to deliberately exploit the resources available to them, in order to effectively create a specified set of ‘products’. It can even be assumed that in this way they actually fulfil the goals they set for themselves, and guarantee the continuity of their organizations (Hasenfeld 1983: 7). Moreover, all services are expected to have a division of labour and are also expected to be familiar with the concept of co-ordination (Mintzberg 1983). However, and as a part of the current ‘permanent reconstruction’, most services have also developed a computerized infrastructure and various services that work behind the scenes to support their primary processes. And, more often than not, these services are now also developing a number of ‘boundary roles’ (Scott 1992), as exemplified by the marketing departments, call centres and client services that help them relate to their (potential) clients. As a consequence, they have also become more complex in a very technical sense of the word, which involves more units, more divisions and more possible links (Mintzberg 1983). At the same time, however, these newly ‘reorganized’ services are not only expected to be ‘in control’ of their everyday performances but are held ‘accountable’ for them to the outside world, as well. Accordingly, the emergence of professional managers should not be too surprising: to some of us, they must be present to ensure that all of these new ‘organizational’ characteristics are put in their proper places. And yet, the services should also be seen as a different kind of organization because of the actual core tasks they perform. In fact, even the current

6  The public services under debate reconstructions should not allow this typical ‘service’ aspect of these organizations to change. For instance, services do not produce any material goods. They cannot be considered ‘information processing’ establishments, either. They are also different from governmental departments doing paper work, or from organizations taking care of data collection and/or storage (Korczynski 2002). They also do not resemble organizations that spend most of their time and energy on the transport and distribution of ‘material goods’. A number of authors believe that the main difference here is that service work means that these organizations do most of their work in the presence of their clients. (Normann 1991; Grönroos 1990). But it is not simply the ‘how’ or the ‘where’ that is different here: services are also expected to perform quite different tasks.

What is a ‘service’? Yeheskel Hasenfeld (1983) argued some decades ago that the services, in particular, involve people work in two senses of the word. First, and like all other organizations, it is people who actually do the work, whether or not they are supported by a computerized infrastructure or by material objects. But, second, and unlike other organizations, the services also perform people work in the sense that they do their work to, with or for those people who actually participate in their processes as clients. Even those services that happen to perform much of their work ‘behind the scenes’, when seen from a client’s perspective, are actually expected to do something ‘to’, ‘with’ or ‘for’ their clients. Hasenfeld argued that services are organizations ‘whose principle function is to protect, maintain or enhance the personal well-being of individuals by defining, shaping, or altering their personal attributes’ (Hasenfeld 1983: 1). This is still basically the case, although it may be more accurate, nowadays, to adjust Hasenfeld’s rather normative proposition of doing something about ‘the personal well-being’ of these individuals into a more generalized ‘changing’ these individuals’ physical, psychological or social ‘condition’. But, even with this adjustment, we can still assume that all services provide some sort of intervention in the lives of their clients. Moreover, it may not appear as self-evident as it used to be in Hasenfeld’s time, that clients are invariably positioned ‘on the receiving end’ of the intended changes. Contemporary clients are sometimes even expected to actively ‘deliver’ the services themselves (Normann 1991). But again, the point that should be made here remains the same: the actual process of service delivery always involves two parties who, together, perform the client relationship as required. Accordingly, a number of elements can be used to pinpoint what these services are about. First, there are those elements that expressly relate to their core business. Their primary processes (cf. Grönroos 1990) are organized around the specific core services they perform, including the client relationships that are central to these core services (cf. Hasenfeld 1983). Apart from this, the services are usually also expressly related to specific core values that link them to various stakeholders in their societal environment and that help them to (re)produce their legitimacy in the public debate as well.

The public services under debate  7 So an appropriate description of what ‘organized services’ are about should contain at least three elements: (1) Services are generally organized around a primary process that consists of a series of client contacts that together make up the process of service delivery, as arranged by the organization. (2) This process of service delivery is arranged around one or more specific core services performing specific interventions, with specific aims, in the condition of the clients. These core services require an ‘organized’ client relationship involving both the organizations’ service professionals and their clients. (3) Such ‘organized services’ are not only expected to account for organizational values such as effectiveness and efficiency but also for specific core values related to the core service(s) they are to perform. Together these specifications provide their bottom line. The attention here will be focused on those services that are related to the public domain. But, as the boundaries between the public and the private are currently changing, this description is not limited to the non-profit (or not for profit) services that are usually associated with the public sector. It also includes commercial services operating in and around the public domain.

The permanent debate It was argued in the opening paragraph of this chapter – as well as being established by Hasenfeld (1983) – that some of the characteristics of the services are always being contested. This debate has probably been further abetted by the introduction of the new management and by the various socio-cultural changes mentioned earlier. We also noted that it may be further influenced by the contemporary media’s preoccupations. But, as a rule, it has always been the case that a number of issues may need periodic clarification, in particular where the so-called public services are concerned. Here are some examples: Who is the client? The client should be seen as the ultimate participant in the process of service delivery. However, to outsiders and insiders alike, it may actually turn out to be quite difficult to discern who the client actually is. For instance, in the consultancy sector, there is usually a ‘patron client’, often a manager who ‘commissions’ a specific organizational change, but this patron client may not always be the client who will take part in the actual process of service delivery; this may very well turn out to be this same manager’s personnel. Other services may have to deal with ‘agent’ clients who act on behalf of the actual clients, for instance, parents who represent their handicapped children, or lawyers who act on behalf of their corporate clients. Accordingly, it is not always easy to establish which client is considered the most relevant, at any given point in time. The clients’ participation. The assumption that the clients participate in the process in vivo does not mean that these clients are always directly contacted by the organization’s representatives. In fact, the contact may even be technologically mediated, via the Internet, a call centre, a bank machine or other automated devices. But in

8  The public services under debate all of these cases, the core client is seen as participating in the process. Some of the current authors on service management claim that even this kind of mediated client contact must be ‘right at first strike’. A machine should not be allowed to ‘frustrate’ the clients during this so-called moment of truth (Grönroos 1990; Normann 1991). The role expectations associated with the ‘organized’ client relationships. As a rule, a set of more or less self-evident roles, both for the client and for the service professional, are assumed, in the client relationship. A doctor is a doctor. A patient is a patient. But, first of all, this general agreement does not always mean that these mutual expectations ‘meet’. The actual expectations of the various parties involved in the process of service delivery may turn out to be quite confrontational. Service professionals may consider their daily work as a routine, while many of their clients consider the treatment they receive as unique. A second issue involves the fact that new participants and ‘people from elsewhere’ may not be aware of this apparently self-evident set of expectations. Migrant patients are often chastised for having ‘inadequate expectations’ of ‘our medical services’. A third issue is that this ‘negotiated order’ (cf. Kruijthof 2005) may change over time. In the Netherlands, for instance, it can very well be argued that doctors are not quite what they used to be, and that the same can be said for the patients. And, finally, there is always the question of how all of these expectations are actually negotiated at a specific point in time. The predictability of the interventions’ effects. Many observers believe that the interventions related to the various services should be seen as ‘soft technologies’ because their effectiveness is essentially debated (Hasenfeld 1983). For instance, it should be taken into account that the intervention’s intention or aim may not be realized, or that its actual outcomes may turn out to be quite different from those intended. And, even if the intentions are realized according to expectations, it is very well possible that this may have nothing to do with the intervention itself. These and similar doubts about the effectiveness of interventions have recently stimulated interest in so-called ‘evidence-based practices’ – interventions whose effectiveness has been established by empirical evidence. However, the apparent ‘exactitude’ of these efforts has also come under discussion. The inevitability of moral issues. The core service always involves the performance of some intervention, and this intervention will always affect the client’s condition. This means that this core task, given its specific nature, often becomes the subject of debate. First, the aim of the intervention or the very intervention itself may be disputed, for example, in cases involving euthanasia or abortion. Second, the intervention often involves risks for the clients, and this is particularly the case when its intended effects amount to irreversible changes. One cannot replace an amputated leg. Third, the individual client’s personal or physical integrity can be at stake, with interventions involving for instance police violence or certain psychiatric treatments. And, fourth, our views about ‘the good life’ may also come under fire. How do we want to treat the elderly? And how about the education of our children (Hasenfeld 1983)? Essentially contradictory bottom lines. The core values related to specific services can become the subject of debate, as well. As we will see in the following

The public services under debate  9 section, the core values related to a specific service may also involve values such as ‘equity’, or ‘professional quality’ or the ‘continuity of care on a 24/7 basis’. At the same time, however, the new management or any other stakeholder – e.g., the government or other financing parties – may insist that the same services promote cost-effectiveness and calculable outputs. These kinds of alternative values may put pressure on the specific core values, while the reverse may be true as well.

Diversifying ‘service’ As was argued earlier, it is very important to realize that the services in and around the public domain vary greatly. Accordingly, a diversity of services will be presented here, in the form of a set of ‘institutional parameters’ that are termed ‘characteristics’ in this book. These ‘institutionalized parameters’ involve the variety of core services, client relationships, client roles and professional roles. They also include the specific core values that the services are often expressly expected to relate to. The ‘structuring effects’ that can be related to the various core services are also included in this set, and, accordingly, some question marks will be added to a currently widely accepted assumption that the structures of most services will actually converge in one direction (cf. also Powell and DiMaggio 1991). There are reasons to assume that the structuring effects of the various core services are actually quite diverse. The more or less institutionalized versions of the services that are established here should not be considered a static ‘universe’. In fact, they should be seen as a number of more or less institutionalized ‘action nets’ instead (Czarniawska 1997), in that they can be expected to provide some coherence and predictability to the everyday practices – or ‘actions’ – of the various parties involved in these services on a day-to-day basis. In fact, Table 1.1 should be seen as a set of sensitizing concepts that help us make sense of the everyday realities of the services in and around the public domain. Mass services The core task of mass services is to supply standard versions of services to large numbers of clients. The NS is a mass service, as are other organizations that transport large numbers of people. The hotel and catering sector and the tourist industry also fall into this category of service (Metz 2002), as do supermarkets and shopping malls and mass-oriented financial services such as insurance companies and banks. Some of these mass services – as we have seen with the NS – were organized as part of the public sector, in the past, but they have become particularly susceptible to the processes of privatization. Examples also include the telecommunications industries and the former public utilities that provide energy and water. A striking feature of these services is evidenced in their ‘structuring effects’. They often resemble very large and totally logical machines, with the fast food industry being the ultimate example. These fast food providers have given rise to the well-known metaphor of the McDonaldization of society, as Ritzer proclaimed

encounter

cog

consumer, aggregate demand

Client relationship

Professional role

Client role

machine

supplying

Core service

Structuring effects

efficiency

Mass services

Core values

Versions characteristics

Table 1.1  The diversity of services

street-level bureaucrat claimant, information provider hierarchy

procedure

processing

equality before the law

Selection bureaucracies

Individual services

loosely coupled system

professional domestication professional expert case

continuity of care and surveillance (24/7) providing care and surveillance

Providers of care and surveillance

professional network, project structure

total institution or personal network

managed dependence relational and process person in charge expert partner dependent

partnership

the clients’ selfdetermination, shared responsibility expert production negotiating coand intervention production professional quality

Professional services

voluntary association between anarchy and sect

regular member

core member

maintenance of individual commitment and collective zeal ownership

voluntary commitment

Voluntary associations

The public services under debate  11 in his now famous book (1993). It can even be assumed that the mass services are quite amenable to this approach. Whenever this happens, their bottom line ultimately becomes determined by efficiency, or by profit and net return, or even by the value of the stock owned by shareholders. These values originated in the commercial sector, but, with the obvious exception of the shareholder value, they are now applied to non-profit (and not-for-profit) services as well. The primary processes of service delivery of these mass services are thoroughly ‘reconstructed’ to ‘rationalize’ them in an industrial manner. Moreover, these primary processes are usually held together and even ‘managed’, to some extent, by an extensive computerized infrastructure. The service professionals working in these organizations are also expected to follow a completely standardized regime, and co-operate in a mechanical manner, like little cogs in a machine. As wellknown examples such as call centres demonstrate, this impression is reinforced by the computerized infrastructure as well. All of this helps standardize the actual core services and their supporting activities, and helps make them consistently available to large numbers of people. It is assumed that it is the simplest of services that can be most easily standardized in this manner, although the principles are applied to many other services as well. The client relationships that are produced along these lines can be called encounters (Gutek 1995: 7). These standard services are presented in terms of their permanent availability to large numbers of clients, and in terms of the ease and comfort of the service transaction, assuming that this is also what these clients expect. Individual clients are seen as consumers and passers-by, and are actually considered the constituent parts of an anonymous aggregate. Eventually, it is the mass turnover figures that count. Selection bureaucracies The distinction between the so-called public and private spheres is not as clearcut as it used to be, but this does not mean that we have become unfamiliar with public organizations in the true sense of the word. On the contrary, there are still quite a few governmental organizations, and their numbers actually seem to be increasing. Meanwhile, departmental organizations continue to make laws and develop policies while many public organizations continue to process information. The political decision-making process of parliament and local governments can also be seen as organized activities, although it is debatable whether they are actually services in the true sense of the word. As a rule, they do not address individual citizens. The representatives of the so-called street-level bureaucracies of the modern social state work with their citizens, and thus they can be called services in the true sense of the word. Lipsky, who came up with the term ‘street-level bureaucracy’, even pointed out that these may actually cover a wide range of activities. ‘Typical streetlevel bureaucrats are teachers, police officers and other law enforcement personnel, social workers, judges, public lawyers and other court officers, health

12  The public services under debate workers and many other public employees who grant access to government programs and provide services within them’ (Lipsky 1980: 3). There may actually be quite a number of mass services or professional services that can be included among these street-level bureaucracies. However, the street-level bureaucracies we are concerned with here could be called selection bureaucracies (Hasenfeld 1983). These bureaucracies work specifically ‘under the rule of law’. They are specifically responsible for the application of general rules and regulations in individual cases. These organizations also serve large numbers of clients, but their clients are usually individual claimants, in contrast to the clients of the mass services. Service professionals are expected to treat these clients as individual citizens who are ‘potentially entitled’ to a provision. Examples of this type of services are social security institutions, the courts system, the Child Welfare Councils, the Immigration and Naturalization Offices, and the Assessment Offices that, at least in the Netherlands, provide assessments relating to the distribution of care. Inspections and government institutions that audit other organizations also serve as examples, even though they serve institutional rather than individual clients. The core service is the most distinctive feature of this kind of service. Hasenfeld called it processing because it applies general principles to individual cases (Hasenfeld 1983: 135). Accordingly, its core values are directly related to equality before the law. The client relationship, in its turn, is over-determined by the procedure. The clients are expected to subject themselves to a decisionmaking process that is entirely determined by the bureaucracy’s rules and regulations. The clients role – that is, that of ‘the citizens’ who are potentially ‘entitled’ to a provision under the law – can also be seen as that of information providers, who are primarily expected to truthfully provide the information relevant to the processing of their individual claims. The client may be called the claimant and is subject to a formal procedure. In their turn, the selection bureaucrats are expected to act meticulously, taking each and every individual case very seriously. They are also expected to act ‘indifferently’, when individual diversity is concerned, however much their individual decisions may also rely on some professional discretion, that is, the express authority to take individual circumstances into account (Herzfeld 1992; Du Gay 2000). That is why a hierarchical distribution of authorizations and responsibilities is often regarded as an appropriate structure for these kinds of services. It appears to guarantee that even when professional discretion is applied, the decisions are ultimately governed by the rule of law. Professional services As suggested above, there are numerous organizations whose activities are not strictly regulated by law but who work under a public regime. Primary examples are found in education and health care. In some European countries, some of these organizations have only fairly recently been privatized, as a consequence of the ‘retreat’ of the social state, and in the USA some of them have always been private

The public services under debate  13 (Strange 1996; Clarke and Newman 1997). Moreover, some professional services, for instance, in the architectural and financial worlds, have always been part of the private sector. But, regardless of whether they are publicly or privately organized, these services are expected to perform in a similar manner, and are called professional services for the purposes of this book. In all of these cases, their core services amount to expert production processes or interventions. This means that professionals who are more or less recognized as such offer expertise that is considered indispensable to the actual core service of the organization. Moreover, this expertise depends on a generally recognized professional repertoire that can usually only be transferred by an extended period of professional training (Wilensky 1964; Freidson 2001). It is no wonder, then, that it is generally assumed that this specific professional expertise is not easily transferred to machines or even other people. The presence of these professional experts is the defining feature of these kinds of services. Their professional quality requirements amount to the core values that these services are expected to uphold. As a consequence, it is generally assumed that these professionals should also be allowed to define these ‘professional’ quality requirements themselves. Moreover, they are expected to act independently, to some extent, of any other kinds of expectations. It is also assumed that the ‘non-professional’ colleagues they have to work with (often called lay people, meaning the clients; or semi- or paraprofessionals as opposed to ‘real’ professionals) are also subject to this professional regime. Even the organization’s management may be seen as an ‘extension’ of these professional interests. Accordingly, the professional experts not only dominate the core services of their organizations, but most of the other parts of the process of service delivery as well. The clients, in their turn, are usually at the receiving end of the professionally defined interventions that are on offer. Those clients who are directly subject to the expert interventions, are even treated as ‘cases’ by the professionals, themselves, and then the client relationship amounts to professional domestication per se. But in most of these cases this domestication is in place: the individual’s problem is not only transformed into a professionally defined version, but the clients are often also ‘socialized’ into an ‘appropriate’ kind of behaviour during the intervention. Some of the expert interventions that form the backbone of these professional services can even be expected to perform quite radical and far-reaching changes. It is particularly where these more invasive expert interventions are involved that the professional experts are not only expected to act professionally in the sense that they are the experts (and that rest of us are not). They are also expected to act upon well-considered decisions and account for the consequences of these actions as well. It is the latter in particular that has turned professional responsibility (and even liability) into an issue. This has led to, among other things, the current relevance of the juridical form. Those professionals who are not subject to such risks on a day-to-day basis – an example is provided by researchers performing a project – still claim some professional autonomy to do their work.

14  The public services under debate These issues of responsibility and autonomy explain why, organizationally, most professionals keep to themselves, and preferably to their own kind. Yet it would be quite wrong to assume that they produce homogeneous professional communities. The opposite is true, because, as a rule, professionals keep struggling among themselves about the areas of life in which they can exercise an exclusive professional jurisdiction (Abbott 1988, 2001). Moreover, most professional repertoires are also considered essentially innovative. It is particularly in larger institutions, which are involved in a variety of professional disciplines, such as hospitals, universities and even commercial consultancy firms, where one can observe the structural consequences of the kind of rivalry that inevitably ensues. A number of observers agree that, as a rule, it transforms the organization’s structure into a loosely coupled system (Weick 2001: 32ff.) that becomes fairly unmanageable, not only to the managers but also to the professionals themselves. Individual services Individual services are often regarded as the very contemporary version of professional service delivery. The so-called professional service firms (Maister 1993) involved in financial services, consultancy, accountancy, law firms as well as the very dynamic worlds of advertising and PR, for instance, stand out in this respect. They tend to operate commercially, and sometimes even on a world-wide basis. Advertising and PR firms, in particular, are now often called the new professional organizations. Moreover, it is assumed  – and this is even more interesting from our present point of view – that their clients have a relatively large voice in their everyday negotiations. Accordingly, one could consider ‘individual negotiations’ as the core service of these individual services, and the ‘self-determination’ of their clients as the core value they have to maintain. However, a number of the professional service providers noted above actually negotiate these ‘commissions’ with their individual clients (e.g., Johnson 1972) and return to their traditional professional core service, once these initial negotiations are completed. Accordingly, it could be argued that, with ‘real’ individual services, an entirely different client relationship should be in place. This ideal typical individual client relationship focuses on a partnership, that is, the sustained mutual commitment of the service professional and the client during the whole of the process. The process of service delivery is converted into a process of negotiated co-production. The clients take an active and responsible role and act as partners. In fact, this ‘ideal’ client role is quite compatible with the concept of ‘relationship’ as proposed by Barbara Gutek (1995). In her analysis, this kind of partnership involves both parties in such a manner that they get to know each other well over the course of a rather long-term process. The participants learn to trust each other in their respective roles, as the ‘service professional’ and as the ‘client’ (Gutek 1995: 7). We should however add that these clients are not only expected to take an active part in the initial negotiations but are expected to take an active role in

The public services under debate  15 the actual performance of the service as well. They are even expected to accept active responsibility for its results. In their turn, the service professionals are not only required to negotiate the initial commissions with their clients but are also expected to actively accommodate their clients’ participation in the process, in due course. This shared responsibility may ultimately provide the essential core value for such individual services. And, as a rule, such individual services can be expected to produce professional networking structures around those individual client arrangements – or ‘projects’ – that sustain their core. Providers of care and surveillance Services providing care and surveillance are expected to be available to dependent clients on a 24/7 basis. These clients may involve people with a handicap – or ‘with limitations’ – or people who need some kind of practical, physical or mental support (Hasenfeld 1983 calls it sustenance). Examples include people with physical or mental handicaps, and the ever growing number of the elderly and chronically ill. In some cases, however, the clients may be people who have to be taken care of on a 24/7 basis as well, but for entirely different reasons. Examples of the latter include those who have been judged as unfit to participate in society because they have committed a crime. The service professionals performing these services are not only expected to provide the care that is required, but they also have to somehow deal with the dependence of their clients on this care. This is why it is assumed, here, that the client relationship usually amounts to some sort of managed dependence that essentially focuses on the (changes affecting the) condition of the clients. The ‘surveillance’ aspect is emphasized here as well. The service’s ‘on duty’ professionals have to somehow be permanently attentive, and, whenever an urgent matter or crisis arises, they are in charge. All of this is related to the core value of these services: the continuity of care. Moreover, these services are, more than any of the others, directly related to the structuring of their clients’ ‘everyday lives’. In the past, these dependent (or socially excluded) clients were usually housed in so-called intramural arrangements – Goffman (1961) called them total institutions. They were focused on a very detailed and uniform structuring of the daily life of their clients. But society’s ideas regarding the ‘everyday life’ of these dependent people have changed, and so have the structures of these arrangements. The intramural arrangements remained in place but other arrangements emerged that accommodate, as best as they can, life as defined by their clients. The structuring effects of these new arrangements amount to the emergence of so-called personal networks around individual clients. It is assumed that the client role will change as well – as does the role of the involved service professionals. The clients are no longer considered the passive objects of care, but instead, as individual participants with needs and preferences of their own, as well as individual lifestyles. To some extent, the clients are even

16  The public services under debate expected to manage their dependence themselves. But the clients’ reliance on care remains in place, and so does their dependence on some level of surveillance. Although the organizations involved in these networks are now expected to deliver their services on call, they still have to somehow maintain their availability on a 24/7 basis. The service professionals are still expected to be there to permanently monitor their clients’ situations. They are also still expected to establish a standby situation for themselves, in order to be available when immediate action is required. Voluntary associations Voluntary services – the more common term in the literature is voluntary associations – can actually appear in all spheres of life. Their core business amounts to the organizing of activities in which people participate on a voluntary basis. This can involve typical leisure activities such as soccer, arranging flowers, dancing and carpentry, but also community-oriented services or collective enterprises such as scouting or self-help groups in health care. They can also organize, on a voluntary basis, innovative activities that would otherwise not be on offer. Moreover, there are also the so-called missionary organizations such as trade unions, political parties and social movements dedicated to environmental issues and human rights (Putnam 2000). As a rule, these voluntary associations do not organize paid labour, nor do they visibly contribute to the Gross National Product. And yet, they are considered a version of the services, here, for the simple reason that, like all the other versions, they are not only organized but also deal with ‘real’ people, in the course of their day-to-day negotiations. The core value of this type of service is determined by the voluntary commitment of the individual members of the organization. All of the participants – from the regular members to the ‘managing board’ – work on a voluntary basis. As a consequence, the distinction between the service professionals and the clients and even the managers is blurred. The core business of these organizations is, thus, to mobilize the voluntary commitment of its individual members and to also keep it going. They must mobilize the individual involvement of every single member and at the same time maintain a collective zeal. Accordingly, a sense of ownership is central to the client relationship that is assumed by these organizations. Whatever the organization’s purposes are, its participants are not only expected to be expressly committed to the organization’s values, but to also do their work ‘for free’. As far as the structuring effects related to this client relationship are concerned, these associations are essentially kept together by the voluntary commitment of their members. As a consequence, structurally, they tend to move between two extremes. On the one hand, there is the collective that often cannot avoid sectarian traits, and to which you either ‘belong’ or do not, and where you are seen as a ‘renegade’ whenever you leave the organization. At the other extreme, the organization could also evolve into a loosely connected ‘anarchy’, consisting of fairly headstrong individual participants who claim that their own individual commitment – or ‘ownership’ – should continuously be reinforced.

The public services under debate  17 In everyday practice, however, and depending on the actual activities they perform, these associations may very well end up as hierarchies (scouting, competitive sports) or even as commercial systems (farmers’ banks, Internet providers) or as organizations that depend on professional expertise (specialized patient organizations; environmental organizations, Greenpeace). But even within these modified forms they usually retain some of their ‘voluntary inclinations’. Apart from the general membership meetings that often still prevail, many of them may still be able to effectively command the individual sense of ownership that comes with a collective commitment. This is why these organizations usually present themselves as ‘one’ to the outside world. To sum up These are the six ideal typical services we will continue to turn to in the course of this book. And, of course, to some of the readers these six may be far too many, while others may consider them not enough, and advocate a number of additions to this list. Why, for instance, are the mass media not discussed as a separate action net, performing ‘communication’ as a core service, and with a specific client relationship between creative professionals, on the one hand, and an anonymous mass of clients, on the other? And why not pay some more attention to organizations such as prisons, whose client relationship obviously involves a straightforward kind of control instead of the somewhat ‘softer’ surveillance? It may also be the case that some services may actually present themselves as quite heterogeneous. Schools, for instance, may be identified as professional services, as a rule. But to others they may also contain some obvious ‘selection’ elements and, in some respects, may even turn out to be quite ‘mass oriented’. To describe the day-to-day functioning of a school in terms of care and surveillance is not that far-fetched. Most of the sensitizing concepts presented in Table 1.1 are actually quite relevant to any service we may encounter. The expectation presented here, however, is that, organizationally speaking, specific core services will produce some ‘typical’ effects.

This book: the services in and around the public domain This book presents a way of looking at the services in and around the public domain that is informed both by an interpretive and an institutionalist approach. Moreover, it is not so much informed by the current interest in the effects of New Service (or Public) Management as by an interest in what these services are actually doing on their work floors, and in how they legitimize their efforts to the outside world. Accordingly, this book will try to make sense of, first, the socio-cultural developments that inform the action nets that constitute these services, but, second, it will also focus on the actual performance of their client relationships, by both the service professionals and their clients. And finally, it will address some managerial issues as well.

18  The public services under debate I propose that we start from the outside. In Chapter 2, attention will be paid to the socio-cultural discourse that can be considered relevant to the various action nets – to use Barbara Czarniawska’s (1997: 67) felicitous phrase – that help constitute the everyday negotiations that are performed on these services’ work floors. A discourse can be defined as a semantic network held together by a more or less legitimate societal concern. It is usually (re)produced in what we call the general public debate. It can also be seen as a resource to the ‘action nets’ informing the day-to-day activities that are specifically associated with the various services that are discussed in this book. First, the discourse concerning rationalization will be discussed. Generally speaking, it has always been this discourse in particular that informs ‘organizing’ as an activity. It now informs the current interest in the new (public) management that has set out to reconstruct all of the services in and around the public domain. Second, the effects of the processes of bureaucratization and state formation will be discussed; they include the establishment of the rule of law, but it should also be pointed out how, in most services, ‘juridical form’ has become quite prominent. Many service relationships are now preceded by ‘contracts’ between the organization and its clients. Clients now often present themselves as subjects who are entitled to certain ‘rights’. Third, the past and present manifestations of professionalism cannot be ignored when services are discussed. Of course, there are the traditional action nets that inform the so-called professional services in and around the public domain, although it will be pointed out that, to many of us, their traditional superiority appears to be fading. For instance, it will be demonstrated that other kinds of professionalism have gained an unexpected precedence of late, including, among others, the ‘creative professionals’ who are associated with marketing and design (Florida 2002) and the so-called ‘process oriented’ managers and consultants (Buchanan and Boddy 1992; Barley and Kunda 2004). But a very different observation can be made as well. The term professional is very liberally used these days, and it often points to the relevance of a much more mundane kind of ‘selfcontrol’ that has become a part of almost all our day-to-day negotiations, including those of any service professional who deals with clients. Fourth, it is not too surprising that the many effects of the individualizing processes of both the past and the present will be discussed in relation to the services in and around the public domain. Currently, the expression of one’s individuality has become a fairly indispensable aspect of numerous service agendas. Moreover, and fifth, we also discuss how various services interfere in their clients’ domestic lives, and that such disparate themes as leisure and the entitlement to privacy may turn out to be essential to some of these services. In section six, we see that the same is true for the current debates surrounding the re-definition and re-distribution of care. To conclude this chapter, the impact of these various discourses on the permanent (re)production of the legitimacy of the services will be discussed. Chapter 3 is dedicated to a further elaboration of the various core services and associated client relationships that were presented in Table 1.1. It will discuss the various service legacies that relate to the discourses and action nets discussed

The public services under debate  19 in Chapter 2, but will elaborate on those action nets that specifically inform the various services. This chapter will deal with the actual core services and client relationships that are essential to them. It will discuss the various expectations that can be attributed to the service professionals and to their clients, but it will particularly address the specific risks and inconveniences that may be incurred by the various services’ clients. Chapter 4 focuses on the everyday arrangements concerning the actual processes of service delivery, of which the core services are only a part. It addresses the ‘(re)organization’ and ‘redesign’ of the primary processes of service delivery that are currently underway in so many of our services, as a part of the general ‘reconstruction processes’ that now take place. It focuses on what Wenger (1997) has so aptly called the geography of practices, that is, the actual distribution of the various activities in terms of time and space from the first encounter of the organization with its clients to the final stage of the transaction. The organizations themselves often present this as the routing of their clients. This chapter will also be pay attention to the division of labour between the various service professionals, not only including those who perform the face-to-face transactions with the clients. The various human and non-human actors – such as computers (Law 1994) – who perform behind the scenes are discussed as well. The service professionals and their contributions to the services will be the focus of Chapter 5. Each version of the services discussed here can be expected to perform its own kind of professionalism, and make use of the ever widening semantic network around professionalism and professional discourse. Each service may label its service workers in its own way, making use of terms such as employees, officials, personnel or professional experts, but the term ‘service professional’ is used here as a general label. The chapter focuses on the actual professional repertoires that are related to the various core services but also includes the various other activities that can be involved with performing a service. Moreover, the various repertoires not only include the classical kinds of professional expertise, but also so-called relational skills, not to mention the process skills that have become almost indispensable to most professionals in the ‘management’ of their organizational context. To conclude this chapter, the ‘traditional’ dichotomy, of professional autonomy vis-à-vis the organization’s attempts at domestication will be re-evaluated, in favour of some notions that are directly related to the new professional responsibilities that are currently involved, due to the now quite general acknowledgement of the clients’ and the organizations’ risks. Chapter 6 is dedicated to the clients. To be sure, the notion of ‘client’ is as awkward as that of ‘service professional’. Many observers relate the specific term of ‘client’ exclusively to health care and to counselling practices. But, despite this, the term will be used here as the general indication of those who participate in the processes of service delivery in various client roles. Moreover, the chapter commences with some notions that are particularly related to the ‘everyday lives’ and to the ‘social capital’ of clients. Accordingly, this chapter will discuss the actual processes in and around this informal sphere, in which the actual ‘client demands’ come into being. Third, it will also be argued that, after the initial negotiations

20  The public services under debate between the services and their clients have been concluded, the clients may in fact end up being ‘delivered’ to the process of service delivery that the organization has in mind. Chapter 7 focuses on the third perspective that is relevant to the day-to-day performance of the services. In fact, it will even be argued here that, given the current complexities of the services, there may be a need for some degree of ‘managerial control’. However, this chapter will also demonstrate that most managers – operational and otherwise – are often too easily inclined to rely on the many standards that are now applied to these processes. As a consequence, it may very well be true that most of the ‘new managers’ may actually find themselves in need of some ‘relational skills’, in order to deal with their day-to-day ‘negotiations’ and the ‘cultural effects’ associated with those who participate in their primary processes (Martin 1992, 2002). They may even find themselves in need of some process skills, as well. The latter are particularly relevant to the innumerable power effects in and around organizations (Buchanan and Boddy 1992). And, finally, chapter 8 will try to summarize how we can look at the services at this specific point in time.

2 Meanwhile, in society

‘How’s Luke?’ ‘I suppose he is growing daily in academic, artistic, musical, social, spiritual, physical and moral stature’, says Julia dreamily. I begin to laugh. ‘Is he now? That’s quite a lot of growth for a small boy.’ ‘I’m quoting from his school brochure.’ Vikram Seth, An Equal Music

The outside world is in The focus in this chapter is on the complexities involved with the interconnectedness between the various services and their socio-cultural surroundings. After all, there isn’t a single service provider who would not react to processes such as individualization, not to mention the many processes involving rationalization. Even the latter probably do not simply emerge from ‘inside’. The legitimacy of the various services – and this includes the ways they may become subject to public debate – is continuously being (re-)produced in and through this socio-cultural environment. The socio-cultural processes are presented here in terms of the societal discourse that is presented mostly in the public debate. The theoretical notion of discourse has become more well known through the work of Michel Foucault (cf. Anderson 2003: vi) A discourse or discursive formation can be defined as a network of meaningful expressions held together by a more or less legitimate societal concern. As noted in Chapter 1, it is expected to affect the legitimacy of the services discussed here. In this context, however, this notion of discourse is specifically related to the notion of the action net, which, according to Barbara Czarniawska (1997: 67), denotes the practical connotations that can be associated with a discourse. Whenever a specific discourse is ‘institutionalized’ as a part of an organizational regime, it can also be expected to inform the everyday practices in and around an organization. The discourse, itself, usually has a long history. It is also assumed that it is somehow familiar to all of the participants involved in the debate. Through the so-called action nets, it tends to ‘automatically’ give direction to the activities of the service’s management and to the everyday negotiations between the service

22  Meanwhile, in society professionals and the clients as well. One should realize, however, that a discourse cannot be expected to actually predict – or determine – such local interactions, if only because there may also be quite a few other discourses and associated action nets active and present in one and the same organizational field. Moreover, the meanings reproduced within a specific discursive formation are often less defined than one might expect, and they are not unambiguous either. Everyone who has ever participated in a debate concerning a specific discourse knows that the question ‘What do you mean?’ can lead to an incredible amount of confusion. One could even argue that such general discourse – for instance, the discourse regarding individualization – derives its social power from this ambiguity. It may encourage fairly profound differences of opinion, but it allows the various parties to tap into and utilize the same language, at the same time. To one speaker, the arguments for a greater sense of responsibility for individual clients may relate the clients’ entitlement to individual choice and self-determination, whereas to another speaker it may mean that there must ‘finally’ be some real demands placed upon these clients. The six discursive formations presented below have been selected because of their specific relevance to the services discussed in this book. And yet, the actual services should certainly not be seen as entirely determined by a ‘given’ discourse, however appropriate this, at first sight, may seem. On the one hand, they may often consider its ‘given’ options as legitimate, and in fact this may be confirmed by the ‘relevant others’ that contribute to the debate about a given organizational practice (Czarniawska 1997: 179). On the other hand, however, it should also be pointed out that a discourse and the associated action nets may also be negotiated quite differently in a variety of contexts. A given organization may actually ‘tap into’ a variety of discourses, at various moments in time (cf. also Fairclough 1992; Gastelaars and Vermeulen 2000).

Rationalization Rationalization is considered by many to be one of the fundamental aspects of Western society. The term is related to the systematic application of the principles of goal means rationality to numerous social activities. The discourse is quite often related to the far-reaching practical and societal implications of modern science and technology (Habermas 1971). It also relates to the most accepted interpretation of ‘organizing’ insofar as it is expressly related to the action nets involving the goal-oriented efforts of people. Rationalization lies at the core of the work of Max Weber, one of the architects of modern sociology (Weber 1972 [1922]). He introduced a distinction which also forms the basis of this presentation because it remains essential to this very day. The general discourse on rationalization is basically fed, on the one hand, by the contentoriented (Weber uses the terms ‘substantial’ or ‘material’) versions of rationalization. These can basically be interpreted as ‘think first, then act’. On the other hand, there are the technical (in Weber’s terms, the ‘formal’ or ‘instrumental’) versions of rationalization, that are basically exemplified by how we talk about ‘tools’.

Meanwhile, in society  23 Content-oriented rationalization: ‘think first, and then act’ Whenever the content-oriented versions of rationalization come up, the notion of material rationalization is usually at stake. This kind of rationalization is expressly related to the assumption that any given situation or practice can be analysed in a ‘rational’ manner, with the express aim of improving these practices on the basis of obtained insights. The ‘analysis’ performed beforehand is thus the most significant task in this kind of rationalization. Many of the research practices in the social sciences can be seen as examples of this type of rationalization, as they try to systematically make sense of a given situation with the express aim of improving it in a ‘rational’ way. Wherever this sort of rationalization is applied, it is often assumed, at least by its proponents, that a well-founded insight or solution will lead to the appropriate relevant practices in everyday situations, as a matter of course. As a consequence of this, this kind of rationalization produces it own power effects, in that it appears to consider it a natural state of affairs that eventually the ‘thinking’  – and the associated ‘thinking heads’ – will prevail, and will be ‘in control’ of the ensuing processes of ‘implementation’. Moreover, a well-considered proposal will simply convince everyone by itself, on the basis of its rational merits. As a consequence, there is usually very little room in this argument for ‘politics’ or for differing interests, although even Weber himself pointed out that such rationalization processes may also take their direction from quite differing ‘political’ positions and that, as a consequence, a variety of ‘rationalities’ can be involved (Weber 1972: 12). In fact, the latter viewpoint lies at the heart of how our formal meeting structures, including those of parliamentary democracy, are expected to perform. The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas even devised the theoretical and practical foundation of the ideal of a Herrschaftsfreie Dialog, that is, a dialogue between opposing parties that is informed by the material rationality related to the issue at stake rather than by power issues (Habermas 1981). His theoretical effort can be framed as an attempt to ‘rationalize’ the exchange of arguments in situations that are political, by definition. For the most part, however, those who adhere to material rationalization assume that a political discussion can actually be dispensed with, for the simple reason that ‘everyone’ is ‘automatically’ ready to be convinced by the rationality of certain proposals or arguments. To state the same issue in a different manner, one can often observe that ‘material rationalists’ have a strong dislike for politics. As a matter of fact, the ‘thinking heads’ may even end up disqualifying deviating ideas, as ‘the unfounded opposition’ of those who ‘merely refuse to listen’. The same is true for the application of such ‘rational solutions’ to the everyday practices on the work floor. The thinking heads are again inclined to expect that their rational solutions will find their way by themselves and are to be adopted by ‘everyone’, in a simple process of ‘accommodation’. And again, any resistance may be seen as essentially ‘irrationally informed’ (see also Habermas 1971: 48ff.). But, having said this, it should also be considered that this kind of rationalization has become quite well established in our society. It has produced an ever

24  Meanwhile, in society increasing number of manifestations over time, and they are usually considered as a ‘rational improvement’ of our society and of our everyday lives. In contemporary services we recognize this kind of material rationality in the current reconstruction efforts aimed at the innovation of their primary processes, and in the continuous development of standards and protocols (see also Chapter 7). Formal (or technical) rationalization: the production of reliable tools The technical (in Weber’s terms, the ‘formal’ or ‘instrumental’) forms of rationalization are of a different nature, and are exemplified by how readily we nowadays talk about ‘tools’. Here we are less concerned with the thinking process and more with its technical results. While material rationality may be concerned with well-thought-out choices (‘doing the right thing’), technical rationality is more concerned with the accuracy (‘doing things right’) of our standards and with the predictability of our actions. The main idea here is that uncertainties must be reduced to the absolute minimum by means of technical procedures that can always be relied upon to work. Here we move from the ‘controlling efforts’ of material rationalizations to an ‘effortless control’ by means of standards and tools. The industrialization process of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries strongly influenced the development of technical rationalization. Such technical rationalization was part of the mechanization effort; it produced ‘technological artefacts’ that could be applied by any producer in any given situation. In a similar manner, by the end of the nineteenth century, the American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor pointed out that it was not just machines and products but also human transactions that could be the subject of such rationalizations. The techniques that were produced this way seemed to invariably lead to an increased level of efficiency wherever and whenever they were applied. They appeared to be particularly applicable when large-scale production processes were involved, and where massive amounts of goods were being produced, and it was also assumed that the workers who did the job could be easily disciplined by definition (Huczynski 1993: 120–23). Even today, this type of technically oriented rationalization is still commonly associated with: (1) the expansion of the organization; (2) standardization applied to local activities on a mass basis; and (3) an effective centralization of power. Moreover, this kind of effort is usually associated with a continuous increase in productivity, as well. This actually means that terms denoting ‘efficiency’ are often readily associated with the specific commercial aims of profit, or with the continuous growth of the company’s market share. They are even associated with the increased earnings of the stockholders of large commercial enterprises. However, there are quite a few non-profit organizations that also use this form of rationalization, without developing these characteristics. The very association of technical rationality with commercialism may even confuse our current debates. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the same style of organizing began to emerge in all sorts of services, even though some of them had proved fairly resistant to any kind of rationalization. The forerunners were the large-scale

Meanwhile, in society  25 commercial services, with the fast food sector leading the way. This famous example fostered the now-common phrase ‘the McDonaldization of society’ (Ritzer 1993). Ritzer, in his now well-known analysis of this phenomenon, described the ‘four basic dimensions of rationalization’, by which he presented a version of his own, of this formal, technical rationality: ‘Efficiency, calculability, predictability, and greater control through the replacement of human by nonhuman technology’ (Ritzer 1993: 16). McDonald’s was not only concerned with standardizing the production and distribution of its hamburgers but also the manner in which they were to be served to individual customers. This last concern was especially novel at the time. Those who practise this kind of ‘technical rationality’ can even assume that, in this action net, there is no need for a systematic and ‘material’ rationalization, as long as the ‘tools’ appear to ‘work’. Of course, the scientific community continues to have a preference for technical procedures that are based on systematic research efforts. These research efforts are there to demonstrate that, under specified conditions, the same connection between a specified cause and a specified effect will always take place. If this connection has been adequately tested one can rightfully speak of a working standard, or an effective proven technique, or an evidence-based practice. And yet, there are plenty of so-called ‘tools’, today, that without much ado are presented as workable, although this assumption is often based on nothing more than the sellers’ assumption (and the buyers’ willingness to accept) that they will always work. Flexible streamlining: creating standardized options to satisfy individual choice Since the 1980s, commercial mass production of consumer goods has been confronted with a persistent stagnation in demand. Mass markets were saturated and investments were needed in new consumer markets, where the consumers proved to be particularly flexible in their consumption behaviour. The rapid local adaptations of production processes, which were made possible due to new information technologies, appeared to be the solution for all of the aforementioned problems (Du Gay et  al. 1997). The automobile industry led the way, but in the meantime, there is almost no production company anywhere that has not invested in a computer-based infrastructure that enables it to apply a large number of standard modalities to its products, and to make its production processes accordingly more flexible, so that a client is allowed to make his or her individual ‘choices’. And, not too surprisingly, this kind of flexible streamlining has also found its way into the service sector. First of all, this kind of flexible streamlining involves its own version of ‘material rationalization’ in that it requires plenty of planning and thinking beforehand. It involves development activities that not only include more colourful marketing and advertising efforts, but also the systematic redesign of not only the processes of service delivery but also of the varied standards that will be applied to these processes. Second, it encourages its own kind of technical instrumentality as well.

26  Meanwhile, in society Like any technical ‘instrument’, once they are introduced into a process of service delivery, the ‘flexible standards’ it produces are usually treated as ‘given’. And, accordingly, the service professionals are simply expected to follow the rules. Their clients, in their turn, may simply be expected to make their ‘individual choices’ from a standardized menu. In commercial sectors, this specific type of flexibility would in fact be meaningless without a dynamic market but, where the services in and around the public domain are concerned, this very same process is repeated. There are not many services left any more – in health care, in education or in social security – that have not already applied flexible streamlining of some sort, particularly because many of them have also undergone the appropriate expansions of scale (read mergers) in order to prepare their organizations. First, they are all inclined to reorganize their primary processes of service delivery in rational terms, and to introduce a computerized infrastructure in order to properly support these streamlining efforts. Second, they also introduce flexible standards such as ‘custom-made services’ or ‘services on demand’ and, third, they standardize their service professionals’ competences in a manner that is compatible with such individualizing efforts. And, finally, they all introduce formal accountability systems and other tools to improve managerial control. As we will see at some length in Chapter 4, most ‘reconstruction’ efforts precisely amount to that.

Bureaucratization, state formation and ‘juridical form’ Bureaucracies – by which we mean formal, orderly organizations that are more or less in the business of developing and implementing government policy – have existed since ancient Egypt and China (Kamenka 1989). In these large, ancient kingdoms, activities arose that could no longer be implemented easily, because they were on too large a scale. They also required too large an effort in terms of both the number of people and the amount of resources involved. Or they involved projects that had to be undertaken ‘at too long a distance’ from the centre of government. Classic examples include the large irrigation projects, the construction and maintenance of infrastructures for traffic and transport, the regulation of the storage of goods and of the transport over great distances of food and commodities. The registration of developments among the population was another case in point. A ‘formal state’ consisting of organizations that were populated with professional writers has traditionally offered a satisfactory solution to these kinds of problem. These writers regulated and categorized, they were the inventors of bookkeeping and the guardians of writing and they were hired into hierarchical organizations that not only sought to increase the reliability of their activities but also established the expression of the prevailing power. The state (the ruler) appears here as the central authority. Its authority is basically dependent upon a (temporary) monopoly on violence (Elias 1939) and it is upon this basis that it ‘organizes’ the people of a particular territory, as well as the organizations that are expected to serve its goals.

Meanwhile, in society  27 The modern bureaucracy However, in his thorough study of old bureaucracies, Kamenka (1989) notes that it has only been since Roman times that there has been any evidence of ‘modern’ bureaucratic practices. Weber’s well-known ideal-typical construction of the bureaucratic organization actually serves as his basic premise. Older bureaucracies, or so Kamenka contends, were also characterized by certain features of the modern bureaucracy such as the impersonal and impartial behaviour of its employees, which was determined by certain general rules and the same entry exams for everyone (Kamenka 1989: 52). But, in the context of the power structures of the time, the people were administered as a subservient mass and not as citizens. Their ‘rights’ depended on the benevolence of the ruler at the time. What has been very decisive in the development of the modern bureaucracy, according to Kamenka and to Weber, as well, is the introduction of ‘the rule of law’. It is only after all of the involved – the civil servants and their superiors but also the citizens themselves – not only agree to abide by the same set of rules but also allow themselves to be legally and publicly controlled, that the possibility to actually implement any kind of security under the law can be guaranteed by these organizations. Kamenka (1989: 55) calls this ‘the elevation of law and above all of constitutional rules that govern and limit the exercise of political and administrative power’. To Kamenka, the rule of law, particularly the constitution, forms a very specific action net that informs bureaucratic organizations, precisely because it establishes their boundaries as well. To have a constitutional state implies, for instance, that citizens are ensured a certain measure of protection from the power of the state. And, although the state’s monopoly on the use of force (or violence) remains, it can now only be employed under circumstances that are guided by the rule of law, and can only be justified accordingly. This is why it is so often said that the street-level bureaucracies (or selection bureaucracies) that are specifically responsible for the application of social security or for the actual distribution of various provisions among the citizenry are, unlike many other services, characterized by a particular sense of responsibility. In the associated action net, the latter is often presented as ‘bureaucratic’ integrity or independence or even ‘indifference’ (Herzfeld 1992) that can specifically be related to the rule of law. (cf. also Wilson 1989) Bureaucratic culture It is interesting to see how Weber defined the role of the service professionals that perform in this type of organization. In fact, he discussed the governmental departments that produce laws, but these principles can also be applied to the so-called street-level bureaucrats we discuss in this book. These service professionals are expected, before anything else, to identify themselves with the bureaucratic order and not just work as little cogs in the machine. The formal allocation of competences and responsibilities among individual civil servants serves as the organizing principle here. It allows civil servants to

28  Meanwhile, in society disentangle themselves from any kind of personal dominance or commitment, or – in more modern terms – from external influences that may threaten their integrity. This also guarantees a certain disinterestedness – or personal indifference – in the implementation of their daily activities. Civil servants in the modern democratic state are required to engage in their functions with an ‘impersonal’ or ‘personally indifferent’ attitude. They are not expected to perform ‘exceptions to the rule’. The latter in particular was why Weber adhered to principles that were quite innovative in the eyes of his contemporaries but have not lost any of their power since. (Weber 1947: 328–40, trans.) He insisted, for instance, that these service professionals needed to be formally appointed and not chosen or personally selected by anyone in power. He also considered it important that they earned a fixed salary and that they were not dependent on other sources of income. Above all, however, they needed to be offered a ‘life-long’ career in the organization because, if they were not, they might end up losing their independence. The crux of all of this was that, according to Weber, some requirements needed to be fulfilled, to ensure that civil servants would actually go about their activities with ‘integrity’ and without any personal commitment to any specific people or groups. A similar ‘organized attitude’ is usually referred to as ‘organization culture’ at this point in time. And, even if these principles are now quite often accused of encouraging bureaucratic rigidity, government bureaucrats are still expected to distinguish themselves by employing these principles of bureaucratic ‘indifference’ or ‘independence’(cf. Herzfeld 1992; Du Gay 2000). Even if today we see an observable increase in the number of project organizations (Noordegraaf 2004) in which these service professionals are to work consistently with different projects all the time, they are certainly not expected to give up this specific bureaucratic commitment. In fact, the ever growing public interest in their work, which has been impressively highlighted by several recent Dutch parliamentary surveys, may even force these civil servants to publicly prove their bureaucratic integrity more often than in the past. Classification efforts under the rule of law The modern state is also a welfare state and that means that there are more services available than ever before to individual citizens. Among them are the professional services that provide health care and education. But in the context of the bureaucratic action net we are presently discussing, it is even more relevant to focus on those street-level bureaucracies that actually work within a legal framework. And, as we have seen in Chapter 1, the daily work of these ‘real’ selection bureaucracies mostly involves the application to individual cases of the general guidelines provided by legislation. Because these street-level bureaucrats usually work with individual clients, it is that very principle of formal equality before the law that encounters a lot of pressure during the everyday negotiations they perform. Within the framework of social security, we have made it a habit to maintain differences between individual people, in order to produce equality in collective terms. We want to improve the social opportunities of individuals who are

Meanwhile, in society  29 considered ‘structurally disadvantaged’. Initially, this kind of reasoning was only applied to the undesired effects of the differences between the rich and the poor. On the basis of this principle, any individual claimant could be provided with social security, provided he or she was able to demonstrate convincingly that his or her level of poverty amounted to that of the ‘official demarcation’ of being ‘in need of financial support’. In the meantime, however, this same principle has also been applied to the differences between men and women, and between people of various ethnic backgrounds. In the end, the social security laws even constructed categories that identified an accumulation of quite a number of these social disadvantages, such as ‘single migrant women with children’. Representatives of these artificial categories can file individual claims for services and financial support. In all of these cases, the central issue with which the street-level bureaucrats are expected to be concerned is whether individual applicants actually fit into any of the categories that are produced by the classification systems that are to be applied. Even if the lawmaker provides very detailed descriptions of the categories that are involved, this cannot guarantee that these will actually seamlessly fit the ‘real’ individuals who the street-level bureaucrats are confronted with in their everyday negotiations (see Lipsky 1980; cf. also Prottas 1979). Consequently, this work always relies to some extent on the ‘discretion’ of the service professionals, who must, however, keep in mind that their decisions must remain within the letter – or intent – of the law. If they do not, they will be overturned by a higher office, or – ultimately – by a court. The current relevance of juridical form All of these developments have encouraged individual citizens to view themselves as citizens with certain inalienable rights. It is particularly this development that has also encouraged a much broader cultural change, which we usually indicate in terms of the impact of ‘juridical form’ – or of ‘juridization’ – on our everyday negotiations. By now, all of us seem to put quite a few of our negotiations in juridical terms. First of all, it seems that more people than ever before are inclined to take legal action whenever they feel slighted by a person or by a service provider who has failed to provide a service. Second, it is also no longer uncommon to characterize even our private relationships in terms of contractual agreements. A lot of negotiations take the form of a contract. Third, we all tend to ‘negotiate’ a lot – including even such apparently un-juridical acts as the rewards and punishments we apply to our children. And, finally, we all apply the notion of ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ to our everyday negotiations. No wonder that all of these developments nowadays also apply to the service providers we encounter in the course of our lives.

Professionalism and professional privilege Professionalism, like bureaucratization, is a process with historical roots in a distant past. This is especially the case when we focus on the privileges associated

30  Meanwhile, in society with traditional professionalism. Whether we agree with this or not, it is these associations that determine the scope of most of the actions related to professionalism to this day. Generally speaking, this type of professionalism is still associated with status and power. The associated action net, for instance, encourages various service workers to not look favourably upon this type of professionalism when they observe it among others. But, of course, this does not rule out the fact that there will always be service workers available who will end up emulating the privileges associated with the traditional type of professionalism they aspire for themselves. The historical legacy of professional privilege Until very recently, the terms ‘professionalism’ and ‘social standing’ were considered synonymous. Highly regarded social duties. First of all, this is caused by the fact that every society has always had people who specialized in certain important activities. Thus every society, according to the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, has had to provide solutions of some sort, to a number of seemingly insurmountable problems. As examples, he points to the fear of illness and death, the experience of injustice and the need for justice at the same time, and to the fact that there will always be things we will not be able to comprehend (Geertz 1973: 100). To this list we can now also add the certainty that mankind will never totally be in command of preserving nature, as well as the fear of violence and the desire for security this fear appears to provoke. For those professionals who are dedicated to the ‘management’ of such problems, the core of their professionalism remains the same: they are endowed with an exclusive relationship to highly regarded social values and, accordingly, they are endowed with a certain status and power as well. Unselfishness. The sociologist Émile Durkheim (1992: 12–13) emphasized a second consideration that is often also related to this kind of professional status. He argued that professionals can be expected, by definition, to distinguish themselves through a specific kind of unselfishness in the exercise of their duties. It may very well be true that this unselfishness was due, more than he knew, to the circumstances under which many of the established professionals functioned in the past. According to Magali Sarfatti Larson, for instance, the eighteenth-century English professions of law and medicine were considered ‘activities fit for gentlemen’ at the time. In other words, they were people who did not need to live off their jobs and who could easily maintain their ‘make health, or safety, or knowledge, or good government, or good law but no money’ credo (Larson 1977: 58). To this day, this tradition of unselfishness, even to the point of appearing not to do the job for the money, has remained part and parcel of the traditional professional discourse. In this respect, these traditional professionals can be likened to the traditional bureaucrats we have already discussed. Deserving individuals. The meritocratic tradition of the USS in the early twentieth century (Bledstein 1976: 87–90) added a third characteristic to this list. According to this tradition, professionals were above all considered deserving

Meanwhile, in society  31 individuals. They specifically profiled themselves as having personalized skills and an exclusive professional expertise. And even today, most professionals – in the Western world but also elsewhere – derive most of their sense of authority from these ‘exclusive’ professional skills, although, as a rule, a university background is now also considered important. The latter does not deny, however, the specific relevance to professionals, to this day, of a personalized set of knowledge and skills, or a personalized (and sometimes even ‘embodied’) expertise (Abbott 1988). Even if they work in teams, they prefer to present themselves as individuals. The fact that professionals often relate to a specific ‘attitude’ or ‘responsibility’  – or to a specific need for ‘autonomy’ or ‘independence’  – is often also socially recognized as an indispensable part of their individual make up. Institutionalizing professional autonomy According to a number of authors, however, the ‘classic’ professions – the wellknown list included the medical field, the legal profession, notaries, accountancy, officers in the armed services, engineers – managed to consolidate their privileged positions within society in the course of the nineteenth century with a number of institutionalized means (Freidson 2001). To the professionals, themselves, the particular process by which they established themselves represented their right to be recognized as ‘real and proper’ professionals, by definition, but others prefer to see it as the purposeful consolidation of a social status (Freidson 1970, 1986). The sociologist Harold Wilensky (1964) in a famous article described this formal professionalizing process in terms of a series of ‘traits’ that, for the purpose of the present argument, will be summarized into three important elements that are often recognized, to this very day, as relevant to the establishment of professional recognition per se (see also Abbott 1988: 10ff.; Freidson 2001). Demarcation of the field. The first element concerns the demarcation of the profession’s content, by means of the establishment of a professional association and a formal education process that ensures entry into the professional group. In this manner, the profession’s expertise is consolidated, and so is the development of professional innovations. This basically means that a profession can insulate its ‘own’ repertoire from that of other professions, and that the same is true for the further development of this repertoire. By now, the profession’s scientific knowledge base receives a pre-eminent place in this context. Most of all, however, this demarcation allows the ‘real’ practitioners of the profession to be insulated from the ‘moonlighters’ and ‘charlatans’, which can then lead to a proper demarcation of specific content-based work areas, at the expense of other claimants. It is strongly directed toward exclusion. At the same time, however, this aspect maintains a certain dynamic within the so-called professional system, as well. This term – the professional system – was coined by the sociologist Andrew Abbott, and it points to the endless internal discussions among different professional groups about the mutual division of their specific professional jurisdictions, that is, the temporary settlements as to who can ‘occupy’ a specific area at a given point in time, at the expense of all other professional groups (Abbott 1988: 2).

32  Meanwhile, in society Professional discipline. The second element is just as important as the first. It concerns the disciplining of the profession’s practitioners among one another. A professional code of conduct and one’s own disciplinary rules are instituted to regulate the relations among the profession’s practitioners, themselves, but also their relationship to the outside world. Professionals can decide among themselves whether someone within their own circle meets the profession’s requirements, and they must also be willing to take action in cases involving colleagues accused of professional mistakes, or of breaking the rules of conduct that apply to a specific profession. As a rule, the professional association plays an important role in these matters. This kind of collegial support – and intra-collegial justification and control – is mirrored by the type of organization that is preferred by most professionals to this day. This is the partnership, a form of self-management by equals, which is usually chaired by a primus inter pares (first among equals) from within the profession. Such a partnership only acknowledges hierarchical differences between seniors and juniors within its own circle. Accreditation. The third and final element amounts to the classic pinnacle of this professionalizing process: acknowledgement by the government of the discipline, the professional association and its own internal disciplining efforts, and preferably all three at the same time. Here we are confronted with the rule of law again, and to this day it is invoked by professional groups of various kinds, as a legal protection of their professional status. Even though it may seem to some that the need for such an acknowledgement today may be a little exaggerated, many professions still try to establish their social legitimacy along similar lines. These three elements essentially confirm that most professionals are mainly interested in controlling their own situations. The fact that many organization theorists consider organizations where these professionals dominate – Mintzberg (1983) called them professional bureaucracies – as uncontrollable for managers, may in fact relate to the professionals’ inclination to only mind their own business. As a consequence, professionals may even display a distinct lack of interest in power issues ‘for their own sake’. Moreover, the professional hierarchy, itself, is not to be disturbed by the formal power structure of an organization. Again, the perpetual internal struggle for professional jurisdiction we mentioned earlier, will eventually lead to the development of an essentially loosely coupled system (Weick 2001: 32v) that may even turn out to be quite ‘uncontrollable’ for the professionals themselves. Professionals and power However, many authors, among them the social scientist Steven Brint (1994), have also observed that some changes are taking place, especially in the manner in which the professionals themselves, relate to power issues in and around their organizations. Brint himself describes two developments in this regard. The first prevails in the commercial sector, the second in the professional services sector in and around the public domain. The latter, in particular, affects most traditional professionals. In the Netherlands and elsewhere, they continue to rely heavily on the public sector. But even

Meanwhile, in society  33 then, their position in relation to the formal power relations in the organizations where they work is changing. The top professionals, according to Brint, are today more inclined to nestle themselves in the ‘centres of institutional and organizational power’ (Brint 1994: 206). In these instances, the ‘ordinary’ colleagues end up being more constricted in their daily situations than ever, and particularly by the flexible streamlining that currently affects their work as well (see Freidson 2001). The professionals who end up at the top of the ladder may consider their move into management as an exit strategy from this particular kind of organizational incorporation; however, they may experience this move as a loss of ‘professional status’, at the same time. Brint even goes so far as to predict that the term ‘professional’ will only be reserved for those professional practitioners who still abide by the traditional aspirations we have described above. It is not impossible to envision a time when the term ‘professional’ might come to be reserved as an honorific to describe those people whose role orientations emulate the older ideal forms of professionalism: a close connection to the cultural aspirations and public issues involved in occupational activities, in addition to high levels of competence in the performance of an intellectually demanding activity. (Brint 1994: 206) To Brint, this development may even confirm our earlier suggestion that those professionals who have made an upward move may actually have lost some of their traditional ‘unselfishness’ in financial terms. In fact, however, many professionals may feel compelled to ‘join the powerful rather than fight them’, if only because their traditional control over their own situation is no longer self-evident at all. In the other instance, Brint discusses professionals who create commercial enterprises of their own. In the USA, a number of traditional professionals have recently discovered how they could actually use their established positions as a starting point toward accomplishing this. Medical specialists, lawyers and accountants, often with their traditional partnership structures intact, have seen countless possibilities ‘to channel their interests in relation to market opportunities’ (Brint 1994: 205–6). And, although in the Netherlands commercial augmentation among the established professionals has yet to be accepted, there are some efforts in the health care sector that point in this direction. Moreover, the so-called new professions – consultants and the advertising industry in particular – do, in fact, create this type of commercial organization. Moreover, the hierarchical relations among the professionals, themselves, have remained intact here. Young professionals, for the most part, continue to enter their field at the bottom of the professional ladder, to perhaps one day become a partner. However, today they may have to deal with increasingly more difficult requirements on their way to the top. These requirements include such established rules as ‘up or out in five years’ in a case where the professional’s success is expressly

34  Meanwhile, in society related to financial targets (Maister 1993). In other cases – creative settings, for instance, and in the scientific world (Van Wijk 2006; Abbott 2001) – individual success may still be related to awards and other forms of intra-professional recognition, but even then the actual production norms may still be related to the enterprises’ commercial success. Acting professionally as a general norm In the mean time, many authors have established – tacitly or more explicitly – that the web of meanings associated with professionalism appears to have widened considerably and that the action nets related to it have changed as well. For instance, in the everyday usage that is current nowadays, the term professional is very liberally used. In many services, it now denotes the relational aspects of the face-to-face ‘people work’ that is considered quite indispensable, by now, to the day-to-day delivery of services. It also denotes the process management that is required to handle the many power effects that can be observed in and around the public domain. As a matter of fact, ‘acting professionally’ today indicates a performance of individual self-control in all kinds of relationships, and even the ‘personal discipline’ of someone who always manages to keep his or her cool. This development does not necessarily imply that the ‘privileged character’ of some of the highly valued kinds of professionalism is somehow diminished, but it does mean that some other aspects of the ‘professional repertoire’ are being re-considered. This concept of ‘self-control’ – or even of appearing to ‘be in control’ – may, first of all, have established a somewhat privileged position for a new kind of expertise that until recently had not been recognized as such, which affects the status of some ‘new’ professionals such as consultants and even managers, in particular (Buchanan and Boddy 1992; Barley and Kunda 2004; see also Chapter 5). But, second and maybe even more importantly, it may also imply that some degree of individual (self-)control is now expected from all of the service professionals present. Accordingly, many contemporary service professionals are expected to be able to manage any situation they may be confronted with. In the Netherlands, professional soccer players are now called professionals because they are generously remunerated. They are also called professional because they are good at playing football and score with some regularity for their teams. The same term, however, can also be used against them when they lose a game and they publicly begin to berate their own team-mates. Or even worse: when they take out their anger on the press. That is what we call unprofessional! Moreover, and as a part of a managerially inspired ‘attitudinal change’ (see also Chapter 5), to be called professional may also mean, nowadays, that all professionals are expected to somehow ‘manage’ the most complicated of working

Meanwhile, in society  35 conditions without losing their cool. This may, first, require one to always be flexible and follow the permanent changes affecting one’s organization, and, second, to also keep an increasing workload under control, while one is, third, dealing with ‘empowered’ clients on a day-to-day basis. This ‘triple command’ may, in fact, affect all professionals present. In their turn, they may even consider this more difficult to cope with than anything else (Hochschild 1983; Korczynski 2002).

Individualizing effects Individualization is considered by many to be the major theme of our time. That may be true, but at the same time, there has been an ongoing debate on the subject that, again, goes back to the eighteenth century or the beginning of modernization. This debate initially focused on the protection of the individual from the state and from other ‘invasive’ institutions. Later on, the debate was about the empowerment of the individual as a fully fledged participant in society. It ranged from the enactment of citizen’s rights and individual self-determination, to collective emancipation. And, currently, there is also a lot of talk about our individual ‘experiences’ and about the expression of our individual ‘identities’ and our purely subjective ‘identifications’. Those who speak of individualization are often referring to one or more, or even all of these aspects of individualization at the same time. The protection of the individual The concept of individualization began with the protection of the individual – as a citizen, as a private person – against the forces of the state and other invasive institutions (Gastelaars 2002b, 2003b). This is one of the basic assumptions that are relevant to, for example, the establishment of formal rights. As such, it also relates to the origins of modern bureaucracy, as it is related to the rule of law. Citizens’ rights establish the right to political participation. Human rights in particular stress ‘the integrity of the person’. As to the latter, one is not allowed to be discriminated against on the basis of sex, skin colour or ethnicity, philosophy of life or religion and this also includes something called the right to privacy and the integrity of the body. As to the citizen’s rights, they may even pose a danger to an organization’s existing power structure. Thus, we can see how labour rights protect employees from a variety of employer’s injustices, but, meanwhile, their labour contract stipulates a hierarchical relationship. Accordingly, they are expected to perform the assigned tasks and to comply with the rules of the organization. Whistleblowers continue to have a difficult time. And as we have noted earlier, there are also the social rights that are guaranteed by the so-called welfare state – in the Netherlands they apply to social security, housing, employment, a good and easily accessible health care system – and offer a (minimum) subsistence for every single individual. However, these social rights are not so much motivated by the protection of the individual, as by the attempts of the state to repair, in individual cases, the undesirable ‘collective’ disadvantages associated with one’s membership in specific categories or groups.

36  Meanwhile, in society In organizations, concepts such as ‘positive action’ also relate to these rights (Gastelaars 2002a). The infringement of any of these rights may be taken up in a court of law by the individuals involved. But, specifically where the protection of the individual is concerned, it may turn out to be essential to the enactment of these rights, that their formal acknowledgement specifically serves the function of letting society know where the critical boundaries lie, when it comes to the treatment of people. In everyday life, most people may still seek informal solutions before they take their cases to court, because ‘complaining’ will always affect their relations with these ‘relevant others’. And yet, the simple assumption that any action taken on this point is now formally justified, may also encourage informal attempts to put things right (Minson 1993). The empowerment of the individual In the 1960s, we saw the rise of a certain level of collective involvement and participation to help emancipate those groups of people who had been discriminated against, till then. The democratization movement during the 1960s was concerned with the political participation of everyone (‘One woman, one vote!’) in and around organizations, or at least with the proportional representation of such groups in the decision-making processes these organizations have. This principle would apply to women and to (ethnic) minorities, even if individual ‘representatives’ did not want to be associated with these ‘groups’ (Gastelaars 2002a). In fact, this often meant that traditional citizens’ rights – freedom of expression, freedom to organize, right to vote  – were also enacted in countless organizations. And, again, this proved particularly relevant for those groups which had until then played a subordinate role. Thus the participation of – or participation on behalf of – clients in commercial enterprises (consumers) and in the various services offered by the welfare state (students and patients/clients) was also improved when this action net became more relevant to the respective organizations (Gabriel and Lang 1995). In most organizations, the rights of these groups are now formally recognized. In the mean time, however, this kind of participation is increasingly defined on an individual level, as well. Most services are now concerned with the selfdetermination of their clients, and if they are not, they can even be forced to do so by law. And, similarly, they are also concerned with their individual empowerment with respect to important decisions. Ideally, individual clients are no longer considered ‘passive objects’ of ‘a treatment’ and have a guaranteed right to speak up. As a matter of fact, these versions of individualized rights reinforce the current prevalence of juridical form. Individual (self-)realization We should not ignore the influence of the ‘me-generation’ when it comes to the discourse concerning individualization (Lasch 1979). Individualization can certainly

Meanwhile, in society  37 also be seen as an outstanding personal project, whereby people learn to see their lives as a process of self-realization. The Dutch philosopher Eveline Tonkens (1999) described the self-realization trend of the 1960s and argued that, at the time, it sorted its greatest effects into the areas of education and social work. She described it as ‘the idea that all people – by which we mean all people – should discover and develop their own potential and talents’ (Tonkens 1999: 22, trans.). According to her, this was not the first time that these kinds of goal had been aspired to, but it was in the 1960s that it developed its current characteristic of a self-chosen ideal. The notion of a ‘guided self-realization’ which had been quite popular until then, and which had also assumed a role for professionals, was abandoned for an ideal of ‘spontaneous self-realization’ (Tonkens 1999: 69). Thus ‘everyone’ was encouraged to make their own decisions informing their particular courses of life. Even the currently popular ‘human resource management’ (HRM) shows, however, that this does not necessarily mean that the principle of ‘guided selfrealization’ has been abandoned. Thus, the pleasant opening question Maister (1993) once proposed for individual coaching consultations – ‘What would you like to be famous for in this organization?’ – is not really directed at one’s most personal aspirations. Someone who responds with ‘my beautiful, long, red polished nails’ fails to understand that his or her self-realization had better tune in with the organization’s aims. Expressions of individuality Culture researchers have noted that the great variety of preferences and lifestyles presently brings a colourful accent to everyday life. To them, it even expresses the essence of a consumer culture (Gabriel and Lang 1995; Du Gay et al. 1997; Hebdige 1992). A second proposition in this context is that people by definition no longer follow the patterns laid down by their parents or by the community they belong to. This is probably because people are more interested in deciding for themselves where they belong and where they don’t in any given situation. The latter, in particular, reveals how the traditional differences between people may now be handled quite differently, and not only by the people who are directly involved, but also by their relevant others. This means that ‘everyone’ is, in fact, free to choose their own lifestyle or even social class. Of course, one cannot totally ignore the individual effects of apparently ‘collective’ categorizations such as sex, age, size, skin colour, visible handicap or ethnicity, but more and more people believe they can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and can do something constructive with these distinguishing characteristics. And yet, such essentially individual characteristics are often still socially ‘reinforced’. So, more and more commercial services are ‘culturing’ their services, in that they present a variety of optional identifications to their clients, such as Yuppies (‘young urban professionals’) and Dinkies (‘double income, no kids’). They are involved in ethno-marketing as well. Even welfare agencies can be seen as ‘culturing’ (Du Gay et al. 1997) institutions, in that they also appear to tap into the ‘symbolic meanings’ their clients attach to the services they provide.

38  Meanwhile, in society Engbersen, for instance, made use of categorizations provided by Robert Merton and Mary Douglas, to describe people living on welfare in a similar manner. He introduced conformists (those who do everything by the book for their welfare cheques and, eventually, employment, while remaining hopeful for better times); ritualists (they do everything asked of them, but have long ago given up hope on the future); retreatists (they see no prospects, but aren’t really concerned about it); entrepreneurs (who attempt to find work in every way possible); and finally, calculating people (cultural rebels who have no desire to find a regular job) living on welfare. He encouraged social services agencies to translate these categories into policies. (Engbersen 1990: 26ff.; see also Engbersen et al. 2006) The above example demonstrates that such categories are usually derived from aggregated individual choices that have actually been made in the past. Experience as a value The ‘experience economy’ is a term used primarily in various commercial sectors. In the areas of leisure and shopping, much attention has been paid to the subject of ‘the actual movement of the client through the organization’, with special attention being paid to the client’s perceptions. We have seen similar developments in the non-profit sector. Certain places are presented as ‘just like home’ (a hospital for children), while others are profiled as ‘totally different from what you have been used to’ (youth institutions). In all of these cases, the view is that the perceptions and experiences of the clients are relevant to the process of service delivery. Accordingly, a term like ‘client friendliness’ – contrary to terms like client- or market-orientation – is explicitly meant to improve the contact strategies used by service professionals in relation to their clients. And yet, these perceptions of the clients tend to remain elusive because they are ‘purely subjective’ and subject to change.

Domestic life and ‘normality’ The origins of all sorts of organizations, but primarily the development of the modern state, has historically led to the recognition of the private sphere as a separate social domain that can be separated from both the public sphere and from ‘formal organizations’. An influential example of this view can be found in the work of the American sociologist Talcott Parsons (1949). His argument emphatically rules out certain types of behaviour from public life, such as the voicing of ‘affective commitment’ (as opposed to the preferred ‘affective neutrality’) and ‘particularism’ (as opposed to the preferred ‘universalism’), in one’s everyday negotiations. He used the opposite labels to characterize private relationships, labelling them ‘diffuse’ (i.e., not ‘functionally specified’). To this day, being businesslike – or ‘professional’ in the sense of ‘keeping cool’ – implies this kind of cultural code.

Meanwhile, in society  39 At first sight, this appears to have only led to further isolation for the private sphere. The private sphere was once even considered a synonym for the ‘realm of freedom’, by which we mean that domain where everything that is not allowed in the public sphere is allowed. The current relevance of this specific theme will be discussed at length in the following section. But another association we make with the private sphere is also addressed: today’s service providers can no longer deny that their activities are often directly or indirectly involved with the domestic life of their clients, not to mention that of their personnel. And again, there are various meanings attached to this discourse and to the related action nets. The domestic sphere as a ‘haven in a heartless world’ At home you can ‘be your own self’ even if it seems as if TV culture has thrust much of the home into the public domain. In the Big Brother television programme and other ‘reality shows’, we assume that the people who allow their everyday activities to be on view have consciously chosen to do so. The rule remains that you can only be truly yourself in your own home without incurring any adverse consequences for yourself or your social position. Moreover, the norm remains that one can only let oneself totally go in one’s own home – domestic violence aside. You can naturally also do this on TV, but then you have to take into account the consequences of your actions. ‘Home’ means more than simply that. In our longings for a secure environment it also provides a place where one can always escape to and where one belongs, somewhere where one can share ‘everything’ and where one and one’s feelings are always taken into account. Moreover, what really matters at home, according to Walzer, following Fortes, is, ‘the rule of prescriptive altruism’ (Walzer 1983: 229), which states that you must always be there for the other, but that, in exchange, you can always be ensured of unconditional support. Even in marriages and families affected by the emancipation of women and by the contemporary individualizing style of ‘negotiations’, this remains an important and even ‘romantic’ ideal. It should be pointed out, however, that there are no organizations that can assume these sorts of relationships. This is even true for those organized activities which at first sight seem to explicitly relate to this specific action net, such as social work or even prostitution. The intimacy they appear to perform is not reciprocal, by definition. The professional self-control that was discussed earlier is actually quite relevant here as a prerequisite for an adequate performance of this kind of service work. Domestic life providing day-to-day care In the past, the private domain has always served as the place where most of the daily upkeep took place as well as the supervision and care of dependants. This last aspect not only involved the specific tasks reserved for women such as the bearing and caring for children but all sorts of other daily responsibilities as well, such as the actual feeding, attending to and supervising of the children and of

40  Meanwhile, in society adults in need of care. The latter could be handicapped, sick or old, and for that reason dependent upon this type of domestic care. In fact, it was society’s recognition of these tasks in the not-so-distant past that led to the establishment of the various arrangements providing care and surveillance discussed in Chapter 1. As we saw there, in the past, these arrangements concerned mostly intramural services with the accent often placed on the daily supervision and regulation of the activities of everyone present. This meant that the domestic details were taken care of by the organization and also that the private lives of those involved were largely done away with, as they were incorporated into an ‘organized’ life. But, as we also noted in Chapter 1, more and more of this kind of work is being done by the personal networks providing care that are currently organized around individual clients. The action net that is evoked here is even more related to the traditions of domestic care. The remarkable paradox is that the ‘profits for women’ gained by the women’s emancipation movement in the 1970s, seem to fade away as a consequence of this movement. In the Netherlands, for instance, it is expected that people at home or in the immediate vicinity of these networks’ clients contribute their share of everyday care (Emous 2005). But the reverse is also happening. In fact, some degree of professionalism has now entered our home situations as well (Hochschild 1997), for instance in the way care is now often realized in our everyday environment. For instance, it has become too difficult for adults who care for other family members at home to uncompromisingly follow the prescriptive altruism that in the past was by definition assumed in our private lives. Thus you are ‘allowed’ to say ‘no’ if you have other priorities and you are ‘allowed’ to establish boundaries regarding what has to be done at home. You are ‘allowed’ to let your parents be admitted into a care facility and you are even ‘allowed’ to have the normal expectations that, just like other kids, your handicapped child will leave home when he or she turns 18. You are also ‘allowed’ to resist getting overly involved. The old saying that you can only take care of others if and when you are able to take care of yourself, now may even hold true for our private situations. This may be one of the reasons why attention keeps shifting away from ‘caring for’ to ‘ensuring that’. The last notion can also be translated into ‘to take care of the caretaking’, a phrase that implies that one makes sure that the babysitter shows up, the doctor is visited, clothing is purchased on time and so on. In the Netherlands, this notion had its origins in the debates regarding divorce law, in connection with the definition of the parental responsibility for the children (Loenen 1996; Van Vliet 1996). In fact, people are becoming more ‘businesslike’, wherever and whenever this day-to-day care needs to be performed. The everyday differences between normality and otherness Apart from all the recent debates about the re-definition of domestic care, another, quite different debate is also taking place. As was argued in Chapter 1, it has become common practice to relate considerations such as ‘one’s own capacities’,

Meanwhile, in society  41 and one’s ‘independence’ and ‘self-determination’ to the ‘individual lifestyle’ of the person dependent on care. But, in fact, these notions also relate to the societal evaluation of the difference between ‘normality’ and ‘deviance’ (or ‘otherness’, as it is now often called) at the level of the everyday lives of (potential) clients. The abolition of intramural institutions was, for instance, based on the assumption that the ‘otherness’ of dependent people would only be further emphasized by such institutions, as their activities were ‘spatially separated’ from ‘ordinary life’. As a consequence, the opposite goal was developed. The new aim involves the maximum integration of people who are ‘different’ into a normal existence. This is called ‘inclusion’ in the world of organized care. With this strategy, however, the actual degree of an individual’s ‘difference’ or ‘otherness’ becomes a matter of concern. For instance, it has become inevitable that this inclusion makes a distinction between people who have always lived with limitations and people who once lived independent lives without restrictions and who now want to maintain as much of that independence as they can. An example of this last situation would be older people who continue to voice their desire to live on their own, or people with a chronic disorder, however much this condition might alter their daily lives. Thanks to medication and a bit of support, many psychiatric patients can now also manage to live on their own, while maintaining their own lifestyles. This very same argument, however, may turn out to be quite different involving people with congenital handicaps. They may even end up having to have their ‘own lifestyles’ invented for them by those who supervise their ‘independent negotiations’. We will return to this in Chapter 3. Domestic life and everyday maintenance Many still consider the private domain as an outstanding example of a place where housework is performed. We are talking here about such well-known infrastructural activities as cooking meals, repairing clothing and maintaining the home, which have always been part and parcel of everyday life in a regular household. All of these things were mixed and jumbled together with basic care in the traditional care arrangements, both at home and in intramural settings, even though we may only actually notice this until the care-dependent people who used to live in a dependent situation, move outside and start living the independent lives they were promised. In some cases, these everyday household activities offered clients an important new interpretation of their lives, as they turned out to be more ‘self-reliant’, at least in this respect, than anyone – the service professionals in particular – thought. But again, there may also be clients who have forgotten these elementary skills or may have never even acquired them in the past (Gastelaars 2003a, 2003c). It is in this context that today it also becomes evident how many of us are actually assisted in these daily activities by all sorts of specialized service providers. One thinks of domestic services, catering, dry cleaners and Laundromats, the hotel and catering sector, the bakery and other stores providing food, the beauty

42  Meanwhile, in society specialist, the barber, public utilities and public transportation, not to mention all of the other facilities both public and private that follow us through our daily lives. These facilities are only accessible, of course, to those people who are still mobile enough to visit them, and who are able to make sense of them on a dayto-day basis. Or, just as importantly, who have enough money to pay for them, as well. As a rule, the new personal networks that are currently organized around dependent clients are also confronted with the spending powers of their potential clients (Gastelaars 2003a).

The private sphere as the ‘realm of liberty’ The private sphere was initially a social sphere that was different from the rest, precisely because this is where one could do things that would be unacceptable in the workplace or the public domain (cf. Westin 1970). For instance, this private sphere made it possible to choose a lifestyle that diverged from the dominant morality. Or one could hold views that differed from those of the powers that be – including one’s boss – without having to worry about the possible adverse consequences for oneself and one’s social status. Moreover, this same private sphere also represented time that could be dedicated to one’s leisure activities, in contrast to one’s ‘working hours’. Both themes – liberty and leisure – remain relevant to this day, even though both have changed significantly. Thus the ‘political’ aspects of the private domain are still relevant as an action net that should be respected. The way one spends one’s leisure time, however, appears to have somewhat fallen prey to more commercial versions of ‘fun’ (Metz 2002). The private sphere as the domain where leisure is performed The domain of leisure has become increasingly important over the past few decades. It was discovered as such, at the time of the emergence of youth culture. Today, most people, and not just the young, consider their free time more important than ever. Free time usually means ‘quality time’ that can be spent in an appropriate manner after work, and after the housework and child care have all been taken care of. Retired people with good pensions actually only have free time, and consequently must make an extra effort to continue to spend their perpetual leisure time in significant ways. Voluntary associations of the kind described in Chapter 1 are of course still important as examples of organizations that provide for this. In the past, voluntary associations were usually framed as self-appointed extensions of regular families. These organizations expressed feelings of mutual solidarity that were supplied voluntarily, and in many ways resembled real family commitments (Banton and Sills 1979). Naturally, these ‘old-fashioned’ organizations continue to exist, even if many people now consider it more appropriate to think of their participation as a matter of personal choice. Voluntary commitment, however, no longer necessarily means an enduring solidarity. This attitude has now been replaced by a commitment that may be very deep at a certain point in

Meanwhile, in society  43 time, but it is also free of obligations. People can not only feel free to join the association, but they are also free to leave whenever they desire. This specific new attitude may even be encouraged by the fact that our leisuretime activities have been transformed into just another branch of contemporary consumer culture. Leisure time has become – or so it seems – just another hunting ground for commerce. Investigative journalist Tracy Metz, for instance, describes the Dutch situation: Fun has conquered the Netherlands. Leisure time is now more than just time that you yourself experience, it has been transformed into an omnipresent culture of fun with an enormous economic significance. The way we spend our free time is just as important for our social identity as the work we do or the things we own. Tell me where you ate this past weekend, where and with whom you unwound, where you went on a holiday, and I can tell you who you are. (Metz 2002: 8, trans.) Many of our voluntary associations have been forced to somehow follow this ‘individualizing’ pattern, although they can also profit, of course, from the consideration that you can make use of your leisure time to ‘make something out of your personal life’. The private sphere as the domain where you can do and think whatever you want With these last thoughts, we are able to enter a version of the private sphere that is not unlike the classic formulation as defined by John Stuart Mill. He considered it that ‘sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest’ (Mill 1975: 17). This private sphere basically has both a political and social function. It is not just about the freedom to do and not do what you want, but, rather, about the right to continue to do so even if (powerful) others would prefer it otherwise. That is why the fundamental right to privacy is related to this right ‘to be left alone’ regarding your sexual disposition or political views or religious affiliations, even if these are not shared by others (Westin 1970). Furthermore, this same right offers one the possibility to organize oneself around these kinds of issue, whenever there are reasons to assume that people are discriminated against on these grounds. It is from this particular context that the voluntary associations used to derive their legitimacy and still do, even if there has been a change in the character of people’s commitments. As Putnam already noted in his renowned Bowling Alone (2000), many people remain interested in being truly involved in all sorts of issues. And, even if there are plenty of other media available nowadays, voluntary associations continue to offer the advantages of a collective enterprise. They offer substance to one’s dedication to political goals (in the case of ‘missionary’ organizations) or to more practical types of social involvement (such as self-help

44  Meanwhile, in society groups and volunteer work). In effect, they offer individuals the possibility of doing something voluntary, but on a greater and possibly more effective scale (Banton and Sills 1979). Traditional missionary organizations include political parties, unions and employers’ federations and churches. More contemporary examples include the newer social movements such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, as well as the world-wide ‘communities’ on the Internet that are dedicated to a specific issue such as the No Logo network or political Islam. Sometimes they actually recruit a ‘membership’ that involves some sort of practical commitment. At other times, they are principally comprised of financial donors and ad hoc participants. The more practical social involvement of the past has found its way to voluntary organizations such as the Red Cross and Scouting (Meijs 1997). Contemporary versions include the aforementioned self-help groups, as well as consumer associations, patient organizations and associations concerned with HIV/AIDS. But there are also ‘new’ volunteer organizations such as Refugee Assistance and Doctors Without Borders. In all of these cases, the participants usually want to get involved in a goal that reaches beyond their own interests, and are ready to actively contribute to the fulfilment of this goal.

Conclusion: the production of legitimacy as a permanent concern To some readers it may seem that some important new discourse has been left out of this presentation. Let’s look at one example: in the Netherlands as elsewhere it was generally agreed, until recently, that secularization was an important theme. At present, however, and particularly with the emergence of political Islam, the issues concerning religious commitment appear to have returned to our societal and political agendas. But, as far as the services are concerned, these religious issues can easily be incorporated into the debates about the relevance of any kind of missionary commitment to the organizations that are involved. Other potential oversights include the world-wide discourse about ‘security’, and the many socio-cultural effects that are now attributed to the development of IT, or to the world-wide migration movements of the past decades. An attentive reader, however, may have noted that these issues are definitely included in this chapter and other parts of the book, but only insofar as they affect the actual processes of service delivery or the legitimacy of these services – the often quite tacit justification of these services’ existence both by society at large and by the many stakeholders in the services. The general political and economic developments, and particularly the political struggles informing the structural transformations that affect our welfare states, are not expressly included, here, either. This means that this chapter does not focus on the actual political and administrative stakeholders in and around the public domain. Instead it has focused on the general discourses that inform the sociocultural debates that affect the services we discuss here, and not on the dynamics involving specific external actors.

Meanwhile, in society  45 As far as the services themselves are concerned, this selection of discourses is specifically relevant to the (re)production of their legitimacy. Moreover, the associated action nets can be expected to inform these services’ day-to-day negotiations on their work floors. Accordingly, each single service can be expected to deal, in one way or another, with any of the discourses presented. At the same time, however, it can also be established, here, that the representatives of a particular service might turn out to be quite selective as to the discourses they are likely to embrace.

3 ‘Why are we here?’ Core services and client relationships

This is not a kindergarten! This is not a hotel!

The services should mind their cores! The socio-cultural developments that were discussed in Chapter 2 have put a lot of pressure on the services. Every single service appears to be individualizing its provisions, as well as rationalizing them. Most services have been unable to escape the current transformations that professionalism is undergoing. No wonder that many services appear to be in danger of losing their grip. In fact, their core services, in particular, appear to be under duress, and this may even be cause for some worry. As the old psychotherapeutic motto has it, you can only manage your boundaries and have meaningful relationships with the outside world if you know who you are. Accordingly, we take as a starting point in this chapter the notion that the services may very well consider their core services as a very practical response to this issue. Here, we will have a more profound look at the variety of core services and associated client relationships mentioned in Chapter 1, and pay some more attention, in particular, to the ‘inconveniences’ and ‘risks’ that may be involved with these various transactions. Although the risks, in particular, may sometimes effectively harm an organization’s position, they may also help reinforce this same organization’s determination that ‘during reconstruction its business must go on’.

Supplying as a core service: anonymous encounters The so-called ‘encounter’ (Gutek 1995), the client relationship that is associated with ‘supplying’ is by definition a short-lived transaction which does not need to leave much of an impression on the client. The client is basically serviced on the spot. He or she does the shopping, picks something up or merely registers so that he or she can be informed of the organization’s range of activities. This type of service provision can occur in a small store or in a modest office. Mintzberg called these ‘simple structures’ (1983: 23). By now, these types of core services are more commonly associated with large service providers, and with mass services in

Core services and client relationships  47 particular. The reason is that these kinds of activities are the most easily ‘standardized’ and are thus readily available for the streamlined set-up of the accompanying processes that are characteristic of services of this kind. When we talk about mass services, it is indeed the case that their core services still involve these kinds of simple encounters. By now, they usually involve significant numbers of such encounters with equally large numbers of clients. Moreover, the core values of these services are specifically related to mass expansion. The specific quality requirements that one might have established for these relatively modest transactions, at some point in time, are now replaced by aggregate values such as efficiency and yield. This kind of mass services is central to the activities described below. The encounter: manageable and predictable for the client Whenever this core service is available, the clients are usually invited to take part in the primary process upon their own initiative. As a rule they are confronted by a standard client routing through the process of service delivery and, ideally, they are also expected to satisfy their demands in a rather straightforward manner. The predictability of these activities may even be relatively reassuring to the clients themselves. All department stores are similar; the client route through the Website is self-evident. For many people this kind of service provision amounts to a fairly basic ritual that may be repeated endlessly. The supermarket sells all kinds of products and the customers basically make their choices by throwing things from here and there into their shopping carts during their stroll through the store. The customers may allow themselves to be surprised by various deals, but they may also be interested in getting the exact products on their shopping lists. They have the option of seeking advice, but they usually do not bother. Supermarkets sometimes have ‘fresh markets’ that offer more personalized services. Even here, however, customers should not have demands that are too complicated, even if they are allowed to have some influence on what they order. But in any case, customers will probably be expected to weigh their produce and bag their own groceries. Moreover, the rule is that you pay for everything immediately at the end of your shopping trip, although you may end up waiting in line at the cash register. In the Netherlands, after customers pay they bag their own groceries and most of the time, they also bring them home themselves. They have just ‘gone shopping’. The effect that the organization desires is actually very simple: when the customers are satisfied with their purchases or the services provided they will probably return for more of the same. The infrastructure prevails In many of these services, a large part of the infrastructure is physically defined. If we were to do research on an organization such as the Dutch Railways (NS),

48  Core services and client relationships we would fairly quickly notice that trains can only be punctual as long as all the tracks are in good working condition and the signals are all operating properly. And, in a similar manner, a supermarket chain cannot survive without a physical distribution and supply network. This is even true for e-commerce as long as it is not dealing in virtual products. Moreover, most of these arrangements basically go unobserved by most of the clients. But even more important to these mass services, at this point in time, is the so-called ‘techno-structure’, by which we mean the departments that streamline various processes (Mintzberg 1983). Developers behind the scenes, including IT specialists, are responsible for the flexible streamlining of the processes of service delivery and of the organization as a whole. They characteristically operate using a combination of standards and flexibility. These developers not only develop the products and the actual services, they also set up the primary processes as a whole, including the computer-supported infrastructure that is to guide the process. As a rule, they develop an extensive division of labour in which various tasks and the associated personnel are involved. This affects not only the face-to-face transactions with the clients but also the activities behind the scenes, including such physical efforts as delivery and support. In this new kind of infrastructure, IT plays a decisive role. A good example here would be Benetton, a fashion concept with endless combination options. The company anticipates the constantly changing industry demands with the help of a well-organized electronic chain-store infrastructure, which not only ensures that the clothes find their way into the shops on time, but also that actual sales are immediately reported, and that production can follow demand. The service professionals who perform the face-to-face relations in these services often perform as an extension of this infrastructure, which regulates their activities to a large extent. The infrastructure actually takes care of their division of labour, registers their activities and may even change the process when necessary. The activities themselves can also be delivered by machines. The customers, in turn, may not really be aware of this, but to some extent it is the ‘infrastructure’ – and, hence, the professionals performing the ‘technostructure’ behind the scenes – that determines how they negotiate their way through the process of service delivery, from beginning to end. The ‘creative professionals’ behind the scenes It is especially now, since flexible streamlining has become the standard, that commercial versions of these mass services have grown more and more dependent on the contributions of those creative professionals who are responsible for the continuous development and marketing of new products and services. They are expected to anticipate developments in popular culture (Du Gay et al. 1997). For example, it would be a gross underestimation of Benetton, if one assumed it

Core services and client relationships  49 was just some computerized network that provides this company with the necessary information. In fact, Benetton’s creative developers are also expected to closely monitor all of the latest fashion developments and stay on top of trends. These creative professionals are usually also involved in the advertising efforts, which have to consistently figure out new ways to maintain a label’s name recognition. For instance, the recognition of the Benetton brand is no doubt in part due to its permanent local innovations, but it has also been established by the company’s strategy of using of shocking photos of terminally ill AIDS patients and their families in its advertising campaigns. That is why it is less absurd than one might first think that the impact of the increasing cultural and ethnic diversity was first discovered by commercial mass services. Accordingly, the creative professionals in the marketing and design departments sometimes have a greater influence on the organization’s strategic decision making than one might expect. Nike is a well-known example of a multinational where everything seems to hinge on these marketing and design departments. The same can be said for Sony and other companies that consider themselves innovative (Von Borries 2004; see also Du Gay et al. 1997). Inconveniences for the clients, not risks At first sight, these mass services might seem to be a lot less vulnerable to public debate than other kinds of services. The moral risks are minimized by engaging in brief and standard transactions. And, except when their advertising is obviously misleading, customers’ expectations are not easily disappointed. Any observable customer inconvenience involving this kind of service delivery is mostly related to the way these services are organized and to the workings of their complicated infrastructures, including the physical elements that may be involved. First of all, the inconveniences often involve the promised convenience. Mass services are fixated on ‘fast’ and ‘ready-made’ and thus the customer learns to expect this. The irritation that ensues can be substantial – and disproportionate to the magnitude of the situation – if it’s obvious that the service cannot be supplied as promised. If you expect to book a trip ‘just like that’, or just do some shopping, eat something or take public transportation somewhere, or you simply want to withdraw some money from the bank, then long lines or screwed-up transactions – ‘this bank machine is temporarily out of order’ – can be very annoying. A hobbling, struggling infrastructure can really mess things up (Landauer 1995; Brown and Duguid 2000). Second, standard service provision has another side to it, as well. This is the case when the range of services offered, despite their versatility, still do not give the customers what they want. Or when an organization cannot make an exception, even if this seems to be the most obvious way of handling the situation. Why has it become almost impossible to buy just a single lemon, instead of the standard of three in a bag? Third, the mass aspect of these kinds of services does have its own drawbacks. This is especially true when too many customers show up at the same location at the same time. In the case of virtual service providers, this means

50  Core services and client relationships that access suddenly becomes difficult. But you can become just as annoyed in an actual physical setting, when there are just too many customers around (‘It’s too crowded here!’) or too many have lined up ahead of you (‘They should open up another cash register!’). Or when a type of customer shows up that you would rather not come into contact with (‘I hold on just a little tighter to my purse!’). In this last situation, a service provider sometimes ends up with unexpected moral issues. For example, when some people (i.e., homeless people or alcoholics) are too forcefully thrown out of an organization’s premises, or when security – ‘We are keeping an eye on you and our property!’ – manifests itself a bit too forcefully. Fourth, the work of most mass service providers ends shortly after the sale has been made, but this is not always the case for the customer. For instance, when you get the product home it might not live up to your expectations – you just can’t seem to be able to put the bookcase together yourself because three screws broke along the way and the instructions are basically illegible. Then the customer ends up having to deal with an over-burdened customer service department or a help desk that has no real relation to the actual transaction. When I make a call and I end up on hold for a long time, or have to retell my whole story over and over again, and am still confronted with someone who doesn’t have a clue, or exhibits too little flexibility to adequately deal with my questions, my level of frustration simply begins to mount. In the end, some of the customers may decide to actually ‘vote with their feet’, which means that they may end up never coming back to this particular organization. As Gutek demonstrated in her book, The Dynamics of Service (1995), this type of service relationship has more recently also been applied to a number of professional services such as the US Health Maintenance Organizations. However, one should also realize that, however much a general practitioner’s work may resemble a mass service, the actual core services  – for instance the diagnostic skills – should not be placed under duress.

Processing as a core service: the dominance of procedure The core function under consideration here was first called ‘processing’ by Hasenfeld (1983). These activities involve the investigation and evaluation of the potential customers’ condition. This actually entails two closely related tasks that are, however, also quite different from one another. They are called ‘selection’ and ‘classification’, respectively. As to the first, the selection process involves a (short) investigation in order to be able to say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a client who has registered at the beginning of the process of service delivery. It involves, for example, a yes/no response to the question of whether a client in certain cases is even eligible for the procedure offered by a particular welfare agency. It could involve the decision-making process at social security, or at the assessment offices where, at least in the Netherlands, they determine whether a potential client is eligible for

Core services and client relationships  51 the care-providing services. Most services have a similar kind of selection process, if only to protect their core services from undesirable clients. After all, even discothèques have a bouncer who selects incoming clients at the door. Classifying someone, on the other hand, is something else altogether. It usually entails a more in-depth investigation to determine the fate of a client after he or she has been declared eligible. Classification may involve determining the level of someone’s disability benefits (and the level of nursing care an individual client is entitled to). This entails very specific assessments and evaluations of the condition of the client, and a translation of his or her condition into a specific category-in-use. Many of the so-called selection bureaucracies actually focus on classification. And, as we will see in more detail in Chapter 4, many other services also attempt to systematically assess their (potential) clients before they start delivering their services. An example is provided by the intake procedures at a (psychiatric) health care facility. The education system also performs a lot of classification work by definition. But in those services another core service may be much more relevant, in the end. The procedure The organizations that focus on this type of work, the so-called selection bureaucracies, include, as already noted in Chapter 1, a variety of bureaucratic organizations that work in the service of the state. Their core service amounts to applying the state’s general rules to individual situations. This means that their service efforts must, to some extent, always be individualized  – according to the law, every citizen is a legal persona with an equal claim to certain rights. However, it also means that the process must always be performed within the rules of law. Equality and due process are by definition included among the core values related to this service. The client relationship is framed accordingly. On the one hand, the client is often regarded as an ‘information provider’ who is required to be both honest and complete. On the other hand, the clients – or the claimants, as they say – are, for the most part, ‘being processed’ by the organization, and there is very little they can add. These selection and classification processes are often unavoidable for these clients, by definition. Consequently, the clients have no choice but to hand themselves over to ‘the procedure’. The actual client relationships typically amount to a ‘procedural incorporation’ of them. The clients themselves have little room for freedom of choice, and totally none when it comes to ‘What kind of welfare benefits shall we choose?’ or ‘What kind of sanction shall we consider?’ Moreover, because the clients’ activities are reduced to that of information provider, the clients are also required to focus on the ‘procedural’ questions, and to allow their everyday experiences to be translated into legal terminology. When viewed from the client’s perspective, this procedure simply appears to serve to strengthen the effect of an individual client’s ‘depersonalization’. The same goes for the increased presence of computerized support.

52  Core services and client relationships Working with machines or ‘by hand’ Basically it’s the procedures that provide the design of the primary process in these organizations. Moreover, from the client’s perspective, it seems like many of the activities actually take place behind the scenes. They involve numerous computersupported decision-making processes; sometimes it is ‘rooms full of humming computers’ that end up making most of the decisions (Bovens 2003: 68). It is quite common now for computerized decision-making processes (the so-called decision trees) to support the often very complex decision making in individual cases. However, the fact of these computerized processes does not mean that the actual ‘manual’ activities of the service professionals no longer play an essential role. First, it is taken for granted, for example, that the standardized decision-making process will collect enough data on the individuals involved. But the data must be both complete and correct. This naturally assumes that the client has been honest in supplying the necessary data, but it also presupposes that someone from the organization must confirm the data’s accuracy. Some clients may have reasons of their own for manipulating the supplied information (Berendsen 2000), and the organization’s representatives must remain vigilant and ensure that everything is correct. Second, although service professionals are always obliged to follow the rules, critical studies by Merton (1957) and Blau (1955), for example, pointed out some time ago that, whenever they stick too closely to the rules, service professionals can potentially end up actually sabotaging the procedures. Moreover, it is generally known that many service professionals  – and this we have learned from Lipsky’s famous study (1980) – develop their own informal classifications. These are classifications that are not found in the regulations but are developed by the service professionals on their own behalf, for instance, because their work loads are usually very high. Which claimants are ‘worth the effort’ and which ones are not? Are they at least vaguely polite or are they particularly aggressive? Do they readily supply necessary information or do I get the feeling they are withholding certain details? Are they still useful members of society or are we talking about lost causes? (Lipsky 1980; see also Engbersen 1990) However ‘illicit’ this process, it also provides instances of service professionals performing certain aspects of the service ‘by hand’. Third and most importantly, many procedures also offer the service professionals a certain amount of formal room to negotiate when we are talking about individual cases. This room to negotiate is formally called their discretionary space. However, these discretionary spaces are often under a lot of pressure. Thus the discretionary room that physicians working for the Dutch Disability Act have is very limited indeed, because they are only allowed to perform their medical examinations within the framework of the law (CTSV 2000b). Moreover, these streetlevel bureaucrats always end up having to constantly justify their decisions, and prove their bureaucratic indifference – or ‘independence’ or ‘integrity’ – as well.

Core services and client relationships  53 The claimants’ inconveniences and risks The most important risks for ordinary individual claimants chiefly involve the outcomes of the process. They can either be unjustly selected or unjustly not selected, or end up with unfair or undesirable classifications. They can be denied welfare or be declared unfit to work, however much they may disagree with the decisions. Appeals and objections naturally offer clients some options for rectification, but even then there is still the inevitable stigmatization (Goffman 1963). It is no wonder then that in these kinds of cases the clients are often seeking financial compensation for the damage incurred. But, apart from this, for many claimants it is equally frustrating to have so little control over this process. They are required to do things they do not fully comprehend and they seldom have much insight into the consequences of their actions. Moreover, the fact that ‘your reality’ has to be translated into the appropriate legal terminology can sometimes be very annoying. It can also be exasperating to have to explain over and over again that you really are incapable of financially supporting yourself. And, because the exact outcome of these calculations remains unpredictable, by definition, even the most relevant decisions attain a completely arbitrary character for the clients. The Dutch Disability Act requires an investigation to determine if a particular claimant is capable of working or not, which not only depends on one’s medical condition, but also on the level of stress involved in performing certain jobs. A computerized decision-making process ‘calculates’ the exact degree to which someone must be considered ‘fit to work’ (e.g., less than 20 per cent for full financial compensation). This calculation is based on the physician’s ‘determination’ of the claimant’s physical capacities, in relation to the ‘exact’ requirements of a number of ‘theoretically available’ jobs, at the claimant’s former level of performance. (IWI 2002) This kind of treatment can lead individual claimants to conclude that the organization is not interested in them at all. And, of course, selection bureaucrats may encounter situations involving substantial risks, for instance, when they have to perform inspections involving very powerful ‘institutional clients’. The integrity of these public servants may depend on the degree to which they succeed in doing their work properly, in spite of these kinds of pressures. Most of all, however, this kind of selection and classification work appears to establish the relevance of ‘juridical form’ for a variety of clients. Clients who feel discriminated against, or who actively pursue their rights, may eventually go to court.

Expert intervention as a core service: the inevitability of professional domestication This core service is comprised of the expert ‘production’ of a service or artefact, or the expert ‘intervention’ in the client’s physiology or psychological or social condition. The objective here is to perform at a high level of expertise, and to perform both

54  Core services and client relationships intentionally and deliberately, with a specific aim in mind. This is what is expected of professional experts. However, these interventions can sometimes be very radical for the client and can result in grave consequences, so that an expert intervention that fails to take place can sometimes result in irreparable harm. Thus it is not sufficient that these interventions are intentional, or performed in a deliberate manner. This is why the service professionals involved in so-called ‘invasive’ interventions are often compelled by a sense of responsibility: they have to be able to justify their actions, after the fact. But not all professional services are as invasive as that. Three types of client relationships and three types of risk When it comes to the risks involved, to both the clients and the professionals, it is important to differentiate three kinds of client relationships, all of which involve expert production and/or interventions of some kind. First of all, their mutual differences may have to do with the fact that some expert activities occur behind the scenes, when seen from the clients’ perspective, and some involve face-to-face interactions with the clients. A second distinction involves the face-to-face interactions with the clients. Some of these practices can be perceived as very invasive, while others may be fairly uneventful for the clients. The representative distinctions are, first, the expert production that is performed ‘behind the scenes’, second, the ‘invasive’ expert interventions and, third, ‘individualizing’ (or ‘soft’) expert interventions. The last two are usually performed on a face-to-face basis with the clients. Expert production behind the scenes. Examples of those who do their work behind the scenes include professional experts such as designers and architects but also scientific researchers working on assignment. In these cases, the client has to patiently await the results. Risks involving the clients usually arise after the actual service has been delivered. Another characteristic is that we are dealing here mostly with a professional’s unique one-off performance which may have actually been commissioned by the client him- or herself. Examples would include creative professionals developing an ad campaign for a multinational company; the architect designing a building commissioned by the department of education; or the researcher presenting a report on demand. Naturally, mistakes can occur in this kind of service work. Moreover, there is always the possibility that the final results will not live up to the client’s expectations. In most of these cases, however, the consequences are usually not irreparable for the client. In fact, an unsuccessful commission may mainly damage the reputation of this particular service, and have detrimental effects on its future acquisitions. The service’s representatives may seek out damage control. Invasive expert interventions. Meanwhile, there are those professional experts who work directly with (or literally on) their clients. The impact that the invasive version of these interventions can have on the client can be quite substantial. In certain cases, the effects may even be irreversible. Thus the ‘heroic’ aspect of the work done by surgeons in the so-called ‘acute’ medical field has a lot to do with its invasive character. In these medical circles, the professionals use the term

Core services and client relationships  55 ‘invasive’ themselves to describe their work. The representatives of such disciplines must somehow deal with the irreversibility of many of their interventions, and also with the ensuing responsibilities when something goes wrong. The term ‘professional domestication’ that was introduced in Table 1.1 is a particularly appropriate label for the client relationship in these kinds of case. The client is often literally at the mercy of the intervention, which also entails substantial risks. This not only leads clients to seek out self-protective practices on their part but this applies to the professionals as well. This explains the emergence of the self-regulating practices of the classical professionals, as presented in Chapter 2, with professional codes of conduct and internal disciplinary regulations. In the past, the professional group would usually investigate allegations concerning poor judgement or incorrect procedures itself. Today, however, we are fairly familiar with the media’s coverage of various inspection reports. Moreover, clients who are dissatisfied with the results can opt to take legal action. As a consequence, ‘juridical form’ has become increasingly popular in this particular realm. So-called informed consent, which has become law in the Netherlands, as elsewhere, sanctions the clients’ participation in the decision-making processes involving a particular medical treatment on their own behalf. This, however, does not only mean that the professionals may have to face a clients’ claims, in case of damage. It also means that the clients may have to accept their share of the risks. Individualizing (or ‘soft’) expert interventions. The ‘soft’ interventions  – we particularly find these in social work and education – have begun receiving more attention. They are called ‘individualizing’ interventions, here, because they often are a part of the processes of individualization. The professionals are expected to actively relate to their clients, and pay some more attention to their clients’ individual expectations. One could even argue that in this case the actual client relationship is ‘professionally programmed’ in individual terms. These interventions are often called ‘process interventions’ as well. This is because the outcomes of these interventions are usually dependent on the ‘processes’ the interventionists set in motion. They are not even able to control the actual course of events. Maybe this last issue is the real reason why these ‘expert’ interventions are invariably called ‘soft’ by the more invasive colleagues. In their view, the ‘softness’ of these interventions is mostly related to the lack of predictability of their outcomes. They are dependent on the actual contribution of a specific client, on the ‘given’ situation and on the ‘process interventions’ the professional provides. But, apart from this, the effects of these expert interventions are often less drastic, if only because they often can be reversed. And yet, the ‘professional domestication of the client’ may still provide an adequate description of the client relationship that is involved, here. The clients may ultimately end up being ‘delivered’ to the relational qualities of the experts. The inevitability of ethics Apart from the usual inconveniences and risks that are involved with their practices, these professionals – invasive and otherwise – seem to raise some specific

56  Core services and client relationships ethical questions. These ethical questions are often reinforced by the fact that this type of service usually involves a degree of superiority of the (professional) experts over their (lay) clients. This is probably the reason why most of these professionals do not usually succeed in keeping these ethical discussions within their own circles, and become quite often subject to public debate. Professional experts who work behind the scenes are probably the least affected by this threat of public debate. Professionals engaged in social research may periodically have to deal with issues such as what researchers are and are not permitted to ask their respondents. They may also have to address the issue of suppressing or publishing sensitive information. But it is the more invasive professionals who usually are to face issues involving the moral boundaries of their expert interventions. Is someone authorized to give AIDS patients a medication that has not been thoroughly tested, even if they are demanding it? The clients’ direct participation in the individualizing interventions, however, does not prevent the emergence of these kinds of ethical issue. For example, should teachers be allowed to express their own views to their pupils or should they try to remain objective or impartial? Should teachers talk to parents when they notice that certain children appear to be at risk? It does not help here that, at least at first sight, these ‘soft’ professional interventions seem to be quite comparable with everyone’s everyday experiences. ‘If I were that teacher …’ Rationalizing around the professional core It is understood that most professional experts prefer to operate autonomously and they show little interest in their organization’s management, to say the least. As we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2, the professional services have often been considered loosely coupled systems, by definition (Weick 1978). Moreover, it is generally agreed that this loose coupling causes a significant shift in the organization’s balance of power, away from the executives and toward the professional experts themselves (Mintzberg 1983). And thus, the flexible streamlining that these organizations undergo usually ends up having to fit within the boundaries established either tacitly or explicitly by the professional experts who are essential to their cores. Thus, the only way to ‘manage’ professionals who take their actual work behind the scenes is to make them work with binding deadlines. They may also have to work with contracts stipulating clear outcomes. But even if they do, the actual outcomes must be characterized by a certain amount of flexibility  – the work that most of them do is usually comprised of unique, one-off commissions. All of the relevant others in and around the organization are expected to agree at least to an extent with the terms laid down by these professionals, themselves (Van Wijk 2006). The more invasive expert interventions, however, are often performed in organizational settings that require working with large numbers of clients. Of course many of these professional experts would also prefer to work on their own, but they cannot avoid the fact that some welfare state arrangements  – hospitals in

Core services and client relationships  57 particular  – are by definition available to one and all. Like the mass services, these organizations have become quite dependent on elaborate infrastructures where almost everything is rationalized, by definition. As a rule, however, these rationalizations often end up circumventing the professionals. For instance, the organization’s rationalizations mostly involve streamlining the routing process of the clients, the work schedules of associated support staff and its financial arrangements. They do not control the expert interventions performed by the professionals themselves. For instance, the controversial Diagnosis Treatment Combinations, which have been introduced into Dutch hospitals, and elsewhere, leave the professional transactions undisturbed. These professionals often even end up making the final decisions, even when so-called evidence-based practices or professional protocols are put in place. Interestingly enough, these types of rationalization appear to have even less effect on the softer repertoires. In education, for example, and despite the emergence of substantial computer support, the services still largely depend on faceto-face contact between teachers and students. Social work ‘methods’ are actually geared up in a way that guarantees that direct client contacts remain the decisive factor (Van der Haar 2006 and 2007). In cases like this, protocols often focus specifically on the management of exceptional situations that involve the professional control of issues such as racism, sexual intimidation or violence. In a manner of speaking, they even seem to relate to the kind of managed ‘self control’ we discussed in Chapter 2.

Negotiation and co-production as a core service: performing partnership Many services, especially professional services in the commercial sector, have transformed their clients’ self-determination into an important goal. Furthermore, they often strive for the establishment of more durable client relationships with people who will continue to return with newly commissioned projects  – and, where possible, even with new clients. In this section, however, we focus on those processes of service delivery that involve the negotiation of a co-production with the client during the actual process of service delivery. As noted in Chapter 1, the client relationship in the individual services essentially requires the mutual and enduring commitment of both parties. Not unlike other professional services, however, they are often preceded by negotiations that ‘frame’ this specific client relationship beforehand. Initial negotiations involving risks for both the organization and the client We noted in Chapter 1 that negotiating is quickly becoming the initial phase of the primary process among more and more services. Furthermore, the client persona who is involved in this initial activity, is often a different one from the typical clients who eventually participate in the process of service delivery. From now

58  Core services and client relationships on, we will systematically distinguish these ‘patron clients’ from the ‘participant’ clients who are eventually affected by the service. The former, for instance, may be the acting manager, while the latter may be comprised of his or her personnel. The services usually call these initial negotiations between the service professionals and their patron clients ‘acquisition’. Although this type of acquisition applies mostly to those professional experts who work behind the scenes, it also applies increasingly often to professionals who engage their clients in face-to-face settings. These professionals include both the invasive professional experts such as plastic surgeons and their less-invasive colleagues, such as counsellors and trainers. The classic example, here, is the acquisition performed by highly paid professionals with their fairly puissant (or financially influential) patron clients. These risks seem to mainly affect the organization, here, and involve specific issues such as giving ‘too much’ or ‘too little’ room for a particular client’s contribution. In the consultancy world – which is one of the ‘real’ individual services, as we will see – the term ‘servicing’ arises when the professional experts appear to give in too easily to their clients’ demands. And vice versa, when there is too little room left for the client to manoeuvre it means the organization has too much control, which may make it particularly difficult to maintain the client’s involvement in the processes of service delivery characterized as a co-production in the true sense of the word. The risks to the organizations that may be involved, here, may also provide an important reason why contracts have become a generally accepted form for rounding off these initial negotiations. It may also provide a reason why these negotiations are often reserved for the more influential members of the organizations. Not everyone can engage in acquisitions in the name of the service provider, just as not everyone is allowed to sign a contract (or a ‘service level agreement’) on behalf of the client. Co-production and its associated risks But, as we argued in Chapter 1, a client relationship involving a true co-production also involves another set of expectations, both for the service professionals and for their clients. According to Gutek, a great deal of work is invested in the continuity of these relationships, which is generally considered essential. Ideally, a ‘shared history of interaction’ is produced that also involves ‘bonds of attachment and trust’. This means that both partners know everything they need to know about each other and that they are also inclined to keep in close contact in the event that an emergency should arise (Gutek 1995: 16–17). Gutek believes that this level of trust is an essential condition for the transaction’s progress. I would like to add to this, however, that the ultimate outcomes of these processes of service delivery rely to a large extent on the sense of ownership and responsibility of both parties. The assumption here is that even if the service professionals and their patron clients have made some clear-cut agreements beforehand, they are also expected to work together throughout the process.

Core services and client relationships  59 Moreover, the actual performance of the service depends, to some extent, on the permanent willingness of both parties to mutually invest. But this may precisely be the reason why ‘participant’ service professionals and their ‘participant’ clients may feel ‘subordinate’ to a process of service delivery, which has been negotiated by the services’ ‘acquisitionists’, on the one hand, and by a ‘patron’ client, on the other. The latter has to be obeyed by the ‘participant’ clients. Networking as a preferential organizational form Some authors are of the opinion that the open networks these kinds of services offer is the ultimate contemporary organizational form (Castells 2001). As a rule, these professional networks are grouped around ‘nodal points’ consisting of service professionals and their clients, who together produce the various projects. However, these networks also require an effective decentralization of the organization’s power structure in order to provide room for the ‘responsible’ involvement of the relevant parties. Not all of the services that claim to be interested in this type of structure are actually willing to pay this price.

Providing care and surveillance as a core service: the management of dependence The first description of the arrangements responsible for care and surveillance appears in Chapter 1. The core service at stake here is not per se highly professional, but it is responsible for twenty-four-hour care and surveillance seven days a week, by definition. As we have seen, the client groups related to this core service can be fairly diverse. The services provided may involve care facilities for people who are essentially dependent on them, such as the elderly, the chronically ill, the bodily or mentally handicapped. But, as we have seen, these arrangements may also involve people who are not dependent in this sense of the word, but who are, for quite different reasons, placed in a facility that is isolated from society. Moreover, and as we have seen in Chapter 2, the relevant activities around this kind of service may concern even the most routine aspects of everyday life. We have also seen, however, that the action net involved in this particular kind of service may revolve around a set of very diverse notions. It may even promote the ideal of a ‘haven in a heartless world’ (Lasch 1977) as well as the daily upkeep, care and surveillance of household members classified as dependants. It also relates to such routine household activities as cooking meals, repairing clothing and maintaining the home. It is particularly these last two aspects that distinguish services providing care. And, as we pointed out in Chapter 2, these services usually provide surveillance, as well. Hasenfeld, when he named this core service ‘people sustaining’ activities (Hasenfeld 1983: 137–40). This notion of ‘sustaining’ expressly relates to the fact that the clients’ ‘deviations’ or ‘limitations’, and hence, the clients’ ‘dependence on care’ is taken as the ultimate point of departure. Hence, the actual interventions consist mostly of a mixture of support and assistance with one’s everyday routines,

60  Core services and client relationships on the one hand, and of reliable supervision, on the other. This supervision prevails for those clients who have been ‘separated from social life’. However, the client relationship in all of these cases can be labelled ‘managed dependence’ and includes some surveillance efforts as well. According to Hasenfeld’s groundbreaking analysis, the notion of care includes, first of all, the daily assistance and support of people who cannot take care of themselves. But second, Hasenfeld also spoke of ‘preventive maintenance’, which includes permanent monitoring to determine how the potential client is doing (or should be doing). When Hasenfeld used this term he was basically referring to daily care – such as ensuring that someone is eating well – and other activities that ensure that someone’s condition doesn’t worsen. These activities are already part of every household but they can also become part of organized care. Moreover, and third, Hasenfeld was also concerned with the ‘protection’ of the individual from threatening circumstances, which informs the surveillance aspect that, as we have seen in Chapter 1, is essential to this core service. It is often called ‘signalling’ in the care sector but in the legal world it is much more common to talk straightforwardly about surveillance. In all of these cases, however, this effort basically boils down to a guarantee that something will be done whenever ‘something happens’ and whenever any of the clients appears to be involved. It may be this awkward mixture of ‘day-to-day maintenance’, ‘support of the dependent’ and ‘permanent surveillance’ that has abetted the debate that has now been raging for many years. The debate has been focused on the ‘organized’ versions of this type of work and, as we have already seen in Chapter 2, the first question it addressed was whether people with certain limitations or people who have been temporarily removed from society should be placed in totally isolated situations, or whether they should be socially (re)integrated. A second concern was whether the everyday lives of these clients should be arranged in a manner based on their own preferences and tastes, and, as a consequence, be more like ‘a normal life’. The development of personal networks of the kind described in Chapter 1 has definitely been encouraged by these issues. The result is that more traditional intramural arrangements have become less popular, and the so-called personal networks are now considered the ultimate alternative. In spite of their obvious decline in popularity, however, the intramural arrangements continue to exist. Intramural arrangements and the risks encountered by their clients When we speak of these intramural versions of providing care today, we are mostly referring to an involuntary admission or intake process for people who need this type of care. The actual commitment of the client to the institution can be brief or fairly lengthy, and in certain cases, it can even last a lifetime. All of this eventually depends on the way the clients’ condition is evaluated by the people who commit them to this kind of care. There are still plenty of examples of intramural arrangements in both the nursing home and psychiatric care sectors. These institutions sometimes offer professional

Core services and client relationships  61 treatment, while at other times they just offer safe houses or places for people to live and/or work. In these cases the ‘support of the dependent clients’ is clearly assimilated into their ‘daily maintenance’, and the ‘permanent surveillance’ appears irrelevant to a point. However, there are also a number of organizations of this type that fall either directly or indirectly under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice. They may involve the involuntary commitment of a person to a professional institution as well as people held in custody pending their legal cases. In these cases, ‘daily maintenance’ is provided, and ‘permanent surveillance’ may be more essential than the issues concerning the provision of ‘support’. In all of these cases, the clients are subjected to a fairly rigid set of regulations and the organizations manage the lives of their clients down to the minutest details, which further underlines the clients’ dependence and/or isolation from the real world. The risks the clients in these institutions encounter may, first of all, be caused by the fact that these intramural settings often involve the physical closeness of many other people, which can lead to feelings of insecurity and physical risk particularly in institutions where people are housed against their will. But second, and more importantly, the risks that arise from these intramural settings involve the de-individualizing (or depersonalization) of the clients. People sacrifice their ‘individuality’ because they must abide by the rules of the established regime. In so-called closed institutions where service professionals care for otherwise healthy people, these regimes even encourage active and collective ‘counter-cultures’, where the ‘oppressed’ group – the clients – can easily find one another (Goffman 1961). These ‘inmates’ often have a hierarchy of their own and are quite aware of the ‘games’ the staff play with punishment and rewards, and, accordingly, their own ‘games’ often amount to manipulating these rules to their advantage. In their turn, the service professionals may try to manipulate their surroundings (by locking the doors), their time (with strict office hours), their physical presence and even their availability to the clients (with appointments) (Geuijen 2000). As was suggested earlier, this kind of management of their clients’ dependence may in fact amount to nothing more than ‘keeping them under control’. In the intramural arrangements that are more specifically focused on providing care to the dependent, however, the clients are mostly unable to do much on their own. And it is here that we find much discussion, although mostly among the professionals themselves, about how the so-called hospitalization effect affects these clients. People who are basically dependent anyway, may end up feeling too safe and secure in these closed environments. Service professionals, meanwhile, create distance between themselves and their clients, but in this case, they may be doing so to avoid being overburdened by their clients’ never ending demands. But, third, it should also be considered that the risks that arise from such intramural institutions usually also involve the power that the service professionals have over their individual clients. Prison clients are essentially being managed and observed against their will. Considering the backgrounds of many of these individuals, there is very little discussion about this. However, when clients are

62  Core services and client relationships essentially dependent on care, this authority that the service professionals wield can essentially come under discussion. Is someone permitted to tie up the elderly or the mentally handicapped? Are psychiatric patients allowed to be isolated? Here we are talking about people whom most people can somehow relate to (‘would you like to see this to happen to your own partner?’). They are also seen as people who cannot do much of anything to alter their own behaviour. Personal networks and the risks incurred by their clients As we have seen in Chapter 1, personal networks pay a lot of attention to personalized negotiations at the start of the process of service delivery. Moreover, their various options try to replicate the individualized versions of the ‘definition of life’ as they are offered by the clients or, at least, they try to provide sufficient room for the clients to enact their own definitions. Moreover, these institutions claim that they are primarily interested in their clients’ ‘inclusion’, that is, their participation in what is generally considered as a normal life. Again we should be concerned here, as we were before, for both the healthy clients who are kept under surveillance and those dependent clients who require care. The healthy clients are involuntarily kept under surveillance and, to avoid accidents, they are often saddled with all sorts of limitations on their movements which may involve everything from electronic ankle bracelets to regular parole reviews. In this context, it may very well turn out to be surveillance that prevails. In the personal networks providing care, the care offered to individual clients uses the actual limitations in the day-to-day performance of these clients as a starting point. It may very well turn out that the client can have his or her say, as well, but that the negotiations may become quite complicated for those clients who have serious handicaps. This leaves the service professionals feeling that they should fill in the gaps themselves. In these cases, which we will observe in greater detail in Chapter 4, this often means that the service professionals are expected, by definition, to supplement the client’s own stories with their medical and professional diagnoses. One can even assume that these negotiations will never end, if only because the dependence of the client may eventually change and end up being a perpetual condition. That is why these personal networks cannot avoid showing this shift toward surveillance, if only because it fits under their motto of ‘caring about care’. In this specific context, everything appears to revolve around the maintenance of the clients’ former day-to-day lifestyles. But, as we observed in Chapter 2, with this issue, in particular, one cannot avoid distinguishing between people who have lived normal lives before and those who have not. Apart from this, the risks incurred by the clients may, first of all, involve the definition of the degree of the individual’s dependence on care. On an individual level, for instance, too much effort may be put in by the services, and this may result in unnecessary interference or obtrusive inspections. And yet, when there is too little effort put in it may result in negligence. Moreover, and second, who takes responsibility when things actually do go wrong?

Core services and client relationships  63 Third, some risks can emerge due to the simple assumption that the client should ‘live his or her own life’. This last detail does not necessarily mean that all of the choices the client makes are actually ‘good’ ones. But who should judge this? How serious an issue is it when clients living on their own refuse to cook? What if they do not keep their homes tidy? Or make dubious friends? Is it a sign of respect or of incompetence when these clients are allowed to go their own way? And fourth, one should realize that even an individualized care relationship can never provide a haven in a heartless world, although it is precisely the personalization of the agreements, here, that can unconsciously lead to all sorts of expectations of this kind. The question to be addressed here is: How does the organization react when a relationship between a service professional and a client gets too intimate in the eyes of the organization if not in the eyes of those involved?

Maintaining individual commitment and collective zeal as a core service: encouraging client ownership For obvious reasons, voluntary associations seldom appear in economic statistics. They neither earn money nor do they pay the people who work there for the most part. However, it is less easy to explain why they are also under-represented in organization literature, although it must be said that the number of publications that deal with voluntary associations is actually growing these days. Voluntary associations are actually founded on a contradictio in terminis. On the one hand, they are often well organized, especially when it comes to effective goal attainment. On the other hand, they continue to depend on the ‘voluntary’ commitment of their members, however professional or businesslike they may have become otherwise. As a matter of fact, their members organize ‘themselves’, and these organizations represent a ‘realm of freedom’, by definition. This may even imply the opposite of goal attainment at a certain point in time. Mobilizing as a core business Membership is the all-determining qualification for the client relationship that a voluntary association provides. Thus, the organization’s core service amounts to the mobilization and maintenance of its members’ involvement. A voluntary association often mobilizes a ‘we feeling’ that distinguishes it from others. This is how it hopes to maintain a certain level of loyalty among its membership, as well. However, it has been generally observed that nowadays members feel that their membership is becoming less obligatory. And thus, even the most loyal members may be unpleasantly surprised when they continue to be pressured ‘for the sake of the club’ to be involved in its everyday activities. And, although it cannot be denied that voluntary associations have succeeded to this day in organizing ‘interesting’, ‘educational’ or ‘attractive’ ways to spend one’s free time, they are also confronted with the fact that those involved will only continue to do so as long as they themselves see fit. In a paraphrase of Hirschman’s (1970) famous ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’, the appropriate question today is not so much what moves

64  Core services and client relationships members to join a club but rather, what motivates them to stay under adverse circumstances. Moreover, voluntary associations must also mobilize their members to do the tasks that need to be done in order for these organizations to survive, and these issues may be quite a burden for these organizations. At first sight, the intrinsic commitment of the members is often more easily attained when it is related to a political mission or to a particular social goal. In those cases, you can still assume that the organization’s interests will transcend the self-interests of its members, although, at this point in time, it cannot be denied, either, that membership in an association that focuses on ‘society’ – Amnesty International and Greenpeace are good examples – may also enhance your self-interests in that it may look good on your CV. Media attention is often considered a helpful tool for these organizations, by now. It not only helps them to successfully promote their ‘political’ world views, it also helps them to focus on donors and on other sources of the income they so desperately need. Risks for the organization, not for the client The biggest risks, here, are incurred, not by the clients but by the voluntary associations themselves. The vulnerability of these organizations comes from the ‘real’ freedom of the people involved in their day-to-day activities. This freedom demands a certain ‘purity’, which the organization itself will have to maintain. For instance, and first, it may rapidly lead to internal problems when a voluntary association begins to focus too much on the mass media. An obsession with publicity can lead to a situation where an organization only ends up performing ‘where the cameras are’. Second, it may become even more problematic to some of its members when a voluntary association gets too involved with its commercial sponsors. Some commercial sponsors have discovered, for instance, that volunteer work ‘in the boss’s time’ is often quite appreciated by their own employees. Pringle and Thompson (1999) describe how a well-known fashion label suggested that, after purchasing a suit, its customers leave their old suits behind and donate them to the homeless. These old suits were then distributed among the homeless by the company’s employees. Another example is the airline that encouraged its crews to collect the left-over foreign coins from passengers on their return flights, and donate them to developmental aid. To some it may seem that a voluntary association that gets too involved in this type of commercial commitment stands the risk of becoming too dependent on its commercial counterparts. Third, when volunteer organizations begin to concentrate ‘too much’ on the professionalism of their management or on that of their own service professionals, they also begin to run some risks. Many patient associations, but also organizations such as Greenpeace, often have paid professional staffs that sometimes overrule

Core services and client relationships  65 the volunteers, and the latter may resent this. Moreover, there may also be volunteers who are associated with the organization because of the professional skills they happen to have – for instance, law students who work for Amnesty International (Drucker 1992). These are expected to perform professionally but as a consequence, they may start wondering why they don’t get paid. In all of these cases, the principles of voluntary commitment are mingled with other principles, and this may even encourage a process of organizational disintegration, in the end. Since the appearance of In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Bestrun Companies (Peters and Waterman 1982), an unmistakable ideal has emerged among organizations, involving this specific combination of ‘individual commitment’ and ‘collective zeal’. This ideal suggests that everyone involved in the service must be seen as a co-owner of the process. But this means that one must also accept the fact that the process itself may very well end up moving in an entirely different direction from the ones originally intended by the people who set out on a specific strategy.

Conclusion: the indispensability of the core These core services are central to the primary process of service delivery. They serve the various services’ legitimacy by establishing the relevance of the activities that should be seen as essential to their survival; after all, there may always be some risks and inconveniences involved with their interventions. These core services establish what a particular service is about, and they enable it to ideologically establish its boundaries to protect itself from an overly demanding environment. For instance, a school is at least theoretically ‘within its rights’ as a school when it announces that it is willing to help some parents raise their children, or keep these children off the streets during lunch hour, but that it cannot be held responsible for these activities. Moreover, an established core service may also help a service to maintain its independence vis-à-vis external stakeholders who may be trying to impose rather strict financial targets. In fact, these core services can legitimately impose restrictions on the various processes of reconstruction that are now underway.

4 The (re)construction of the services (Re)routing the clients

Carefully choreographed architectural motifs, automated climate-controlled environments, sophisticated lighting schemes, and computerized surveillance systems all work together to ‘communicate’ a special cultural place. Jeremy Rifkin, The Age of Access

The primary process is under reconstruction This chapter will discuss the ‘series of client contacts that together make up the process of service delivery, as arranged by the organization’ (see p. 7). We are concerned here with the actual physical routing of the clients, from their first meeting with the organization until the final farewell, as it is provided by the organization. The main argument of this chapter is that, although we should assume that the core services remain essential to these services, we will also have to accept that these core services have become increasingly embedded in all sorts of other activities. The main cause of this is the flexible streamlining that most of these organizations are currently undergoing. Most of today’s services have placed their entire processes of service delivery into a specific sequence, by now. They provide for a well-defined variety of so-called ‘streams’ to accommodate the current variety of their clients. Moreover, many of them have added to this a thorough but fair ‘classification’ to ensure that everyone gets what he or she deserves. All of this leads to a reconstruction of the ‘geography’ of the various practices that are involved (Wenger 1997) which, in turn, seems to turn the actual processes of service delivery into a ‘chain’. Accordingly, the organization expects its clients to move, with dossier in hand, from place to place, department to department or building to building, or, in the case of outsourcing, from organization to organization. This same arrangement, however, must also provide a variety of spaces for the service professionals who are involved in the various streams and the rest of the primary process. Moreover, the organization expects these various professionals to co-operate according to the objectives it has established. This co-operation appears to be secured by

The (re)construction of the services  67 computer-supported infrastructures but there are also many service professionals working behind the scenes. In fact, it may not be accidental that, in contemporary service management literature, the notion of a ‘line of visibility’ (Grönroos 1990) is introduced, which basically means the invisible barrier that separates such activities behind the scenes from the activities that are performed ‘face-to-face’ with the clients. It is quite often assumed in the so-called service literature that most services converge in one direction, in this respect, and in many ways this is true. This chapter, however, will also argue the contrary. It will try to demonstrate that the diversity of the core services has remained intact, and has even had a considerable impact on the actual reconstruction of the primary processes of service delivery.

Recruiting potential clients In the commercial world, the birth of advertising in the 1930s constitutes the beginning of the explicit attention paid to customer recruitment. Ever since then, advertising has been indispensable to the turnover of consumer goods on a massive scale, and that goes for the mass services as well. However, when in the 1970s the turnover of commercial goods and services stopped increasing automatically in conjunction with the increases in average spending power of the people, the entrepreneurs tried to tune in with what Dick Hebdige (1992) so beautifully labelled the ‘revolution of aspirations’. This general change in the advertising world acknowledges that customers and clients are no longer solely motivated to acquire certain goods and services by their ‘objective’ needs and by what they are willing to pay for their fulfilment. They are also attracted by what they think they can symbolically derive from them. Of course, the actual uses of products and services remain important to them, and so do their prices, but the status or image they may derive from them may have become just as important (Nixon 1997: 185). That is why many service providers nowadays not only want to know how many customers they can expect or how the spending power of these people will develop, they also want to be informed about what people expect from their lives. Of course, the service providers also differ from each other, in this respect. Sometimes the services they have on offer are so basic that it makes little sense to consider their everyday effects, not to mention their status value. Sometimes the clients cannot avoid specific service providers because they have a monopoly position. Moreover, not all services are expressly dependent on large turnovers or on large numbers of clients. As a consequence, the various services may have a wide variety of views on the impression they wish to make on their prospective clients. However, and in the wake of extensive cutbacks by the national government, even some non-profit organizations have begun asking themselves whether the right groups are approaching their organizations and whether they shouldn’t be trying to avoid some groups who do. These organizations may not be very

68  The (re)construction of the services interested in the ‘symbolic meanings’ of their services, they may not even be interested in advertising in the proper sense of the word, but they may be very interested, indeed, in providing information to help people to make a proper decision. Their ultimate intention may even be to prevent some of their potential clients from approaching their organizations. Gathering information on potential clients Modern commercial services, particularly mass services, often gather information about their potential clients. Over the years, this has even led to the development of the specialized research branch of marketing research. Ethno-marketing is one of the latest trends in this area. Researchers provide the data that allow the services to better understand the lifestyles and buying habits of the groups who are relevant to them. These researchers usually do their work behind the scenes from the clients’ perspective, even if their pollsters do approach the latter in their own homes. Moreover, this kind of information gathering behind the scenes often continues during the actual processes of service delivery. Supermarkets, with the help of electronic customer cards, are continuously gathering information about changes in consumer behaviour. They hire market research agencies to analyse the results. The market developments distilled from these data are often sold to third parties. Most people do not even seem to mind that others know what they are purchasing all the time (De Ruijter 1998). This data-mining is certainly not limited to the commercial sphere. The government and its organizations are also interested in all sorts of information. This work is often done by independent research institutes and, as a consequence, its outcomes are often presented as more ‘objective’ (Gastelaars 2002a). The ‘greying’ or ageing of the population, for instance, was first presented by these kinds of research organization, as were the national and local effects of global migration. In the Netherlands, many of these institutes are founded and financed by the government itself. Accordingly, the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) continuously gathers data on the Dutch population, while the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Institute for Demographic research (NIDI) analyses them and performs research of its own. The Social Cultural Planning Bureau (SCP) does the same. These two institutes have, for instance, revealed that seemingly obvious categories such as ‘old’, ‘young’ and ‘migrant’, obscure a large variety of lifestyles. The government has also discovered the uses of data gathering in relation to its own services. Here, prevention is often stated as the government’s official goal. Locally based epidemiological institutes have, for instance, shown how certain diseases were unevenly spread among specific groups. Another example is provided by the police. The Canadian researchers Ericson and Haggerty (1997), for instance, demonstrated that the meaning of the term ‘surveillance’ has changed dramatically among Canada’s police officers, and even more so since computers (CPIC) were introduced in patrol cars. The term is now ‘pro-active patrolling’ and the computers play a distinctive role because they are able to collect and establish the activities of police ‘suspects’ over time, and connect the various sets of data.

The (re)construction of the services  69 One police officer in an interview: It [the computer] is right there beside you, and it takes two seconds to type in a name and a date of birth and you can query anybody. Plus, if you query somebody and get a hit, you can send a message anywhere in Canada to any other CPIC terminal… . You can drive around and look up license plates along the way… . If you stop somebody you can query them right on the spot. I have a tendency to drive down the street and query just anybody. Just query vehicles as they go along. (Ericson and Haggerty 1997: 140–41) In this case, the private sphere may come under duress, and there has been some public debate as to whether this should always be permitted. There may be some issues of privacy involved here (Gastelaars 2002b, 2003b). Information about the organization Clients also have their information strategies. They gather information by consulting the Internet and other sources. They want to know what an organization has to offer and which organizations are the most attractive. They may also want to find out whether they qualify for certain public services. In the public sphere, it is often not so much consumer organizations that provide this information. Here, the various inspection agencies in the education and health care sectors also see it as their duty, these days, to publicly distribute their findings. This last change has been particularly felt in the public sphere. Welfare state arrangements often feel they have been victimized by this type of news coverage because they find it increasingly difficult to rectify ‘misinterpretations’. Moreover, organizations that used to have a monopoly (i.e., public utilities) did not discover until after privatization that they have also become much more vulnerable in this area. The same can be said for hospitals and other health care arrangements. In the past, they could count on a steady stream of referrals, but now they have to compete on a more open market. They now often employ their own PR to maintain their grip on the flow of information. There are also services – particularly individual services – that try to re-direct these information flows via their ‘personal’ networks – of which the golf course and Rotary Club are classic examples. And, when seen from the client perspective, this word of mouth provided by one’s informal network may generally turn out to be quite decisive for most of the clients’ decisions to actually contact a service, in spite of a variety of ‘objective’ data that may also be available to inform their choice. We will return to this in Chapter 6. Approaching the clients directly Mass services have increasingly turned to direct contacting of large groups of people via advertising campaigns, call centres and direct mail and, in doing so,

70  The (re)construction of the services interrupt their (potential) clients’ everyday lives. Internet users may even feel quite feel harassed by the inundation of Spam. But it is noteworthy that voluntary associations have already been using these recruitment methods for years and that they continue to do so. Activities such as fund raising, recruitment and selling door-to-door used to be done by the organization’s volunteers, but since most members prefer not to do this kind of work any more, even these organizations have increasingly turned to outsourcing this work to salespeople who are both organized and paid to provide this service. Not unlike their commercial counterparts, these salespeople receive an assignment to handle x number of telephone calls per hour, of which a number of x – y must deliver the desired results, and thus, they are sometimes perceived as quite aggressive by potential clients. It is no wonder that some other services consider this type of recruitment as particularly detrimental to their good names. ‘Branding’ as a strategy Advertising has long been considered an unreliable source of information, and in a manner of speaking this is true, particularly insofar as advertising emphasizes symbolic meanings. For instance, many international commercial organizations claim that their continuity depends to a large extent on ‘branding’. They use shocking, humorous, amusing or aesthetic strategies and focus on the recognition of their name rather than on the specific services and products they have on offer. We all remember how a certain brand of cigarettes was indelibly associated with a certain type of manliness, although this type of cigarette advertising has long since been banned. Du Gay et al. (1997) in their analysis of the introduction of the Walkman on the world market, by Sony, have shown that the intended symbolic meanings do not always work out as expected and that, accordingly, it may take some effort to succeed. The first portable radio of this sort had two sets of headphones because Sony tried to create an image of ‘the pleasure of listening together, just the two of us’. After this approach failed, Sony removed one set of headphones and began showing young roller skaters in a city park wearing the new individual prototype. And it was only then that the decisive association that became a world-wide success was made. The Walkman became personal and portable and that was attractive to the young adventurous people the company had in mind, although, in the end, quite a few older customers got addicted to this gadget, as well. (Du Gay et al. 1997) We can also observe a tendency among some advertisers more recently of increased ‘authenticity’, that is, they pay more attention to the actual values that are on offer (Boyle 2003). Some organizations – Greenpeace, for example – have always turned to actions that would get them the necessary media attention – in other words, are spectacular and visually interesting – but never at the detriment

The (re)construction of the services  71 of the actual aims of the organization. The same can be said for some mass services – for example, health insurers may actually do well to avoid a straightforward exploitation of the anxieties of their potential clients. There have always been services that believe that this kind of image building cannot but hinder them from establishing a good name. In the Netherlands, for instance, the freedom to choose one’s own school has long been an important theme. This is due to a longstanding Dutch tradition of governmental institutionalization along religious lines of its system of education, into so-called ‘pillarized’ schools. But, generally speaking, schools in the Netherlands were not expected to perform ‘public’ recruiting methods when focusing on the parents of potential pupils. The Secondary School describes how it doesn’t expect to succeed through direct mail – ‘It creates such a negative image. Are they that desperate for new students?’ Moreover, it also states that the local newspaper should be avoided. Except, of course, to post practical news such as the registration schedules and open house dates and ‘whenever we have some good news to announce’. (student field report: The Secondary School 2000) But circumstances changed. It seems that these tactful recruitment strategies were put aside with relative ease when demographic figures showed the decrease in average family size among the native Dutch, and among the religious Dutch in particular. On the one hand, and encouraged by the relatively large family sizes among some of the migrant populations in the Netherlands, some schools began focusing their recruitment strategies on ‘alternative’ populations. On the other hand, some schools that found themselves situated in so-called ‘black’ neighbourhoods – that is, neighbourhoods where migrant groups appeared to be overrepresented – turned to the media to advertise their efforts at ‘interculturalization’ (Glastra et al. 2000). They presumably did this to also attract white, middle-class Dutch pupils, and to avoid becoming ‘black’ schools. Regulating the first physical contact But, once the clients start showing up, many services insist on thresholds that somehow keep the first contact under control. They do this in various ways. First, and because it is assumed that ‘everyone’ has an Internet connection and a telephone these days, most organizations make generous use of these means of communication to do this. In fact, many service providers, including former government services such as cable service, the water works and public utilities can basically only be reached via telephone or the Internet. One of the consequences of this development is that no one knows where to actually physically find these organizations. This is especially true when their network goes ‘down’. Sometimes, and second, many services handle this issue with ‘time’. Some services, such as the emergency room in a hospital, must be available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Other organizations, however, create their own fixed hours such as the opening hours of stores and public transportation schedules.

72  The (re)construction of the services Health care sector services, which attract large numbers of clients – general practitioners, outpatient clinics, community health centres – often make use of a mix. They arrange their initial contacts via a central switchboard or the Internet, but they may also have office hours, or even arrange for individual appointments. The latter are usually set up to provide individual clients with some control of their own. A third way to manage this issue is by means of the actual physical site (Brand 1994) of the facility. Sometimes it is assumed that everyone knows the location of the building where a particular organization can be found and that the clients can actually figure out how to get there. However, some population-oriented institutions cannot afford to take their accessibility into consideration when they move to a specific location, let alone afford to behave like their commercial counterparts, and take the prime locations. Contemporary rationalization goals have led to some unintentional effects, in this respect, particularly in the public sector. The clients may certainly be ‘helped’ by the wide range of medical specializations that the contemporary hospital has on offer after its expansion  – read: merger – has taken place. The clients may even acknowledge that this extensive assortment can only be realized by a reshuffling of a number of organizations. The fact, however, that these organizations end up needing larger spaces, and move to new buildings that are located ‘in the middle of nowhere’, may also cause some inconveniences to these clients. The transportation repercussions for them, but also for the friends and relatives visiting them, can be quite considerable. In other cases, the advantages may end up outweighing the disadvantages. This was the case with those Dutch higher education institutions that consolidated all of their departments to one location, following the example of similar institutions abroad. Sometimes, however, it is the proximity of the organization’s location that counts. The secondary school likes to be ‘in the neighbourhood’. It realizes that those parents who do have a choice consider the distance their kids have to bicycle to school important. At this age, Dutch children start going to school by themselves. (student field report: The Secondary School 2000) And so does the physical appearance of their building. The school’s research also showed that parents seemed to value the physical aspects of the building (‘light’, ‘clean’, ‘modern’). For instance, a small building for the first-year pupils scored especially high. (student field report: The Secondary School 2000) Organizations may even try to impress their clients with the symbolic meaning that can be attached to their physical entrance. Even the most modern courthouses have pontifical entrances to reinforce their authority. Their service workers may

The (re)construction of the services  73 not be aware of these aspects of their organization, but often they make use of them as a matter of course. Third, the services may expressly manipulate the access to their services ‘by hand’. Doormen or security personnel, for instance, are expressly instructed to prevent uninvited guests from setting foot inside. Their ‘Can I help you?’ often goes hand-in-hand with ‘Are you looking for something?’ or ‘May I ask you where you are heading?’ And, again, this same goal can also be reached by physical arrangements. The asylum-seekers centre is located a bit outside the city, near a sports complex and an industrial park. The bus stops near the fenced-in terrain. One observes people who obviously know the way, presumably people who work there and asylum seekers. The visitor who gets past the main gate, however, only figures out where the main building is after some searching. That is where the reception desk is, as well. What one notices almost immediately is that all the doors in the reception area are marked ‘no admittance’. Someone from reception accompanies you to the innermost part of the building where you finally get to talk to the professional service worker you have come to see. (field notes)

Selecting clients: the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at the front door This activity becomes relevant when the clients actually ‘knock at the service’s front door’. In fact, there is not a single service any more that does not have a selection process. Sometimes this is manifested physically as well, as with the doormen we noted earlier, or with an unwelcoming entrance (Katz et al. 1992). In many cases, however, this selection – or ‘yes’ or ‘no’ at the front door – takes place behind the scenes and the clients are not even aware of it. Risk selection Commercial mass services, in particular, have expanded their risk selection efforts enormously over the past few decades. This shift was pioneered by the financial services. In practice, it involves amassing large amounts of data on individual clients and being able to permanently access these files. Its explicit aim is to sort out those people who are considered a risk to the organization. Financial services may even be slapped on the wrist if they don’t do this kind of preparatory work. Accordingly, defaulters and debtors are being registered and blacklisted on a global scale. In fact, these clients appear to have lost their right to a free choice. The renowned cultural philosopher Zygmunt Bauman even suggests that it is the organization’s explicit goal ‘to confirm their reliability as clients and choosers … and to sift out … those incapable of choice … before damage is done or resources wasted’ (Bauman 1998: 51). And, although there has always been some debate about the discriminatory nature of such procedures, the amassing of these kinds of data and having permanent access to them has become an essential aspect

74  The (re)construction of the services of the monitoring practices of many services. In the world of Dutch social security, these financial check-ups are now performed as a matter of course. To other services, however, it is not the financial risks that matter. They are more interested in the more practical risks they may encounter, whenever they allow ‘notorious’ clients to enter their services. People who have had conflicts at work, or are known to have addictions, or who have been perceived as rude or even violent, may discover sooner or later that they have been put on a black list by a particular organization. They will thereafter be denied entry at the front door. Many services still rely on the professional intuitions of the service professionals who meet their potential clients ‘at the door’, to find out whom to admit and whom to exclude from the service. In the end, however, this sort of informal selection may very well be experienced as discrimination because this kind of selection may actually be quite badly informed, insofar as it focuses on the looks and manners of people. Moreover, the mutual recognition of ‘our kind of people’ may also be involved, here, and this also may tacitly exclude everyone else. Regulating access Most services, especially those in the non-profit sector, do not profile their risk selection to this extent. On the contrary, their selection is often presented as a method for regulating access to their particular service. That is why automatic telephone help desks have become quite popular in the service world, despite the obvious disadvantages for the client. The automatic phone answering services often provide various options – if you want information about … please press 3 … – which is primarily how the service-providing organization manages to guard its own time (all the lines seem to always be busy). They don’t take the clients’ time into consideration (or their telephone bills) and often their specific questions even less so. (cf. also Landauer 1995: 139) Sometimes a client who calls may get a real live service provider on the line because it is in the best interests of the organization. The Dutch police announced two important phone numbers to the general public. The first is the well-known general emergency number 112 (i.e., the Dutch version of 999). This number doesn’t just give access to the police, but also the ambulance service and fire department, and should only be used in emergencies. The second number – in the Netherlands it is 0900 8844 – is meant to handle all other questions. In both instances, the people answering the phone sit behind the scenes from the client’s perspective and make use of a comprehensive computer infrastructure, which provides information on ‘suspicious circumstances’. It also provides instructions for various types of conversation. Some callers will be transferred to another service professional ‘behind the scenes’.

The (re)construction of the services  75 In the above example, these automated processes of selection and classification tend to merge into one integrated process, and we can also see this happening elsewhere. With some services, these combined selection and classification efforts are essentially performed on a face-to-face basis with the clients. A medical emergency service usually performs a kind of triage. Those who are not seriously injured and those who do not need immediate treatment can wait for further assistance; but there are also those who must be treated immediately; and there are those who are the hopeless cases for whom treatment no longer matters. In the Netherlands, a similar combination of the selection and classification processes guide the elderly, the chronically sick and even those who are temporarily dependent to the various kinds of care. Since a few years ago, this process is now taken care of by a separate Central Assessment Office, with regional offices around the country. These regional offices are expected to make ‘objective’ and ‘independent’ decisions regarding the specific demands of individual patients, and to also consider the urgency of their situation. This agency was established by the Dutch national government with a threefold objective. First, it was to regulate the clients’ admittance to the immense variety of services that currently is on offer. Second, it was to ensure equity and a ‘just allocation’ for each client. And, third, it was expected that this procedure would moderate the scarcities in health care and manage the waiting lists as well. (student field report: Central Assessment Office 2006) In these centralized offices, automation is considered quite inevitable these days.

Client classification: ‘what are we going to do?’ This client classification usually involves the performance of assessments to establish the problem and also the treatment one will subsequently receive, once one has been accepted by the organization as a client. This phase is receiving more attention than ever before from most of the services. As a part of the current reconstruction efforts, many services are presently considering a greater diversification of what they have on offer. But, even more importantly in this context, they also believe that a proper classification can adequately regulate the admission of their clients to the variety of processes or ‘streams’ they have produced to accommodate this client diversity. Accordingly, most services are utilizing some sort of ‘classification’ at the beginning of their processes of service delivery. Depending on their core services, these efforts may, however, differ widely. Some services may try to standardize most of their classifications and perform them primarily behind the scenes. Other services may actually do the same as far as the standards are concerned but rely much more on the discretion of their service professionals, and basically do their classification work ‘by hand’. And, third, a service may allow considerable space

76  The (re)construction of the services for the contributions of their clients and may perform its classifications ‘faceto-face’ with its clients as well. In all of these cases, it now appears to be the services themselves who are in command. We have a menu! Many mass services, especially the commercial ones, have chosen a standard list of choices, in other words, a menu. They often strive for an extensive standardization of their assortment. We recognize these types of decision-making pattern in restaurants, but customers can also make their own choices from a long list of options in travel agencies, in IKEA and in supermarkets. These choices are generally determined beforehand by the organization itself. Some mass services simply compress their entire process of service delivery into one single classification act that is performed by the clients themselves. All of the activities that follow in the course of the process of service delivery are then dependent upon this first meeting between the organization and its client. Mail-order houses, for instance, have been distributing catalogues since they were first established, to inform their customers about the options they have on offer. The clients can then make their choices at home and place an order through the mail. This order will either be authorized or not by the company. This basic process remains the same when access via the Internet is provided. The transaction is usually tacitly completed by the organization, by the physical delivery of the products to the home. In many of these instances, access to the organization is regulated via a call centre. Moreover: Some phone-order companies give the entire responsibility for an order to a single agent, the person who answers the telephone. With the help of the computer, this person is familiar with the inventory, is knowledgeable about the product, and interacts with the customer from beginning to end. If there is a problem, the single agent can resolve it. (Landauer 1995: 156–57) But even this person can be replaced by a machine. Some Internet search engines and interactive websites do exactly this. Moreover, the latter claim to also inform their clients about the progress of the various processes behind the scenes during the course of the transaction. ‘Through lots of back-office integration the consumer gains direct access to databases … allowing them to track their orders. The function of the site is [then] to involve the consumer in the organization itself’ (Miller and Slater 2000: 151). ‘The legislator writes …’ Many selection bureaucracies – we already saw this in Chapter 3 – actively seek out options to eventually convert their entire classification process into a computerized decision-making process (Bovens 2003). There also, the restrictions on

The (re)construction of the services  77 manual practices have been increasing rapidly. See, for instance, a random glimpse into the workings of the Dutch social security system, which determines who and why someone is entitled to a social security benefit or a benefit in natura. The Dutch Law on Work and Income stipulates that the Social Security office shall concentrate on the execution of its core service, by which it means determining a person’s right to receive basic social security benefits in the case of long-term unemployment and/or the absence of other personal income sources. But the law also anticipates that the Social Security office will actively play a part in the return of its clients to the labour market. On paper, this so-called reintegration process is even given priority. The entitlement of an individual client to the intensive coaching that is involved with this, however, is carefully stipulated by this law. This process is in large part standardized and determined by computerized decision-making. The individual contacts must first be rated with the help of a so-called ‘odds meter’ (Kansmeter). For every individual job-seeker the ‘odds’ of finding a job are established, on the basis of a number of various criteria – educational level, work experience, social skills, physical and psychological limitations. Accordingly, his or her employability is presented in terms of various phases. People in phase 1 are deemed capable of finding work on their own and thus need no further support; while people in phase 4 are classified as unemployable and would thus automatically remain in the ‘card files’ (or computer system). Currently, Social Security has been officially mandated to work as intensely with these people as they already have been doing with those they classified in levels 2 and 3. These clients undergo a second ‘uniform qualification assessment’ (Kwint), which is again based on a standard decision-making process. This assessment is supposed to refine the insights regarding their actual employment opportunities. Based on these results, it is then determined whether they qualify for certain kinds of individual coaching or collective training. The actual performance of the latter is now handled by external organizations, as these activities have been outsourced. (student field report: Social Security Report 2001) In many of these cases, a certain amount of ‘hands on’ activity, involving some discretion by the involved service professionals, is unavoidable in spite of the computerized automations. Evaluations that reveal one’s ‘distance from the labour market’ do not readily fit into a standardized decision tree. Some other evaluations have a decidedly professional character. This is certainly the case with the Dutch Disability Act. The medical evaluation involving one’s disability claims are still very important to this law, and it is still performed ‘by hand’. The employer is legally obligated to do his best to ‘reintegrate’ an employee who is unable to return from sick leave on his or her own. It is only after an employer has fulfilled his obligation, and the company doctor has determined

78  The (re)construction of the services that the reintegration has failed, and after one year of sick leave, that the individual employer is permitted to apply for the Disability Act, which offers the employee welfare benefits when he or she is unable to return to work. It is only then that the selection bureaucracy gets involved. The organization can access the necessary existing files, but it also has to establish whether, or to what degree, an individual applicant has a right to welfare benefits. This procedure depends mostly on a more or less ‘manual’ evaluation of the remaining physical and psychiatric capacities of the employee. This assessment relies on the professional discretion of a qualified insurance doctor (verzekeringsgeneeskundige). Then there is the evaluation of the employee’s earning capacity. This last evaluation is performed by a labour expert (arbeidsdeskundige) who determines the level of the benefits. This evaluation, however, is performed by means of a complicated computerized decision-making process, which includes all sorts of ‘possible functions’ and the related ‘workload’ and ‘wages’. With the help of this machine, the employment expert matches these ‘possible functions’ with the data supplied by the applicant and by the insurance doctor. In the end, the match that turns up is translated into the ‘remaining earning capacity’ of the individual claimant. The level of someone’s welfare benefits is ultimately determined by reversing this percentage. Thus, an earning capacity of 20 per cent or less turns into a benefit that amounts to 80–100 per cent of the wages last earned. (CTSV 2000a, 2000b; IWI 2002) This procedure is fairly standardized and so are the possible outcomes as automated evaluations are gradually replacing the ones that are done ‘by hand’, with the consistent exception of the Insurance Doctors’ work. During the procedure, the applicants simply have to wait for a decision. If the procedure calls for it, these clients may be invited for an individual appointment. They are not only required to be on time but also to hand in voluntarily all of the required information, and make sure that the data are correct. They will even be sanctioned by the office if they do not comply. ‘We are professionally responsible’ Naturally, there have been all sorts of professional services that have dealt with these kinds of classification in the past. This is the case in the medical world where diagnostics has always been an important aspect of professional practice (cf. also Abbott 1988). The same can also be said for individualizing expert interventions such as psychotherapy, which has had a long-term admittance procedure for some time, which determines whether treatment is advisable and, if so, what treatment can be offered. During these professional assessments, we move from the problem as experienced by the client to a case that is suitable for treatment, or a ‘professionally manageable’ complaint (De Ridder 1991). At first sight, these assessments are seldom performed without any direct involvement of the individual clients themselves. But, like elsewhere, in this stage

The (re)construction of the services  79 of the process the client is usually required to supply the relevant information in order to enable the professionals to make a proper decision. They are only presented as private people with lives of their own insofar as it serves the assessment of their case. Moreover, and in the medical sector, in particular, a number of clients have encountered a substantial amount of pressure during this assessment period since some of the decisions are of a life-or-death nature. This also provides a reason why some clients may actually prefer not having to say too much in these decisionmaking processes, although there are always clients who act otherwise. But, even if there is a legal obligation in place, and the so-called informed consent of the client is required, the client’s actual involvement in the decision making usually does not take place until after the medical assessments. The actual decisions are usually made behind the scenes by one single professional or by a professional team. Many of the professional services are well on their way to further standardizing their professional assessments, but as a rule, these standards do take the indispensability of ‘hands on’ professional evaluations for granted. So, there are now plenty of technologies available to perform medical diagnoses – they include, for instance, CAT scans and x-rays – but they are usually only used upon the professionals’ request, and the data they produce are usually also evaluated by these professionals. ‘Our professional jurisdiction should prevail’ With the individualizing expert interventions, the decision-making process relies less on the ‘objective’ collection of data than on the ‘interpretations’ of individual cases by the professionals. Although this particular issue may apply to many other professional classifications as well, with these individualizing classifications in particular, it is now often suspected that the professionals who are involved with them may be biased in their assessments. For instance, it has been demonstrated that, at least until several decades ago, most psychotherapists implicitly employed the so-called YAVIS-criteria (Young, Attractive, Verbally competent, Intelligent, Single) to prescribe more intensive (and more expensive) therapies. Similar discussions are currently taking place regarding the professional assessment and evaluation of people with migrant backgrounds. Here, the comprehensive professional classification systems that in fact have been developed to avoid such tacit discrimination may turn out to be much less objective than expected. For example, there are currently remarkable local variations in the ‘universal’ application of the world-wide standard for psychotherapeutic diagnostics or DSM. Another example of these apparently inevitable flaws regarding individual professional assessments is provided by the education system. The awarding of a certain ‘level’ to an individual pupil, for example, is increasingly based on ‘objectifying’ evaluations of student cognitive performances, such as tests. However, it is also very dependent on the ad hoc professional diagnoses of the teacher. No wonder that many schools will do just about everything to maintain their grip

80  The (re)construction of the services on the related conversations between the professionals and the representatives of their clients: ‘New teachers receive a course in parent-teacher meetings with all of the dos and don’ts’ (student field report: The Secondary School 2000). Personalizing care: the ordinary is different, after all A critical case in this respect is provided by the new personal networks in the health care sector. With the recent developments in this area of organized care there has been much ado about the individualizing aspect of the assessment of new clients. As we have seen in earlier chapters, these personal networks are organized around individual clients. They are even expected to provide the necessary room for the personal preferences and wishes of their clients. At first, these assessments seem to rely heavily on the ordinary choices these clients must make anyway, as a part of their everyday lives – running an ordinary household, in an ordinary house, on an ordinary street, and going to school and work like everyone else. As a consequence, one would naturally expect the personal preferences of the client to provide the essential guidelines to the process. And yet, the actual process may turn out to be much more complicated than that. This consideration may prove to be particularly essential in the cases of people who have never been able to lead lives on their own (see also Chapters 2 and 3). But in many other cases, also, the applicants (or their representatives) may have to be informed in full about the assistance, and about the various options the service has on offer. They may have to be informed, as well, about the legal aspects of their claims, not to mention how all of this is going to be paid for. Sometimes the particular services that are to be involved in an individual client’s personal network need to be informed and spoken to, as well. Prior to the arrival of the new kid in the class, the ‘normal’ school and its teachers may have to be informed about how to deal with it. As a consequence, the personalized negotiation process  – Verbeek (1999) calls it an ‘individualizing dialogue’  – more often than not requires the input of a variety of responsible professionals. They must lead the applicants and their various bystanders through the complications involved. One has to find out at the very beginning of the process to what extent the individual actually deviates from what is seen as normal. An equally important question is how the client – although living a ‘normal life’ – will react in unexpected situations. Again the input of the service professionals is often considered inevitable in these cases, if not by the clients themselves then at least by the services. Moreover, many of these decisions may even be supported by computerized decision-making processes, although they appear to be processed by hand. Individual acquisition: ‘we value a contract!’ One expects the individual services to pay more attention to the (institutional) client’s contributions during their acquisitions. Moreover, one also expects that the greater part of this process will be performed mutually by the service professionals

The (re)construction of the services  81 and their clients. Here, the standard example, as mentioned in Chapter 3, is provided by the interview of the (often expensive) service professionals with their potential ‘patron clients’. The latter, in the end, are also expected to pay for the service. On the one hand, the service’s representative may want to maintain control over the process; on the other hand, he or she is also expected to present the process as mutual. The patron clients are also expected to assess the service themselves. And yet, these patron clients’ contributions may also end up being directed and framed by the service’s representatives. These interviews are sometimes openly used to protect the (financial) interests of the organization. The company can even protect itself in this way against what we earlier called servicing, which implies offering deals that can ultimately damage the reputation of the organization. In fact, both parties – and this includes both the services’ representatives and their patron clients – may eventually feel a need to sign contractual agreements to conclude this initial phase. The patron clients may wish to be assured of the services’ commitment (and liability) in cases where the process goes wrong. Meanwhile, the services’ representatives need the patron clients to be committed to the subsequent transactions. A simple declaration such as ‘We hit it off, so let’s work together’ or ‘We’ll see where this leads us’ has become less common over time with these services. Negotiating voluntary access In the end, it may be only the voluntary associations that offer their prospective members the combination of free access and almost total free choice. But even they will sometimes rely on specific procedures to ensure an ‘appropriate’ clientele. An example is provided by the co-optation rules that are applied by fraternities that insist on maintaining the exclusive character of their membership. New fraternity members are often only accepted after they have been endorsed by a sufficient number of members.

Client transformation: organizing around the core service The transformation phase for producers is the phase where the raw materials are converted into finished products (Mintzberg 1983). The service world currently prefers to use terms like ‘input’, ‘output’ and ‘throughput’, as a part of the current reconstruction processes, but it is obvious that these terms originated in the world of production. The organized performance of the core service and the associated client relations may require a very different approach. Even when various services are performed side by side – that is, various learning trajectories in a school, the various treatments in a hospital, or the innumerable travel destinations – the organization must continue to ensure that, for each specific core service that is to be performed, the clients and the service professionals are properly involved. This is why the organization usually provides some sort of regime that arranges the appropriate times and places for these activities to

82  The (re)construction of the services happen. This regime usually also includes a number of activities that must occur behind the scenes, which support the various professionals working face-to-face with the clients. And finally, it also appears to describe the appropriate behaviour for all parties involved. As a consequence, the clients in particular may find out that, from now on, they are being ‘delivered’ to the organization’s regime. Everything goes like clockwork: the regime associated with supply Mass services assume that the arrangements regarding the actual delivery of the core service can be planned precisely and can thus be easily standardized. The development departments, which operate behind the scenes, are essential in this stage. Moreover, these organizations make use of extensive IT infrastructures and all of the necessary logistic support to ensure that everything goes like clockwork. And, finally, the service-providing aspects that do not fit into the intended course of action – such as client complaints – are ‘rationalized away’ to the boundaries of the organization. Some organizations that provide this relatively simple kind of service are concerned with ‘relieving’ (Normann 1984: 34) the clients of their work – they make repairs, bake the bread, make the clothing, do the wash, cut the hair, let the dog out, baby-sit the kids and provide ready-made meals. They do much of the preparatory work behind the scenes. Meanwhile, however, there are increasingly more services that let their customers do some of the work themselves. Traditional examples of such ‘enabling’ services (Normann 1984: 34) include supermarkets, launderettes and petrol stations. More contemporary examples include do-it-yourself stores and IKEA. Although the organization remains responsible for the production of the assortment, and for the logistical layout that must ensure that everything rolls smoothly, the customers must also contribute. The physical arrangements of these services are very important. The regime of mass services such as IKEA and shopping malls can become a total pre-programmed experience. In some amusement parks, with Disneyland as the prototype, the waiting line for rides is a pre-programmed form of entertainment. Schiphol, the largest airport in the Netherlands, even profiles itself as something more than just a place to wait for incoming or outgoing flights. Accordingly, the so-called ‘Schiphol experience’ tries to make the most of the air travellers’ waiting time, and offers them options such as shopping, visiting the silence centre or going to view the paintings of a seventeenth-century master in a museum. However, in this case the standard client routing is also inspired by some other important considerations. An airport like Schiphol controls the number of passengers processed to and from their flights with the express intention of also providing for the safety of its customers. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in September 2001, these security measures have been reinforced. The travellers already purchased their tickets long ago. Their actual trip begins with the procedures surrounding checking in. After the passengers have been checked and verified, the computer issues a boarding pass. This

The (re)construction of the services  83 procedure is now almost totally automated and can be done by the customers themselves. Then there is the monitoring of passports by customs personnel. This is to ensure that everyone ‘knows’ who you, the passenger, are and to assess whether you should be permitted to board the flight and travel to your destination. Your baggage is checked by security. Finally the shopping and entertainment can begin. But, after this, the airport has also arranged a waiting period in a ‘non-place’, by which we mean a space that actually offers no sensory stimulation; in fact, it is hoped that the customers will calm down here, because there is absolutely nothing else to do, but also because you have been freed of your daily concerns. Then your boarding pass is checked one more time and voilà, you have been totally prepared for the long, boring haul in a sealed aeroplane packed in tight with a lot of other passengers. (after Augé 1995: 1–5) The service professionals are usually in place, and as a rule, they are expected to perform their standard duties. As a consequence, the strengths and weaknesses of this particular system become evident when people and/or situations become anything approaching ‘out of the ordinary’. The people working in the face-toface relationships with the clients must then manage to improvise to master the situation. Moreover, the ‘internal services’ (Normann 1991) between the people who work front stage and their colleagues who work behind the scenes in these situations, may become quite indispensable. The employees of these supportive services often work together in ‘pools’ behind the scenes, in a so-called ‘pooled interdependence’ with the colleagues who are expected to run the show in the face-to-face relationships with the clients. These – clients and professionals alike – are essentially dependent on the effects of this division of labour. It is based on the assumption that ‘everyone’ will eventually benefit from such departments performing certain specialized tasks behind the scenes (Hasenfeld 1983: 132). In airports, for example, these departments behind the scenes include the routine work performed by the catering services for the aeroplanes or by the baggage handlers. They also include less straightforward tasks such as the handling of clients’ complaints. Moreover, whenever issues such as security are involved, these departments’ representatives are kept on alert continuously, and must respond appropriately in times of crisis. Most of the time, however, they must remain very calm and out of sight. Everything according to the rules: the processing regime Selection bureaucracies consider the state of affairs surrounding the procedure essential to their daily routines and their clients are constantly confronted with these rules and regulations, as are the service professionals. This regime is found in the social security sector, the judicial system and inspection agencies. With these services everything that has been described under the heading ‘The legislator writes …’, in the classification phase, also applies to the transformation

84  The (re)construction of the services phase we now describe. Here we will focus on some additional aspects of the regime. First, as far as the clients are concerned, the interest that the services have in their clients is particularly selective. The procedure determines which of a client’s characteristics are relevant and which are not. Accordingly, the service professionals try to avoid the rest of the data. An individual client may initially be encouraged to tell the ‘whole story’, but in the course of the process, these individual clients are eventually transformed into the categories provided by the procedure. Second, the physical arrangement of the transaction not only gives form to the position of both the service professionals and the clients, it is often involved with issues of surveillance. As we have seen earlier, the clients’ duties with regard to the relevant procedures are usually quite clear cut. Meanwhile, a doorman and the design of the waiting areas at a social security office, for instance, may also establish the relevance of a specific kind of ‘good behaviour’. Today’s consultation rooms even have an alarm, in case a client becomes aggressive. Generally speaking, there are usually quite a few physical arrangements in place to ensure that the clients do the right thing. A courtroom, in particular, is the site of a completely ‘organized’ ritual where the roles of everyone involved are very clearly allocated. The clients of the criminal courts are usually escorted in by their custodians. As mentioned earlier, criminal proceedings also include special arrangements where the client ‘can be kept at the court’s disposal’, as long as the legal case remains open. Third, we saw earlier that these organizations relegate a great deal of the actual processing to quite a few human and non-human actors (Law 1994) who operate behind the scenes. The clients may not even be aware of what is going on there, but the mutual co-operation of the various service professionals who work behind the scenes may turn out to be essential for the outcome. However, this work is usually allocated among the various service professionals on the basis of its content. And, like any other ‘professionals’, these service professionals all end up concentrating on their own specific little islands. The mutual dependence of their successive contributions can be referred to as ‘sequential interdependence’ (Hasenfeld 1983: 132). This means that, as a rule, the service professionals who work further down the line are simply expected to wait for their predecessors to complete their contribution. Although ‘timeliness’ is usually considered essential to the proper processing of a ‘case’, this typical kind of interdependence often causes delays (CTSV 2000a). Everything as it should be: organizing around a professional core Professional services working face-to-face usually arrange their worlds so that a client who has finally made it to this phase is automatically ‘domesticated’ into the process, as part of a typically professional regime. This is especially the case, of course, in situations where clients physically participate in the organizations.

The (re)construction of the services  85 In these cases, the protection of professionalism often means that the organization physically imposes its own arrangements. The result is a series of regulated movements of both the service professionals and their clients in space and time. These regulations are reinforced by the current trend toward flexible streamlining, which involves increasing the division of labour among the various service professionals involved. For example, simple transactions are separated from the more complicated activities. Supportive practices – for instance, diagnostic techniques – are reorganized into separate departments or ‘pools’ that work behind the scenes. But even then the activities remain distinctly focused on the professionals’ expert interventions. One example is the organization of the pre- or the peri-operative care around the operating theatres. This is set apart from the actual surgeon’s work. Before a patient goes into the operating room, (s)he is not only helped into the appropriate clothing, but is prepared in other ways as well. For instance, an individual inventory of the narcotics and other medications required for the procedure is made. After the surgeons have scrubbed their hands, they enter a totally prepared setting where a team of specialists awaits them; the necessary equipment and instruments are there, as well, and so is the totally prepared client. Everyone is ready to commence. (student field report: The Hospital 2003) Despite their distinctly professional character, most of these organizations serve large numbers of clients these days, which means managing an immense computerized infrastructure. In hospitals, we witness the updating and filing of clients’ electronic dossiers as well as the automated administrative settling of clients’ accounts. Once the medical procedures are completed, the relevant data are automatically transferred to the ‘pooled’ financial administrative department, somewhere behind the scenes. In all of these cases, the professionals remain the key figures, whatever reconstructions may have otherwise taken place. Moreover, the co-operation among professional peers still appears to be self-evident except, of course, when the ‘accepted’ jurisdiction of a professional specialist appears to be violated by others (Kruijthof 2005). As a rule, the co-ordination is still based on the specialization of the professionals. However, this may now also be focused on a particular kind of treatment or even on a particular group of patients. In the latter case, the professionals are required to mutually co-operate and even to co-operate with ‘relevant others’ who are part of their team. As a rule, this kind of complex and simultaneous co-operation relies on the ‘reciprocal interdependence’ of these various kinds of professional (Hasenfeld 1983: 132). They are all working simultaneously and must continuously adjust to each other because the output of one is often the input for the other. And thus, a regular process of ‘mutual adjustment’ and ‘consultation’ is usually required. However, this form of direct co-operation usually also involves a distinct but often ‘tacit’ hierarchy, between seniors and juniors, and between dominant and

86  The (re)construction of the services subordinate professional disciplines. This hierarchy often manifests itself in the smallest of details. Who are ‘allowed’ to choose their own schedules and who are not? Do the medical specialists meet their colleagues on a regular basis? When do they visit their patients ‘at the bedside’ and when are they on call? The same hierarchy is also revealed, however, in the blaming circuit that arises during (or after) crises and calamities. Who should have intervened in the case of a heart failure? Who is responsible for what has been written in a patient’s dossier (cf. also Kruijthof 2005)? Ultimately, the client’s itinerary seems to be totally determined by what the professional circuits deem necessary. Sometimes patients are physically able to move around from place to place on their own. If that is not possible, they are transported. The transport will probably be arranged by the organization itself. Moreover, the clients are expected to keep their appointments and stick to the rules. You arrive in a hospital to be treated. You have to register before you can enter the waiting room to wait your turn. You have to have your ID and insurance cards with you at all times and you should not forget your birth date. You have to wait for the doctor to arrive and you shouldn’t be surprised if you’ve never seen him before, even if you have been here before. You have to disrobe and leave your clothes behind in a locker. And then you have to sit still or lay down during the treatment procedure. (field notes) Frequent appointments or long-term treatments, however, mean that patients often end up acquiring their own routines. The weekly appointment with the therapist or the specialist, or going for an x-ray, or visiting another diagnostic department in the hospital, or just coming in for your monthly check-ups, they all have their own routine. Moreover, these regular schedules legitimize the physical presence of the clients in the organization. To the question ‘Are you looking for something?’ they can confidently respond ‘I have an appointment with Dr Peters!’ And for those who believe this only applies to the invasive expert interventions and not to the individualizing ones we discussed earlier: think again. Schools, for instance, have schedules, well-planned movements from one building to another, the regular position of the teacher at the head of a class and assigned seating, although the latter is no longer common nowadays. And what do you think of commands such as ‘Please be on time’; ‘Let’s not have everyone talking at once’; ‘Hats and jackets off and don’t forget to turn off your cell phones’? These clients are obviously also being disciplined by the organization. And, some of the typical co-operation issues between the various professionals can be established here, as well. The client’s participation as an operational norm In the actual co-production of individual services – consultancy, for example – the clients participating in the core service may be the patron clients themselves. But quite often there are ‘participant’ clients in this phase, as well, who in their turn

The (re)construction of the services  87 ‘committed to’ the process by the patron clients. In fact, the actual client relationship between these ‘participant’ clients and the ‘participant’ service professionals can be very much like the ones performed by any other professional service. The participant clients are encouraged by the patron clients to undergo individual coaching or take a workshop together with their colleagues. Moreover, they are confronted with the consequences of the initial service agreements between ‘their’ patrons and the service providers’ leadership when they do. They may not have had any real say in the matter. Moreover, the participant service professionals may also feel forced to work under the regime of the patron client, when the actual process of service delivery reaches its operational phase. An example of this is provided by the junior consultants who participate in a process of organizational change and who are expected to work ‘on location’, accordingly. And yet, even in such cases, one can expect that the patron client is still the one who will ensure that the agreements made in the beginning are enforced. Moreover, the actual process of service delivery may end up being monitored continuously by other stakeholders, who are also involved in the project. Large-scale architectural projects often involve a situation where the architect ends up becoming totally embedded in a network of interested parties. When observed from the perspective of the final product, this chain may consist of the building’s end users, the facility managers, the owners, financiers, developers of the property, the suppliers of building material, the construction companies and all of the relevant governmental parties, including spatial planners and suppliers of various permits. The service professionals themselves usually try to manage this chain by means of a ‘core team’ of their own. This ‘productive core’ usually includes not only the architects themselves but also various project managers and consultants as well. (cf. also Bouman 1996: 81) Quite often the actual state of affairs of these ‘individual’ projects is determined by numerous other stakeholders as well. Everything under control: life in total institutions It was argued earlier in this book that in intramural arrangements providing care and surveillance, the organization actually assumes control and arranges the lives of its clients down to the minutest details. The long-term transactions that sometimes occur in these arrangements can even be seen as a typical product of physical domestication. For the clients all of this is unavoidable, although the services are often inclined to present it as something that is done ‘for the clients’ own good’. The first step is that a physical separation is made between the inside and outside worlds. The doors are often literally locked. In the past, this separation was often visibly reinforced by institutional clothing – the prison uniform, institutional

88  The (re)construction of the services apparel. This, however, has come to be seen as an unnecessary infringement of the clients’ individuality. Meanwhile, the service professionals also shed their uniforms. Second, a prison automatically establishes firm schedules, with its daily routines of going to the cafeteria, work, the fitness centre and bed. This is also the case, however, in intramural nursing homes and psychiatric facilities. Service professionals sometimes even consider this ‘structuring’ as an essential activity. More often than not, they will expressly try to react in ‘a single voice’, and in the name of the institution, to collectively uphold the regime whenever irregularities arise. Even if this regulated lifestyle automatically frees both the service professionals and the inmates within the institution’s walls from all sorts of daily worries, the clients may still experience this as unqualified control. Incorporating care and surveillance into the clients’ lives As far as the personal networks are concerned, they have a specific starting point. As a rule, they try to abide as much as possible by the definition of an acceptable – or even a desirable – lifestyle as lived by the clients. Accordingly, these networks are – like in normal life – created and maintained around individual clients and their immediate surroundings. The regime is the client’s own, and, on the one hand, one could even go so far as to say that this is also observed by the service professionals. On the other hand, however, the clients’ ‘ownership’ is definitely limited by these same clients’ dependence on surveillance and care. An extreme example of the latter is provided by the institutional networks that – in the sphere of criminal justice, for instance – are arranged around specific groups or individuals, although the participants have never requested this. A Dutch project called ‘Justice in the Neighbourhood’ consists of a local network in which educational facilities, (psychiatric) health care facilities, the police, child protection agencies and legal institutions co-operate to focus on young delinquents-to-be, although the latter are certainly not expected to apply for these services (Boutellier 2001). Similar networks are also established when someone ‘on parole’ is again allowed to move around freely. It is simply assumed that this person must be kept under surveillance as well. But this observation can be generalized, to an extent. Most personal networks providing care – we have already seen this in Chapters 2 and 3 – are also concerned with surveillance, by definition. In the home-care sector, this so-called ‘signalling function’ is often seen by the organization as a natural preoccupation, particularly for those service professionals who are actually travelling from one client’s home to another. (Gastelaars et al. 2002; Gastelaars 2003a and 2003c) A similar kind of signalling is also practised by those personal networks where surveillance is prevalent. The latter may even provide their clients with electronic ankle bracelets or camera surveillance. These clients are quite aware of this supervision, as a rule. The type of institutional co-operation that is required for the service professionals who participate in this situation may produce a fairly loosely coupled structure, in the end. The organized parties who contribute may be busy with numerous

The (re)construction of the services  89 other activities at the same time, and the same may very well be true for those who contribute to the process in the clients’ private sphere, such as the people who jump in to help, and who belong to the clients’ informal networks. That is why this kind of co-operative effort has become especially vulnerable to sudden crises. Who is to be held responsible when things start going wrong? Do the various services and their staff hold themselves accountable when things go unnoticed? Or does it mean that this responsibility is ultimately left up to the clients’ surroundings or even to the clients themselves? Offering a collective foundation for individual commitment Most voluntary associations, of course, depend on the unifying effects of a mission or a collective ideology. But, to their members, they also seem to create a collective atmosphere – or ‘corporate culture’ – in their everyday practices. Thus, for those involved, sports clubs can be characterized as having a family atmosphere, while to others they may resemble a gang. Meanwhile, political parties are determined by their party culture and by their proven ability to stimulate the collective commitment of their members. This common zeal may have to be reinforced, time and again, by celebratory gatherings, general meetings or protests, not to mention the collective release of emotions among the winners and the losers after the match or after another collective venture. When this process is successful, the organizations’ participants may actually be willing to join a fairly rigid regime. They may even comply on a voluntary basis with elaborate sets of rules. Every soccer team somehow complies with the rules of the game and the regulations that are laid down by the league. Training is required, as well as a certain amount of discipline, and teamwork speaks for itself. If everything goes according to plan, the players keep each other in line both during and after the matches. Moreover, soccer clubs usually have a distinct hierarchy among players and teams as well as a rigid demarcation between men and women. Organizations like Scouting are even essentially characterized by the discipline they have on offer, but political parties, also, may have reasons of their own to develop a strong sense of internal discipline. And yet, the voluntary association is the only kind of service where the participants ‘own’ the regime.

Winding up (and starting over again) Producers in this phase mention the distribution of their products, by which we usually mean the delivery or the physical movement of the product to the client. It is striking that many producers do not start discussing the concept of ‘service’ until these activities are actually due. In many cases, it is not until this phase, either, that the first face-to-face meetings between the organizations and their clients take place. To the services, this phase may not be so different from the others

90  The (re)construction of the services we have discussed here, but they may also want to wind up their relationships with their clients in an explicit way. To them, this phase concerns two questions: When have we done with our core service? And: Does the organization want its clients to return? The answers to these questions depend to a large extent, of course, on the ‘voluntariness’ of the clients’ commitment to the organization. Members of voluntary associations may simply decide to quit. For these organizations, and also for those mass services that are dependent on the free choice of their clients, the effects of their clients’ decisions may not be so simple. Efficiency considerations may even play an important role among such mass services, to establish arrangements such as help desks and complaints departments that can be expected to make amends in individual cases. But even with these mass services, the actual leave-taking may also be handled in a direct face-to-face situation – clearing tables in restaurants, referring customers to the check-outs, the lights coming on in the movie theatre, the last round in a bar – when the clients are tacitly requested to leave the premises. But the organization should avoid being rude, as it usually wants its clients to return. Many of the professional services, however, work toward a pre-determined result – a successful operation, a diploma, a therapy where both parties are satisfied with the results or an organizational change the contracting parties can agree on. But because this is often literally an end result that cannot be guaranteed, some kind of after care is often considered desirable by these services. Moreover, even these services may want their clients to return. The hospital may expressly accommodate its chronic patients. Educational institutions may establish alumni associations or planned meetings for follow ups. Individual services may set up meetings to determine how the service relationship can be extended. This is all part of their ‘management of the client relationship’ (Maister 1993). In many cases, the premature departure of one’s clients can even have a detrimental effect, if not to the client then to the organization itself. For instance, it has been observed in some secondary schools that insisting on students assuming their right to individual choice may inadvertently stimulate a sense of noncommitment among these same students. Now that schools are being rated on graduation rates, they have begun to intensify their contacts with these students, and, if need be, with their parents, especially when certain students are skipping classes or threatening to drop out. And yet, there are currently many services, professional and otherwise, that are mainly interested in getting rid of their clients after the transaction has been completed. For instance, many public services now employ ‘limiting’ contracts, and hospitals try to hasten the exit process of their outpatients, as well as of those (elderly) patients who may need further care after their hospital treatment has been completed. Moreover, it may not be totally accidental that the selection bureaucracies’ enforcement departments have grown significantly of late, while social security has intensified its battles against fraud. The fact that this final phase of the process of service delivery often seems to amount to the somewhat frayed seam of the actual process of service delivery,

The (re)construction of the services  91 may even have encouraged the situation whereby – in the name of a new clientorientation  – most of our services in and around the public domain now have added a client evaluation to their primary process, although they attempt to be quite selective in the subjects that the clients are consulted on. For instance, they avoid questioning the clients directly about the activities performed behind the scenes, or about the ‘professional quality’ of the organization’s performance. The evaluation criteria are often expressly related to the ‘organization’ of the process and to the relational aspects that affect the direct interactions with the clients, involving their call centres and the various face-to-face interactions that are scheduled by the organizations. The famous schedule designed by Zeithaml et al. (1990) provides an example. It looks at items such as accessibility and the physical image of the organization, at the verifiable speed with which a company reacts to a concrete question (‘so many minutes after a 999 call’) and at the reliability with which it responds (‘Are the trains on time?’). They also look at the clients’ perceptions of the courtesy extended to them by the service professionals. They want to know whether the clients think that they are attentive and showing a genuine interest in the issues they raise. Moreover, these criteria are usually designed to fall within the competence of the organization to make amends. The invariable aim of this exercise is that it encourages the organization to focus even better on the desires of those clients it wants to hold on to (and to establish more accurately which clients it should not be interested in).

Conclusion: the inevitable complexity of the service chain We can establish here that, although the core services may be put under pressure in various ways, they remain essentially the same. But, having said this, the current reconstruction of the processes of service delivery we have described may have a profound impact on the actual course of events associated with a particular service. As we have seen, the selection and classification phases are often physically separated from the rest of the primary process of service delivery. This may not only encourage the impact of juridical form on the organization’s everyday negotiations, it may also complicate the actual routing of the client. Moreover, in many organizations the computerized infrastructure and many of its other support services are now considered indispensable to the services. This may add to the services’ complexity, as a matter of course. Due to the ever continuing attempts to specify all kinds of separate tasks, there are new services being introduced all the time. An unstoppable process appears to be set in motion, this way, in which ‘services generate services’, and no one appears to be able to prevent it. As a consequence, the actual processes of service delivery may evolve into an ever lengthening service chain that may eventually even involve an ever growing number of separate organizations. Where

92  The (re)construction of the services outsourcing is put into practice, for instance, an entirely new client relationship may be put in place, in which patron clients and representatives of the client services negotiate a service-level agreement that consolidates the service arrangement with their ‘outsourced’ partners. The outsourcing itself, however, will only end up reinforcing another tendency that now also can be observed with most of the services. The complete cycle – of recruitment, selection, classification and so on – will be repeated over and over again at each individual stage. All of this may have a profound impact on the ‘manageability’ of the primary process of service delivery to all parties involved. As Barbara Czarniawska (1992: 36) has pointed out, an organization becomes complex in the subjective sense of the word ‘when no one can sensibly and comprehensibly account for all of it’. As we will see in the following chapters, this subjective complexity is not only true for the clients who participate. It also has become a part of the experience of the service professionals, not to mention the managers who are held responsible. The day-to-day management of this complexity may turn into a prominent issue for all parties involved.

5 ‘Whatever it takes!’ The organizational relevance of professional responsibilities

Conversation with a young medical specialist: Q: What is the most important difference for you between older and younger specialists? R:  It is easier for us to make decisions. Q:  ? R: Well, you know, older doctors … they’ve seen just about everything … and they’ve probably all experienced a case where everything happened contrary to expectations … and so we just kind of force the decision …  (Author’s field notes)

The service professionals at work Service professionals are usually the most visible ‘occupants’ of the services for most clients, although the organizations, themselves, appear to simply take them for granted. When seen from the organization’s perspective, however, the service professionals are responsible for the actual performance of their primary processes of service delivery, on a day-to-day basis. Of course, these service professionals, themselves, have their own personal histories and careers and may just be working for the money or because they enjoy working with their colleagues. In fact, their reasons to ‘identify’ with the services they help deliver may actually vary widely. Yet, they are part of these processes from the very moment they start working with the service, and, as a consequence, they are expected to somehow perform. These service professionals will basically be presented here as individuals who are endowed with a specific set of knowledge and skills that can be relevant to the various processes of service delivery we discuss. This set of knowledge and skills is called their professional repertoire. The same concept can also denote the specific set of requirements that is required by the organization they work with. An individual’s repertoire may very well be considered essential to the actual performance of the organization’s specific core service, but, besides these so-called core repertoires, we will also pay attention to the specific impact that the complexity of the services has on the de facto repertoires of the various service professionals that work with them.

94  Professional responsibilities It can be expected, by now, that, due to the current complexity of services, most service professionals may have to behave ‘professionally’ in a number of new ways. For instance, there now are the relational skills that should enable the service professionals to effectively deal with a growing variety of clients, and the process skills that they may need to successfully cope, not only with the various co-operation efforts that are now required but also with the many power effects involved, for instance, with the quite incessant organizational changes. As a consequence, the traditional notions of professionalism are currently being reframed, and new notions of professionalism can be expected to claim their organizational spaces. In the past, the organizational recognition of such professional spaces was usually framed in terms of two extremes, with, on one end, the organization granting an almost total professional autonomy, and, on the opposite end, a complete organizational domestication. But of late this classical dichotomy has come under duress, particularly because of the specific ‘responsibilities’ most of today’s service professionals have to face. These responsibilities are not only related to their direct negotiations with ‘live’ clients, but also to the fact that they may be required to explicitly and publicly account for their professional actions, after the deed is done. On the one hand, one cannot expect professionals who are totally domesticated by their organizations to take on this kind of responsibility. On the other hand, however, it may also turn out to be quite ‘inconvenient’ to reconcile this kind of public accountability with the kind of ‘professional autonomy’ that has so often been automatically assumed for the ‘elevated professional experts’ that were traditionally recognized as such. But before pursuing this argument any further, the first sections of this chapter will be dedicated to the variety of skills that are now relevant both to the various services and their professional inhabitants. The repertoires that may be assembled out of these assorted skills may not only involve the performance of the core services but of all of the other aspects of process delivery as well.

First think, then act: knowledge work and cognitive skills Knowledge work and cognitive skills continue to play an unmistakable role in many services. What we are talking about here is, first, the ‘independent’ knowledge work that lies at the basis of the material rationalizations we discussed earlier (see also Chapter 2). Second, there are the analytical abilities that are important to the development and standardization work that is usually associated with the flexible streamlining of the services (see also Chapter 4). Third, creativity is now often considered indispensable to the marketing efforts that many of the services now engage in. And, finally, deliberation skills play a significant role because of the classifications that most services perform. Knowledge skills Knowledge skills, for instance, involve the ability to think systematically about certain activities or about the solution to a problem. They are essential in all

Professional responsibilities  95 sorts of scientific work but also in developmental activities that occur mostly at a distance from the service’s everyday operations. People in the scientific world consider this distance from day-to-day affairs a guarantee of their professional autonomy or scientific independence. No wonder the latter usually belong to the class of professional experts who work behind the scenes (see Chapter 3). The ‘truly’ scholarly types usually do not need to demonstrate the practical relevance of their work beforehand. In fact, their adherence to the scientific method prevents them from having to do this. Scientific work has its own logic, which is basically associated with the often quite demanding scientific methods related to a specific scientific discipline. They qualify its results. These methods are also relevant to the mutual ‘acknowledgement’ of these results among the scholars. Moreover, most scientific disciplines adhere to a strictly regulated style of publishing, which also means that their work is by definition made public. Formal research presentations and publications actually establish the independence of the scientists by demonstrating the verifiability of their claims. Moreover, in the scientific world, as in the world of art, the intellectual property of the author remains a fundamental notion. Unlike journalists, scientists always publish their work under their own names. However, traditional journalists can also claim ‘the truth’ and the ‘verifiability’ of their statements to be essential for their daily work. Moreover, journalists are usually also monitored by their colleagues to ensure a satisfactory level of ‘objectivity’ and ‘independence’. Among the most important codes for journalists are the rules of ‘one source is no source’ and ‘hearing the other side of the story as well’ and also ‘the separation of facts from opinions’. Accordingly, their work may also be seen as knowledge work, at least in this sense of the word. Development skills The insights produced by such aloof scientific research may very well ensure a stream of practical ‘inventions’ and ‘innovations’ over time. One aspect that scientific scholars themselves rely on, in this specific context, is that of ‘research and development’. The development aspect, in particular, implies that much more effort is required to actually translate the ‘independent’ scientific findings into daily practices. However, and as may be expected, the scientific world is not very keen on performing these processes itself. First of all, the translation of scientific insights into standards and techniques is only acceptable to them when they have been proven in a scientific way. To scientists, a proven technology is evidence based. They usually go so far as to say that this means that it should be scientifically tested. In the terms utilized in Chapter 2, the scientific world demands that formal rationalizations – or ‘tools’ – should be substantiated in scientific terms. Accordingly, and second, the scientific world considers many of the how-to books now in circulation  – for instance among the organizational and management worlds  – to be controversial by definition. At their best, these books are considered dependent on ‘the systematization’ of the ‘practical experiences’ of the author. To most people who call themselves

96  Professional responsibilities scientists, however, this does not constitute evidence-based knowledge. All of this does not rule out, however, some development-oriented operations involving some distinctive analytical skills. The professionals who are expected to perform these operational developments usually perform behind the scenes, like most scientists do as well. The reason for this is that they also require a degree of autonomy to properly practise their development work, but for different reasons. First of all, the development processes themselves are often fairly open-ended in time, despite the deadlines. And, second, even the currently obligatory project plans and research proposals cannot prevent the fact that the eventual outcome of the process cannot be established beforehand. This situation may, again, be considered typical for ‘professional experts who work behind the scenes’. When it comes to the actual implementation of their innovations, however, these same developers may, unlike their ‘purely scientific’ counterparts, fall short when it comes to their exclusive reliance on cognition. Some relational skills may be required as well, if only to convince the potential recipients of the practical significance of the proposed innovation in their specific world. An advertisement for a large IT consultancy firm tells the story of a computer specialist who has developed some new software. He has been trying to sell it in the hallways of the service provider where he works. The man never mentions the innovation itself, instead he promises to save his organization five cents per transaction, and, as it turns out, he is quite right about this. Nobody wants to listen to this nerd, until someone realizes that these five cents actually amount to quite a lot for the organization (‘we make a million transactions per month!’). (field notes) We will return to these relational skills at a later point. Standardization skills Not all development work is as innovative as the above described situation might suggest. It also involves the systematic analysis of pre-existing local practices, with the intention of ‘rationalizing’ them in the technical sense of the word. What are essential to professionals who do this kind of work are the analytical skills that allow them to explicate a process (what are we talking about?), systematize it (how do we frame this?), objectify it (how do we establish our results and make them visible?) and, finally, standardize it (how do we make them manageable for third parties?). In the processes involving the development of professional protocols or a computer-supported decision-making process, this succession of activities is easily identifiable. The same is true with the analyses of current work processes that are part of a Business Process Redesign (BPR) that we will discuss at some length in Chapter 7. They do not innovate but, instead, claim that they can put things in their proper places.

Professional responsibilities  97 These analytical skills are doubtlessly also important to people engaged in the design of the information storage systems that are now so often considered indispensable to the services. These efforts at ‘information management’ have exploded over the last decade, in part thanks to the almost limitless absorption capacities of computers (Takeuchi and Nonaka 1995). In many services this sort of work is left up to the internal techno-structure or to specialized designers who work outside the organization. And again, we are discussing a type of professional expert here who usually works behind the scenes, at least from the perspective of the people who are eventually going to have to work with the standards. The relevant others who may eventually get involved in the application of the latter, often perceive this development work as a sort of behind-the-scenes conspiracy. Information skills Meanwhile, the renewed interest of the services in cognitive skills has come from a totally different angle as well. As we have seen, the day-to-day collection and storage of data is now considered essential to the work the services perform. This information work does not include the development of the relevant systems we discussed above. Rather, it is focused on the actual processing of all sorts of business information, including the ‘strategic’ data that offer insight into the relationship between the organization and its relevant surroundings. Financial analysts are constantly monitoring stock market fluctuations. Organizations involved in economic development work constantly need updated information that will allow them to follow the political and economic developments in countries where they do business. A national immigration service must stay informed about the developments in the countries of origin of various migrant groups, to make accurate assessments regarding individual asylum seekers. There is also the permanent data collection concerning groups that may potentially be ‘at risk’. The clients’ lifestyles and desires may be included here as well. But, as was noted earlier, the clients themselves are also kept up to date. In the Netherlands, national research institutes regularly report on the developments in and around the welfare state. National inspection offices and other government bodies do the same. The professionals who perform this kind of information work must be allowed sufficient latitude to perform these services, and, not unlike the many other owners of cognitive skills we discuss here, they also tend to work behind the scenes. Deliberation skills Another type of cognitive skill is quite indispensable to the deliberation process: to make accurate decisions when applying general rules to individual cases. As we have seen, these skills have become increasingly important for many services because they are essential to the assessments and evaluations that actually perform the classifications at the start of their primary processes. In all of these

98  Professional responsibilities cases, the decision making is quite similar to its classic form: (1) The collection of information that is both complete and correct is followed by (2) its evaluation, based on any considerations that may be considered relevant, both by the clients and by the services themselves. The outcome, if everything goes according to plan, will be (3) a well-considered decision (cf. March 1994: 1–56). Of course, these skills are indispensable to the selection bureaucracies, that is, those service providers whose core task consists of the application of general rules to individual cases. What is typical here is the notion of a ‘careful consideration’. The ‘careful’ concerns the fact that the information needs to be complete and accurate, and must totally conform to the spirit of the law (or at least to the available regulations). It also means, however, that the accuracy and completeness of the data may ultimately depend on the quality of the interactions with clients such as welfare applicants or (the representatives of) ‘applicants’ for care. In fact, some of these transactions may be performed under considerable pressure, if only because they concern matters that are essential to the clients. Whenever the audit or inspection of an ‘institutional client’ is involved, there may even be power issues involved in the day-to-day processing of these decisions. Notwithstanding these pressures, however, the service professionals performing this type of work often have to account for their personal integrity, particularly in terms of the ‘independence’ of their decisions, as far as such pressures are concerned. In fact, the service professionals who perform these kinds of deliberations had better be aware of the public responsibility involved with their decision making by now (cf. Sennett 2003). Many of them are even expected to take an oath in which they vow to dedicate themselves to it. Examples include judges, lawyers and notaries, and service professionals who, in the name of the state, audit the bookkeeping of others. Although, in the ‘democratizing’ 1970s, these rituals fell into disuse among lesser government officials, these vows have more recently been reinstated in a number of public institutions. Creative skills There are activities that could be called ‘cognitive’ but should instead be described in terms of the creative abilities that are required to perform them. The professionals with these sorts of skills are often considered the unique possessors of very unusual abilities. The latitude they are given for their activities in this realm basically relates to the express freedom to go one’s own way, and to determine and evaluate the results of one’s own work, or have it judged by one’s ‘peers’. The formal training these ‘artists’ receive often emphasizes this aspect. It encourages its students to develop their talents ‘in total freedom’. This justifies their claims that they are to enjoy an absolute professional autonomy of the traditional kind. This liberty is also relevant to the world of the applied arts. An example is provided by the so-called creative professionals in the advertising world (Van Wijk 2006). These artists are usually considered a bit above the law within the

Professional responsibilities  99 organizations they work for. This type of creative person will always seek ways to eliminate external pressures, as far as their organizations are concerned. Their work may be framed by the specifications imposed by commercial customers or by other interested parties (Bouman 1996) but these responsibilities are usually taken care of by the ‘relevant others’ in their organizations. The latter may range from the managing partners who perform the organization’s acquisitions, to the ‘account managers’ who are responsible for the day-to-day management of the client relationship, itself (Van Wijk 2006).

Professional expertise: well-considered interventions under a great deal of pressure The second series of skills discussed here involves practical skills that require long training periods. They are often physically ‘embodied’ and also ‘personal’ in the sense that they can be seen as part of the individual service professional’s make-up. In the past, this kind of professional expertise was essential to traditional experts performing invasive interventions, with medical specialists as the exemplary version. This kind of professionalism, however, is also characteristic of air traffic controllers, pilots, fire fighters and soldiers on the front lines, and of any other professionals who work ‘on the cutting edge’. This kind of expertise is usually associated with the individual professional’s ability to maintain a certain level of effectiveness under a great deal of pressure. That is why this notion of expertise is often also accompanied by a professional sense of responsibility that is considered at least equally important, if not by the professionals themselves, then at least by their ‘relevant others’. And, again, the latter particularly applies to those professional interventions that were called invasive in Chapter 3. They often involve interventions that may have large repercussions for the clients. That is why a ‘personalized’ responsibility is often seen as essential for these professionals. Expert learning This kind of expertise presumes a certain level of individual skill that can only come to full fruition as the result of long-term practical training. The associated learning processes were characterized by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986). In their renowned analysis of this ‘expert learning’ (see also Flyvbjerg 2001: 10ff.), these learning processes typically involve the development of often very complex practical skills that are ultimately managed even under extreme pressure. The owners of these skills often experience them as ‘second nature’, and as a part of their personal make-up. People who must actually act with their bodies  – in violent situations or in sports  – may even experience them as embodied, in the literal sense of the word. Expert learning as described by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) involves five phases which will be paraphrased here, making use of Bent Flyvbjerg’s adaptation (Flyvbjerg 2001: 10ff.).

100  Professional responsibilities The novice. The first phase involves the initial appropriation of the rules as they are generally applied in the field. The professionals-to-be are at this point still relative newcomers to the field. During this phase, they are familiarized with the handbook, and, for the more physical repertoires, they practice a lot, often imitating the professional routines of their more experienced colleagues. The emphasis in this phase is on the acquisition of the available routines. The advanced beginner. Here, the rules and routines must be applied in practice, taking into account the circumstances of the moment. The trainees must learn to act ‘situated’, subsequent to which they are called ‘advanced beginners’. In principle, the trainees can already perform on their own, but, in practical terms, they are still fairly busy ‘translating’ the recently acquired insights and skills into concrete situations. The necessary steps in this phase are still a long way off before the skills can be considered second nature. A soccer player who was asked why he missed a shot on goal observed it this way: ‘I had to think too much, I didn’t do it by instinct!’ The competent performer. Gradually the speed of one’s ability to summarize one’s observations and the accuracy with which one performs one’s actions accordingly comes into focus. After this third phase the service professionalsto-be are no longer trainees, and they can now be referred to as a ‘competent service professional’. These service professionals are able to perform the appropriate interventions on their own and are ultimately even responsible for their own decisions. They must also account for the interventions that are the outcome of these decisions. These service professionals not only rely on prepared standards and well-rehearsed practical skills but are essentially capable of making wellinformed professional decisions. Moreover, the accent is now definitely on the here and now, where a service professional needs to not only be able to quickly assess and evaluate the situation (‘What do we have here?’), but also the options that are locally available (‘What can we do?’), and go into action at once (‘Okay … first this … and then that!’). A variety of skills may actually reach this level, but this phase is particularly indispensable for the so-called invasive expertise. The proficient performer. Not much has actually changed here, but the individual professional may now be referred to as a ‘very competent service professional’. These are the service professionals who feel that they have experienced everything at least once and thus can be called upon in particularly difficult situations. But, according to Dreyfus and Dreyfus, they have not yet totally become professionals of expert status. Real experts reveal their professionalism during extreme moments when quick and well-considered interventions are required. Moreover, and precisely because they are undertaken under such pressure, they can only be justified afterwards. The latter is obviously the case when one has to intervene in an ad hoc fashion. But someone who is working with living, breathing clients or who has to perform publicly, experiences this pressure even more. The latter is true not only for surgeons and other people who must work ‘front stage’ and with ‘live clients’, but also for athletes, musicians and theatre people. In fact, it is true for all professionals who have to ‘peak’ at a certain instant, no matter what. The expert. A real expert, according to Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986), is someone who can always sense, in a specific instance, ‘what is about to happen’ and

Professional responsibilities  101 what will or will not ‘work’. It is also someone who can react quickly without hesitation, regardless of the consequences. Moreover, real experts are not afraid to come up with something new on site, if they sense that the situation demands it. In unexpected, complex situations they may certainly consult their peers and even the standard professional resources that are available, about how to proceed. However, it is typical for experts of this kind to rely on their own well-developed intuition and to even momentarily refrain from analysing the situation at all. On the one hand, a real expert can just as easily be a very experienced lay person as a highly educated person. Education level does not necessarily guarantee the required ‘intuitive competence’. As a consequence, the professional privileges that some highly educated service professionals may feel inclined to claim, are often under debate. On the other hand, however, we should also keep in mind here that the daily work routine of most service professionals seldom offers occasions for this kind of heroic expertise. David Maister, in his Managing the Professional Service Firm of 1993, acknowledged precisely this, when he encouraged that a distinction be made between three different kinds of service professional. The most expensive top consultants are acknowledged as the real experts, according to him. They are called the ‘Brains’ and are only called upon when the consultancy effort involves innovative action. They are followed by the ‘Grey Hairs’ who are the proficient performers who have seen a little bit of everything and are thus called upon to handle jobs requiring a lot of experience. And, finally, there are, naturally, the beginners. Maister calls them ‘Procedure’ because, according to him, they should only be allowed to handle standard assignments. He insists that they should also be allowed to develop their skills, under supervision. However, he also introduces the notion of ‘up or out in five years’ (Maister 1993: 22) indicating that those beginners who do not prove themselves in a convincing way, should be encouraged to leave the organization. In fact, there usually are not too many service professionals who need to move beyond the ‘very competent’ level, as far as the services are concerned. The new relevance of professional responsibilities Real experts are even expected to manage situations involving dramatic consequences if their efforts fail. This includes police work and military engagement on the front lines, air traffic control during emergency situations, the work of medical specialists, especially the most invasive ones, involving complicated operations. More recently, some have even begun to consider managerial work in this realm as well (Buchanan and Boddy 1992; Flyvbjerg 2001). Experts who undertake such particularly risky activities often stick to a certain professional attitude that to some may be ‘innate’, but that ultimately mostly develops during a long learning process. What is important here, at least to some, is that this type of service professional learns to accept the adverse consequences

102  Professional responsibilities of their decisions. Many of them actually consider making mistakes as important learning opportunities. ‘One should fail at least once, to prove that one is capable of performing under all circumstances!’ In fact, this professional attitude concerns the type of active professional responsibility that Mark Bovens (1989: 26 and 143ff.) refers to as a virtue. But, having said this, we should also note that professionals have traditionally sought to avoid these kinds of situation, and independently of whether they were to be considered experts. The ‘intra-professional’ disciplinary codes we discussed in Chapter 2 provide an example, but this type of ‘avoidance’ may also become part of one’s daily conduct. Judges, for instance, have long had an informal code that basically states ‘if there is any reasonable doubt, do not intervene’, to avoid the possibility of their decision ending up being reviewed in a higher court. In acute medical situations, the common wisdom is, despite the extreme pressures, ‘when in doubt, continue with your assessment’. That may be the ultimate reason why the older doctors mentioned at the beginning of this chapter ‘never’ end up making a decision. Some highly competent professionals may actually turn out to be quite hesitant to act. And, in fact, this attitude may not have disappeared at all, despite the current insistence on ‘production’. With the emergence of ‘juridical form’, the chances that an error of judgement may end up in court have increased and, as a consequence, the traditional ‘virtuous responsibility’ may have actually shifted toward a professional ‘accountability’ that also includes liability (Bovens 1989: 108ff.). As a consequence, some new ‘professional protectionism’ may be enacted as well.

Managing client relationships: relational skills and relational expertise Relational skills are fairly old skills that relate to a kind of expertise of their own. The classic skills of this kind are the kind employed by social workers and counsellors who, on the one hand, claim that they relate to ‘where the client is at’ (Van der Haar 2006 and 2007) and, on the other, claim that they will eventually reach their goals, while managing to maintain some sort of control over the entire process. Moreover, some of these skills are considered increasingly essential during any face-to-face contact between professionals and clients. In this sense, ‘every’ service professional can be called a ‘professional’ by now. In the past, the expert strategies of this kind were considered ‘merely soft’, but, as suggested in Chapter 3, some of these relational skills are now turning into a well-respected kind of expert interventions. The latter is not only the case with ‘individualizing’ professional services, but with the individual services as well. The more down to earth versions of these skills are particularly consistent with the individualizing tendencies we discussed in Chapter 2. In fact, most service professionals are not only confronted with a need to ‘act as one sees fit’ ‘in the here and now’, they are also expected to be able to constantly ‘shift gears’ from one client to another, and to ‘approach’ their clients, while at the same time maintaining an appropriate distance. And, finally, they are also expected to both ‘observe’

Professional responsibilities  103 and ‘manage’ the inconveniences their clients may encounter, and to intervene, whenever they begin incurring some risk. Fingerspitzengefühl This is a skill that concerns the kind of professional intuition that is sharpened by experience. In recent service management publications it has by definition become associated with the first contact between service professionals and clients, which amounts to a moment of truth for many organizations (Normann 1991; Grönroos 1990). This intuition helps service professionals to quickly distil their first impressions from a large number of often contradictory signals, during that moment when they first meet a potential client. It is often related to a long-term professional experience, and it enables a service professional to ‘immediately’ judge their clients. A street-level bureaucrat may be interested in a client’s honesty. Experienced consultants want to be able to determine at first sight whether the organizational situation that is presented to them will become ‘interesting’ enough for them to continue. Professionals providing care must be able to ‘sense’ the atmosphere when entering their clients’ homes. Meanwhile, however, professionals may also find this instant evaluation quite unreliable. For instance, sales personnel in a men’s clothing shop may actually be misinformed by the dishevelled appearance of a new client. It is no coincidence, then, that one often hears service professionals talking among themselves about the times they made these kinds of mistake. There may also be more complex professional evaluations at stake in this moment of truth that actually require expert intuition. They may manifest themselves as an issue whenever the first evaluation of an incoming client has been turned over to a call centre where some ‘lesser’ professionals perform. An example is provided by the service professionals working in the new call centres (112) and the front offices (the service counter) of the large urban police departments in the Netherlands. These repertoires were initially mostly based on the professionals’ abilities to communicate. This basically means that they can engage in a decent conversation and can be expected to adequately gauge what is bothering a person. But, naturally, this doesn’t necessarily mean they have the intuition sharpened by the experience a police officer considers relevant. The colleagues working further on down the line in the primary process were not particularly pleased, at first, with the qualities displayed by their new co-workers performing this moment of truth. (student field report: Police Report 2004) What at first sight seems to be an issue regarding skills may actually relate to a difference in status, as well. Getting along with people as a skill More and more service professionals must develop their people skills or the ability to relate to other people. For the most part, this involves some basic personal

104  Professional responsibilities qualities. Not everyone may possess them in equal measure, but nonetheless, those who do have these personal skills or people skills are generally not considered exceptional enough to gain much prestige. (Vulto and Morée 1996) Because these kinds of qualities are often considered part of one’s inherent make-up, many of us also consider them as gendered. Thus the qualities of boldness, of being able to confront someone, to push ahead during a conversation, are often considered ‘masculine’ traits, even if it is not just men who possess them. The same goes for qualities such as being considerate and patient, being a good listener, and being able to empathize and to make others feel that their story is important. These traits are usually considered ‘feminine’, even though there may be quite a few women who do not possess these traits. But, apart from these gendered interpretations, these traits are clearly beginning to find their place in a wide variety of services, causing some professionals to ‘soften up’, while others are getting ‘tougher’. Medical specialists need good conversational techniques when there is bad news to report to their patients. Psychotherapists must learn, or so they say, to establish boundaries regarding the behaviour of their clients as well as the duration of therapy. Teachers, in their turn, are used to shifting back and forth between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. The latter is certainly the case when they are standing in front of a class, and have to resolve issues involving order. On the one hand, they do so by establishing strict rules of conduct (‘Everyone sit down in your seats now, get your books out of your bags, turn to page x’) and, in extreme situations, by sending the more difficult students to the principal’s office. On the other hand, all sorts of diversions are introduced by such teachers as well. For instance, they may encourage particularly difficult students to perform a specific task ‘of their own’ in order to re-direct their attention. Most teachers have also learned to somehow ‘parry’ a student’s comments. As a matter of fact, quite a few of these professional coping strategies relate to the principle of ‘professional self-control’ discussed in Chapter 2. These skills are particularly relevant for all service professionals when they have to deal with impatient, difficult or even dangerous clients, for example. Cab drivers are usually quite good at explaining how they ‘always’ manage to handle their sloshed passengers; social security personnel often discuss among themselves how they handle aggressive clients, as do medical specialists and nurses. Being a true service professional always involves using these kinds of people skills. Dealing with otherness Up till now these people skills have usually involved the question of how the service professionals can maintain control over individual clients. But there is actually much more going on here. Remaining calm, having patience, being able to listen, being able to empathize with others are all interesting skills but nowadays the impact of these skills is not as straightforward as it once was. We increasingly

Professional responsibilities  105 see situations where the service professional must keep in mind that the intentions of others and their interpretations of certain situations may turn out to be quite different from the service professional’s expectations. The professionals themselves often like to relate this to the current ‘empowerment’ of their clients, but it may very well be that their own ability to deal with diversity is at stake as well (Glastra et al. 2000). Dealing with diversity means, first of all, that some room is made for the story of the other. Teachers develop new ways of performing in their classrooms. For instance, they may discuss a certain subject where ‘all of the students’ stories’ are admissible instead of immediately insisting on ‘correct’ answers. This is how they try to accommodate all of the possible interpretations of their own questions. (Boogaard et al. 2000) Second, it means being able to switch from one individual to another or from one story to another, thereby exercising a certain openness and candour. This may also involve accepting the unreliability of one’s professional intuitions. Moreover, and third, it means accepting that it doesn’t make much sense to only interpret differences in a standardized way, and, for instance, equate each single individual to ‘his’ or ‘her’ culture. This ‘solid’ culture approach is called the ‘culturalist’ approach (cf. Baumann 1996). Not too long ago, Dutch police officers were taught: ‘Traditional Somalian: Don’t look directly into the eyes of the women or try to shake their hands. With the men you can do that. With the Japanese, bow with your hands folded in front of your chest. Muslims: shoes off. If the man of the house is not home, direct your questions toward the oldest son, no matter how young he is’. (Elias 1997: 196, trans.) Obviously, there is nothing wrong with recognizing these ‘cultural traits’, but, in some situations, it is now usually considered more effective to observe how people actually deal with the differences they observe. In fact, most people still make use of these static differences as cultural tools, as part of their everyday negotiations (cf. Baumann 1996; Van der Haar 2006 and 2007; Gergen 1992). Whenever people feel inclined to keep their distance, they may frame their therapist – or any other service professional, for that matter – as someone who does not recognize an ‘us’ that is presented as different. ‘We Dutch people are not used to doing this!’ Research has shown that many service professionals try to maintain some distance in culturalist terms by using phrases like ‘us’ and ‘them’, just like their clients. Moreover, they often blame the other for any miscommunications. ‘They are difficult to work with, because they have a different culture’ (Van der Haar 2006 and 2007). This fourth and final point may imply, once again, that a given situation does not always turn out as expected. Moreover, it is not only the service professional

106  Professional responsibilities who may have some presumptions regarding a particular client, the reverse may very well be true as well. All of this can easily lead to confusing situations. The police project: ‘Identifying Homosexuals’. The location: a park in the centre of the city. The goal: To register the names and addresses of all of the men who regularly frequent the park, as a preventive measure. Hakan, of Turkish origin, is one of the officers. ‘Hey sevgilim!’ A man leaps onto the path. Hakan snarls at him in a strangely   aggressive way. A colleague of Dutch origin turns around. ‘What was that?’ ‘That guy just called me “darling”, and I said that you can call me   anything but “darling”.’ ‘But don’t all Turkish men do it with each other before they get married?’ ‘Maybe in Morocco, but that’s just fooling around. Anyway, I grew up here.’ Hakan asks the man on the path for his name in Turkish. The man responds:   ‘You may speak Turkish but to me you are just a cop and a traitor.’ ‘But what about you then,’ Hakan responds. ‘You Turkish homo?’ The man confronts him. ‘Are you really from this world? Do you   really think I am the only homo refugee?’ Astonished, Hakan is speechless. (adapted from Elias 1997: 64–65) The researcher then explains how Hakan was born in a Turkish village, but grew up somewhere in the south of the Netherlands (Elias 1997: 65). But the point that needs to be made here is that at first sight, the police officer simply seems to be confronted by a potential victim or offender, but that there are also some less obvious confrontations that can be observed, here. Turk versus Turk. Man versus man. Rural versus city. Heterosexual versus homosexual. An established citizen versus a refugee, and perhaps even an illegal migrant. Not to mention the innuendo of the police officer’s colleague. Who is who and what is what? Expert relation management There are many forms of individualizing professional expertise. It focuses on trying to do justice to the client’s individuality, either individually or as part of a group, and it also considers active client involvement to be a prerequisite for a successful outcome of the process. This kind of expertise is also susceptible to the kind of expert learning we discussed earlier. It may be relevant to the individualizing expert interventions and to individual services as well. As a matter of fact, most experts of the individualizing kind aim for specific preferential outcomes with their clients, regardless of the ‘individualization’ of the processes they negotiate. Teachers, for instance, will always search for ways to motivate their individual students to do their work so that they can graduate.

Professional responsibilities  107 Moreover, these service professionals are also expected to keep the actual processes under control. Trainers want their clients to create their own group processes, but they do not want these processes to get permanently side-tracked. Consultants, in their turn, may be quite convinced that their clients must take the initiative, but they know that they themselves will eventually be held responsible for the results. And, in a similar manner, individual counselling often revolves around the client’s confrontations with himself, but the counsellor is also responsible for ensuring that this process does not injure the client. The counsellor should respect the old adage: ‘The client must be sick enough to need it but healthy enough to stand it!’ Psychotherapists are actually known to ‘expertly’ manage this quite paradoxical assignment, for instance, by relying on certain types of conduct and on specific physical arrangements. In the classical psychoanalytical setting, the silent therapist used to sit at the head of the couch, disturbing as little as possible the free associations the client lying on the couch was engaging in. This position minimized the therapist’s personal presence as much as possible. In this way, the patient could also more easily engage in ‘transference’, or the projection of one’s childhood experiences to the therapist, who then ends up representing for instance the parent. This transference provided these therapists with the material they needed to support their interpretations and interventions. The latter could only be validated, of course, after they had been endorsed by the patients. Nowadays, the production of trust appears more explicitly important. Thus clients and therapists now commonly sit facing each other, in seats that are supposed to give the client a feeling of confidence. The classic therapeutic silence has been replaced by a combination of good listening and encouraging talk. Here the outcome of the process is essentially defined by the professional, however much the clients are expressly encouraged to take the necessary steps themselves – ‘It is your problem, not mine!’ The mutual production of trust is essential to the performance of such relational expertise. As a consequence, ‘relations managers’ often consider this their ultimate responsibility. The experts among them are sometimes even explicitly encouraged to reflect upon their own inadvertent contributions to the process. An example of this is again provided by psychotherapy. It involves the analysis of the so-called ‘counter-transference’, performed by the therapists themselves. This concerns questions such as ‘Why do I allow this client to bother me?’ and ‘What do his or her stories evoke in me?’ and ‘What does this tell us about me?’ (Rubin 2004: 12) Such professional rules of conduct are often also linked to the management of a proper professional distance, in the physical sense of the word. You may be

108  Professional responsibilities allowed to touch the client, but you are not allowed to overstep these boundaries with further intimacies. In this kind of situation, one’s professional integrity may also be at stake.

Managing complexities and power effects: process skills and process expertise Present-day services are expected to pay attention to the so-called process skills, whether they like it or not. This is due to the flexible character of today’s organizations in general. An organization’s personnel now often needs to survive in a fairly poorly organized and uncertain environment. With the current services, however, the service professionals must also find their way within the organization’s hierarchy, at all times, and find ways to protect whatever ‘professional jurisdiction’ they have left, as opposed to the relevant others they are now expected to work with. These increasingly hectic circumstances may now also involve a permanently changing computer-supported infrastructure. And, of course, these service professionals are also expected to serve their clients, and at the same time. Expert process skills, however, rely mainly on the ability to successfully manage the power effects in and around the organization. Consultants and managers may often depend on their own expert mastery of these process skills. A specific kind of professional integrity  – or even vulnerability  – may be at stake when these expert process skills are employed. Acting on orders Many service professionals may still consider finding ways to act on their orders in a proper way to be the single most important process skill they must acquire. This is often also true for the beginners we encountered in the expert learning process. They are expected to perform at a very elementary level and to apply the ‘standards’ in a straightforward manner, although, in due course, they may also be expected to develop the personalized skills that eventually transform them into ‘real’ experts. But many service professionals are simply expected to be able to ‘do their work’. This is particularly the case when they are supposed to perform fairly elementary tasks behind the scenes. But even there, ‘just doing your work’ is no longer as self-evident as it once may have seemed. For instance, there is increasing evidence among support functions, in particular, that the ‘enforced volatility’ produced by the current flexible streamlining is actually quite demanding. An inquiry involving secretaries in some services in Canada provides some examples. These secretaries now often work in ‘pools’. They have to fill the holes in their day with assignments and thus they lose the undefined time slots they used to use in the past to provide for the administrative infrastructure they also need to keep going. The work itself has only grown more extensive and complex, instead of less, with the introduction of computers. Secretaries

Professional responsibilities  109 are continuously required to learn to operate new program updates and formats. There is not less paperwork, either, but actually more. Established skills become obsolete more rapidly. Moreover, they no longer work for one person but for anyone who might appear on the scene. Their steady internal customer relations tend to disappear and so does their grip on whether they are doing their job adequately. Flexible work contracts for them basically entail part-time work, temporary work contracts, work on call, and this also takes its toll on their future expectations. But the most important aspect for almost all of the women interviewed was the extreme volatility produced by these day-to-day changes in combination with the endless organizational reshuffling. One of them considers it a challenge to spar with the chaos: ‘I know … we’re all people working together really hard in an environment that’s extremely fast paced and things fall through the cracks. My job is to be the juggler and catch those things’ (Eyerman 2000: 204). Some of the others considered it the obvious cause of their current burn-out. This no longer amounts to the straightforward organizational domestication of these people you might expect in situations like these. It actually resembles an active and permanent disorientation of the personnel. We find a similar situation in the face-to-face contacts between service professionals and their clients. This is particularly true with those services where the flexible streamlining efforts are aimed at standardizing the day-to-day activities on the work floor. We observed before that many of the mass services are now familiar with targets such as ‘x number of conversations per hour of which x – y have to be successful!’ These targets are considered particularly stressful when the ‘human’ aspects of the transactions come under duress, or when service professionals have to deal with clients under pressure. In fact, ‘sales’ is an often quoted example of the former, and ‘complaints’ provides the ultimate example of the latter. The degree of ‘self-control’ that is required to adequately deal with such pressures was described some decades ago as ‘emotion work’ (Hochschild 1983). Time management ‘Time’ has been an important issue for management ever since the Taylorist principles were introduced. The theme of ‘time’ is currently even more important in management literature, because the Internet allows people to work in real time all over the world. Accordingly, and first, there are more and more services to which the Taylorist principles are now applied. The flexibilization of the work situation we have discussed above is a consequence, and it raises a number of time issues. Second, to this we can add that many services have also installed a just-in-time type of infrastructure. This is expected to support the transport, delivery and storage issues that may be involved with service work. The standard time that is usually employed in an organizational context is described as ‘clock time’ in the literature (Adams 1995). However, it is also pointed

110  Professional responsibilities out that for the services, in particular, the so-called ‘lived time’ must also be an important issue. This concept of time is much more complex than standard clock time. It is much more like the actual experiences of the people involved. Kitchens, Gary Alan Fine’s book on restaurant cooks (1996), introduces an elaborate vocabulary to address various time issues. Of course, these cooks do most of their work behind the scenes. Fine, however, describes a number of time concepts that also can be applied in face-to-face situations. The first relates to the ‘periodicity’ of the cooks’ work, by which he means the daily rhythms of their work. As far as cooks go, this often means standing around for hours waiting for the customers, who sometimes all come at once. The term ‘tempo’ describes the speed at which things have to be done. The common terms the cooks themselves employ are ‘slow times’ and ‘times to hurry’. The ‘timing’ has to do with tuning your own work in with that of your fellow workers in the kitchen. Various people may sometimes end up working on the same thing at the same time, while at other times they may find themselves waiting for others to finish. ‘Duration’ deals with the amount of time necessary to complete certain tasks, while ‘sequence’ deals with the inevitable order of specific actions. Fine argues: ‘The [cooks] synchronize their activities to create an efficient routine in the face of uncontrollable and unpredictable durations and tempos’ (ibid.: 55). Some professionals consider this a challenge – ‘It’s a high. You have to get yourself up there. You have to get your adrenaline pumping. It really feels good if everything is going smooth. You’re just cranking. It feels good. I enjoy it’ (ibid.: 65)  – while others do not. Although there are no clients in view in the above example, the actual duress these service professionals experienced in their kitchens may be reinforced, if not caused, by the continuous fluctuation of the number of guests in their respective restaurants. Managing to work together Process skills are also important when it comes to co-operation, as we have seen above. Moreover, we have also seen that the division of labour and, hence, co-operation issues have begun to play an ever larger role in the services. The various interdependences of the parties involved in the processes of service delivery have already been noted in Chapter 4. These interdependences can be imposed by the organization but they can evolve spontaneously as well. The frictions that exist between people at this juncture can either be accepted as part of the game, or their existence can be denied. They may not only involve their professional interdependences, they can also be influenced by status differences these professionals may experience. That is why it is not only important to learn and value one another’s professional contributions, but one should also be able to somehow deal with the considerable status differences that may be involved.

Professional responsibilities  111 In fact, one may not even be inclined to expect that these efforts will always work out. Walkup, for instance, described four phases in a negative coping process involving some service professionals who were feeling that they were becoming the playthings of others. The phases include: (1) persist (until burn out occurs); (2) distance yourself from the people you come into contact with to the point of ‘setting them aside’ in place and time or, when possible, in the ‘otherness’ of ‘their culture’; (3) blame the failure on anyone who happens to be around, except for oneself, and focus the blame on ‘those who are more powerful than us’ in particular, with the managers or the relevant governmental policies as the preferential targets. And (4) focus exclusively on proven methods or on those efforts that, in any case, can offer some advantages, even if your colleagues (and relevant others) notice very little in the way of progress. (Walkup 1997, see Geuijen 2000: 114–15) These coping strategies were produced by Walkup as a description of the deteriorating relationships between service professionals providing care to asylum seekers, and their clients. But it is obvious that it can be applied in any other situation in which people are ‘condemned’ to work together under such duress. Managing power effects ‘The power factor’ has clearly emerged from its taboo phase in organization science, and this may also be due, in its own way, to the volatility of contemporary organizations (Kanter 1990). To manage the many possible power effects that are currently involved both with service work and service management may sometimes even require a kind of process skill that amounts to a process expertise. These skills involve, among other things, the almost impossible task of constantly having to adjust to endless changes, and to their possible consequences for a large number of parties. Watson, for instance (1994: 8), describes the basic skills related to this process as follows: ‘Feeling one’s way in confusing circumstances, struggling to make sense of ambiguous messages, reading signals, looking around, listening all the time, coping with conflicts and struggling to achieve tasks through establishing and maintaining a network of relationships.’ He was describing managers, but this type of expertise is valid for many others as well. Many other authors have observed, as well, that these process skills typically require an acute awareness of what is ‘actually’ going on (cf. Flyvbjerg 2001). According to these author’s, these skills may also involve some ‘expert’ ways of acting. These skills are often explicitly enumerated in texts concerning the expertise of so-called change agents. Generally speaking, a change agent does well to concentrate on who does and does not participate in the game, and on how to avoid unintended processes of exclusion that may harm one’s own interests

112  Professional responsibilities or those of relevant others. You can also try to establish the rules of the game, in the hope that everyone will abide by them. Negotiating and compromising are also obvious skills, and so are the skills that are relevant to conflict management. In either case you may, instead of trying to win, consider negotiating the future commitment of your partners. You may also decide to work ‘behind the scenes’, because ‘front stage’ power effects may actually turn out to be quite explosive. And so on and so on. (cf. Buchanan and Boddy 1992) These expert process skills are applicable in many situations, ranging from the processes involving strategic decision making to processes in which co-production is performed. Moreover, they involve issues of ‘ownership’ and ‘process responsibility’ as well. These issues may actually raise some external debates. Who can be held responsible for the process? And who is to blame when it takes a turn for the worse? Charisma There are some personal qualities that inspire others to do what you want them to do, even if they have never considered doing this before. This definition of power is often associated with some essentially personal qualities that are usually described as one’s ‘charisma’. This term was first introduced by Weber (1972 [1922]) as a label for the mobilizing capacities of certain people in political and religious circles. However, charisma has become a more general term, and, as a rule, it involves a ‘natural’ authority performed by certain people. The mediagenic qualities of an individual today may play an important role as well. These qualities, also, rely on the combination of a natural disposition with a certain amount of training. The populist politician, the late Pim Fortuyn, was a master at playing the media game. He paired a ‘natural’ casualness in his behaviour with what seemed like the complete ‘public availability’ of his character. He presented himself as obviously gay, and took advantage of the fact that he was different from ‘most of us’. The latter may even have been one of the reasons he was idolized by other people who may also have felt marginalized by Dutch society. He was also an outsider when it came to the traditional corridors of power. And yet, we must also assume that his authority did not rest on these unusual traits alone. As a trained sociologist, he may have had some insights into the workings of society. Moreover, he also managed to sharpen his intuition for what moved the people ‘in the streets’. But most of all, he had had years of practice on the lecture circuit. That is where he mastered the art of presenting his insights with all kinds of rhetorical skills. And thus he was also ‘technically’ able to win numerous points in various debates. (see also Pels 2003) In organization theories, these skills are sometimes associated with ‘leadership’ as well.

Professional responsibilities  113 Moreover, this issue of charisma can be related to the subject of responsibility. Can you or can’t you hold charismatic leaders responsible for the fact that many others are blindly following them, wherever they go?

The relevance of elementary skills Many of the contemporary services are based on a variety of elementary skills that speak for themselves. Many consider these elementary skills as those that do not require much preliminary training. They can be learned and copied by everyone in the here and now. The people who possess these skills are seen as interchangeable because their skills are – unlike most of the others we have discussed – by definition not ‘personal’, nor are they individually embodied. They also appear to be relatively easily delegated to machines. These elementary skills are usually associated with the mass services, but nearly all services provide them on various occasions. For instance, there may be a number of these elementary skills involved in the support activities behind the scenes. Moreover, the re-introduction of these elementary skills may also be an effect of the division of labour that is now often part of the current processes of reconstruction. An example would be the separation of the so-called front offices from other activities further down the line. And, as we discussed in Chapter 4, the dividing up of so-called elementary activities may also affect various expert repertoires involved in the services. In the medical world, for instance, all sorts of activities are first isolated, then standardized and ultimately transferred to machines, or to non-professional employees. These non-professional employees, however, are always expected to work under the express guidance of the medical expert’ (through the ‘extended arm’). The same is true for the machines. It should be pointed out here that, as a rule, the notions of ‘elementary’ and ‘standard’ relate to different things. For instance, not all standardizations are applied to elementary skills. A hospital can standardize appendix operations, hip operations, and cataract operations, and organize them in ‘production streets’, but these standardizations may also involve quite complicated professional ‘standards’. The reverse may also be true: the elementary housekeeping routines involved with the personal networks providing care are often less standardized than one might expect and the same may be true for most call centre conversations. Elementary may in fact not be standard at all.

(Re)assembling professional repertoires, (re)negotiating professional reponsibilities Most services seem to have enlarged the scope of the professional activities they need to engage in. They have introduced new kinds of professional work such as marketing and development. They may have introduced new professional skills, as well. They may even have added relational skills and process skills to the usual practices their professionals perform. Moreover, and although the traditional professionals may in some cases have had the express desire to change their

114  Professional responsibilities professional tunes, many of them must feel that they have also been put under considerable pressure. They have had to renegotiate their individual contributions and often also their individual repertoires. And yet, most professionals will continue to maintain that even during reconstruction the services must go on, and that the same is true for their own professional input. The degree to which they have a point here, however, has become the subject of some debate. In fact, they may be granted a point in this debate because the services they are involved in represent some specific societal responsibilities. Moreover, and second, it may also be very true that service professionals – and particularly those service professionals who are responsible for the core services – need some space of their own to actually manage their day-to-day contributions. They may even need more space at some point to cope with the more empowered client’s demands. And, third, service providers had better be aware of the various risks their clients may incur, not to mention the numerous inconveniences that can be associated with contemporary services. It could be argued that it is usually the service professionals who are expected to manage these issues on a daily basis and that, in order to do so, they may need more room than they are now often granted. All of this means that the traditional opposition involving the organizational domestication of everyone except those who are entitled to a privileged ‘autonomous’ position, no longer suffices in explaining the professionals’ position vis-à-vis all ‘relevant others’ in and around their organizations. A new dimension that is expressly related to the various  – often publicly defined – responsibilities the service professionals have to deal with, at this point in time, and also to the current complexities of their day-to-day negotiations with ‘live’ clients, should be added to the considerations. Accordingly, there are two dimensions presented here, to represent the positioning of professionals, in relation to their organizations as well as in relation to the outside world. Autonomy vs domestication. The first dimension is inspired by the traditional opposition involving organizational domestication, on the one hand, and absolute professional autonomy, on the other. It is internally focused, as far as the organizations are concerned. The two extremes are now labelled in terms of the ownership of the repertoires, with, on the one hand, the professionals’ ‘independent ownership’ of their repertoires, in relation to their organizations, and, on the other hand, repertoires that are entirely ‘determined by the organization’. This dimension may also ‘predict’ the degree to which relevant others in and around the organization may feel inclined – or can be obliged by the service professionals, whenever they do not – to leave some ‘space’ for these service professionals’ everyday negotiations. The notion of ‘relevant others’ may include the organization’s management but does also allow for various other parties that may be involved. Responsibility and risk. The second dimension is labelled in terms of vulnerability. As far as the internal processes of service delivery are concerned, they differ in terms of the degree of (time) pressure under which the service professionals are to perform, of whether they are working face to face with their clients or

Professional responsibilities  115 behind the scenes, and of the degree of personalized responsibility they can be expected to deal with. However, this dimension has an external aspect, as well, as it is related to the public visibility of these professionals and to the associated ‘external’ vulnerabilities they can be expected to deal with at this point in time. Here, the public acknowledgement of the specific ‘risks’ associated with invasive interventions may provide the main cause, but the traditional public responsibilities the services in and around the public domain perform – and the associated issues of integrity and independence – may also be relevant. Here, the opposition is determined by the issue of whether individual professionals are inclined – or, again, can be obliged, when they are not  – to take active responsibility when things go wrong or cannot specifically be obliged to do so. Those service professionals who do, may very well be ‘in need’ of the support of their relevant others in and around their organizations, including their organizations’ management. The service professionals who are not in need of this kind of support are usually ‘left alone’ in this respect, both by their organizations and by the outside world. In the last mentioned case the vulnerability of the professionals’ repertoires is limited. Together, these two dimensions can be combined into four ideal-typical professional orientations, indicating professional claims that can also be acknowledged by the organizations they work for. Orientation 1: externally responsible The first orientation presented here is the orientation toward external responsibility. It is specifically relevant when claims can be derived from the professional

VULNERABILITY High

idenpendent incorporated

REPERTOIRE

1.

Externally responsible

Low 2.

Traditionally autonomous

Professional experts, including relational and process experts, claiming spaces for a ‘personalized’ responsibility. Individually accountable for the external effects of what they do.

Knowledge workers, creative professionals, and innovators claiming spaces to perform. Individually responsible in professional terms.

3.

4.

Locally reflexive

Professionals who perform elementary service work and need spaces for situated discretion. The responsibility is shared with relevant others in and around the work floor.

Figure 5.1  Four professional orientations.

Domesticated

Professionals who are practically skilled and/or claiming to perform elementary tasks. The responsibility is delegated to the organization.

116  Professional responsibilities responsibilities that have already been discussed. These responsibilities can often be framed as individual responsibilities and accountabilities, by either the professionals themselves or by the relevant others in and around their organizations. Wherever they participate in the primary processes of service delivery, these service professionals are not only assessed in terms of the professional quality of their work but also in terms of the (unintended) effects of their interventions. As a consequence, they may legitimately profile themselves as experts with a great sense of responsibility. They may even feel that the fate of other people, or even society, rests in their hands. A number of these professionals, however, may also be seen as professionals who have lost some of their traditional autonomy over time. Medical specialists, for instance, are usually no longer allowed to work behind the scenes in the specific sense of being able to perform their tasks unattended. Moreover, they can no longer simply rely on their professional peers or on their traditional ‘intraprofessional’ processes of evaluation. Above, it has been argued again and again that, when these professionals are held responsible for the core services, they may also be held publicly accountable for their actual achievements. This loss of autonomy, however, is compensated by the fact that they are now seen more clearly as responsible individuals. Moreover, their expertise is still considered quite indispensable to their services, and, as a consequence, they can count not only on sufficient room to perform, but also on a degree of ‘protection’ from the relevant others who happen to be around. In the past, this kind of external responsibility was associated solely with those invasive expert interventions that were commonly called ‘heroic’ or ‘acute’. At present, however, it also applies to the expert relational qualities required to manage complex relationships with powerful and/or excessively demanding clients. Moreover, consultants and professional managers may also have gained some status in this respect, because of their mastery of those expert process skills that enable them to successfully manage the power effects in and around their organizations (Dreyfus and Dreyfus 1986; Flyvbjerg 2001). Accordingly, some new resources for this kind of professional status are being acknowledged here as well. The acknowledgement of the type of public accountability these professionals are often associated with may also offer some advantages. They can expect their organizations to support them when the ‘personal’ aspect of their public accountability is at stake. Moreover, this accountability may also make it more explicit to the public at large than before, what can and cannot be expected from these professionals in a given situation. It is in this respect, that these ‘newly’ responsible professionals may even start to consider their organizations as ‘indispensable’ to their professional needs. Orientation 2: traditionally autonomous The second orientation here involves the traditional kind of absolute autonomy. This professional orientation may be considered particularly legitimate when

Professional responsibilities  117 service professionals offer a high-quality expert production and must be allowed to operate in an autonomous fashion, whenever they are involved in a process of service delivery. At the same time, however, it is also assumed here that these service professionals, in particular, work behind the scenes, both from the perspective of their clients and from that of the general public. Accordingly, they may be granted sufficient professional space to perform, because they usually are not required to work under extreme pressure. The issues of public responsibility may not be raised very often. In the past, this kind of absolute autonomy was naturally attributed to all traditional professionals, but, as we have seen above, the position of the latter appears to have changed. At present, this specific orientation appears to mainly apply to the so-called creative professions as well as to those engineers and knowledge workers who claim to be innovative. Most of these experts usually produce one-off assignments for clients who are willing pay for them. This ‘traditional’ professional autonomy manifests itself in various ways. On the one hand, there are, for instance, the creative professionals, who may even claim that they function pretty well without an organization. If they are part of an organization, they may legitimately consider it as an extension of themselves, in that they expect it to provide a level of ‘security’ and ‘protection’ that is specifically aimed at their creativity. Their claim that ‘you can’t control creativity’ compels everyone in and around their organizations to provide them with ample space; and, given the relevance of their repertoires to their organizations, one may also expect that most of these relevant others are inclined to agree with this attitude (cf. Van Wijk 2006). These professionals are especially sensitive when it comes to their reputations in the eyes of their colleagues, and the relevant others in and around their organizations are often expected to protect this as well (cf. Van Wijk 2006). Some (e.g., Florida 2002) see these ‘creative professionals’ as the essential core of the ultimate new elite. On the other hand, there is also the more practical innovative work, developed by both software and hardware engineers, or by the ‘developers’ we discussed in earlier chapters. This kind of work is especially open-ended and unpredictable as to its results. These considerations reinforce professional claims in terms of an almost absolute autonomy and independence. These professionals’ specific aspirations toward absolute autonomy usually rely on another claim that relevant others are also expected to abide by: ‘You can’t plan innovation’. It should be noted that, not unlike like that of the creatives, the status of these knowledge workers can be seen as ‘socially emergent’ as well. ‘Knowledge economy’ is another commonly used term to indicate the societal relevance of this kind of professional (Takeuchi and Nonaka 1995). Their work is commonly associated with the ‘new economy’, and, for instance, with the expertise associated with the actual process of flexible streamlining of the services. These innovative professionals are only subject to internal evaluations and, like their creative counterparts, they can often avoid being held publicly responsible for their work. In many ways, these ‘newly autonomous’ professionals are actually quite similar to their traditional counterparts. For instance, whenever they are at the core of the

118  Professional responsibilities primary process of service delivery, most of their colleagues – both front stage and behind the scenes – will ultimately be affected by their domination. Moreover, they are also inclined to consider their managers as an extension of themselves. Orientation 3: locally reflexive Most service professionals, and even the ones performing elementary repertoires, may ultimately have to deal with rather complex situations. That is how, in a manner of speaking, the harbour has returned for the ship, and the organization’s domestication of its service professionals appears to have found its limitations. This re-orientation may actually be relevant to a good share of the service professionals, regardless of where they work. Of course, a number of these service professionals are not entitled to any claims of professional independence at all, nor are they entitled to the kind of autonomy and/or responsibility that was described earlier. And yet, they are often still expected to deal with the unpredictable dynamics of their organization and of their clients as well. Wenger, for instance, showed how different computer formats continued to be used after a merger of various large insurance companies. This led to all sorts of ‘translation problems’, particularly for those service professionals working behind the scenes in supporting functions. However, these problems turned out to be particularly ‘unmanageable’ to these professionals when they were personally phoned by individual clients. In Wenger’s research presentation, one service professional, in response to her manager’s question of whether she now understood a certain form which had seen a number of changes, was observed saying: I understand it. I just don’t know how to explain it to a caller. I know how to do it on the computer, everything [is] just fine … But … you can’t tell them ‘I subtracted this line from this line’, you can’t do that. (Wenger 1997: 38) These service professionals, also, are often expected to remain perpetually friendly whenever they are dealing with clients. They are also expected to successfully cooperate with countless others. Generally speaking, however, many other service professionals may also be burdened by responsibilities they cannot reasonably be expected to fulfil. The professional orientation that applies here will be called an orientation toward local reflexivity. And, again, it applies to all of those service professionals who may very well perform quite elementary tasks, but who also need some situational discretion. Examples of such repertoires can naturally be found anywhere in the services, but crucial examples are provided by those service professionals who deal with individual clients regularly, and on a face-to-face basis. Care workers, for instance, provide care at their clients’ homes, keep an eye on individuals ‘at risk’, and are also expected to participate in a complex network of professionals, at the same time.

Professional responsibilities  119 These service professionals are often expected to feel personally responsible for their clients. When it works out well, these responsibilities are often spontaneously shared with the other service professionals they meet at the ‘operational level’ (if they do, in any case). Etienne Wenger observed that any difficulties that arise, are often collectively resolved as well. He even insists that ‘as people build histories of doing things together, any [organization] will spawn some communities of practice’ (Wenger 1997: 251). According to Wenger, the organizations’ formal representatives  – or any other ‘relevant others’ that may be around  – should, in fact, refrain from any interventions that might discourage these informal communities. They should be trying to encourage them, instead. Orientation 4: domesticated This notion of domestication applies to those service professionals who have practical skills and/or perform elementary tasks, although they may also be required to work face-to-face with their clients. As we have seen, these professionals are usually quite central to the mass services, as a rule, but, in fact, there are hardly any services to be found any more, that do not spawn quite a few of such simple tasks, and include the associated service professionals. They may even be central to the day-to-day provision of care and to the work of many volunteers. The notion can be applied to many professional beginners as well. As indicated above, this orientation is particularly applicable to those service professionals who perform these elementary activities behind the scenes. As a rule, they do not need to be reflective, and their ‘responsibilities’ usually amount to just doing their work, even if they are otherwise also considered somewhat ‘skilled’ workers. The point that is made, here, is that these service professionals will probably not be harassed by individual clients. Accordingly, professionals are quite susceptible to the domesticating activities of their organizations. They may even prefer to work under orders and to account for their activities in the organization’s terms. And yet, even these service professionals may need some space of their own. For instance, they may not really appreciate being domesticated, as a matter of course. In fact they may not only be domesticated by their management but also by all other professionals present in the service. They like to be valued as individuals, even if they are expected to act as ‘cogs’ in the machinery provided by their organizations (cf. Collinson 1992; Sennett 1998). However, it would be far too easy to join the growing choir of service professionals who argue that the managerial efforts that are currently being put in place, always lead to this kind of domestication. The previous paragraphs prove otherwise, but we will also return to this issue in Chapter 7.

Conclusion: professional status under debate Whatever core services they perform, most services are actually making space for an ever increasing variety of service professionals. Due to the separation in place

120  Professional responsibilities and time of the various phases in the processes of service delivery, and the many activities behind the scenes, most organizations now also enforce an extensive division of labour. And, as we have suggested in the previous paragraph, individual service professionals may be inclined to follow these developments of their own volition, although they may also feel forced to do so. Depending on the kinds of repertoire they own, these developments may affect their ‘professional ranking’ and, as a result, the status they claim inside the organization. On the one hand, it may still be true that, whenever the organization’s core service involves a variety of ‘expert’ service professionals, one may still expect these ‘expert’ service professionals to more or less ‘dominate’ the rest of the service professionals present. And that, when the core services are performed by relatively ‘unskilled’ people one may still expect these professionals to be dominated by any ‘professional experts’ who happen to be present. On the other hand, however, it may very well be that, by now, it is not only the professionals’ own perception that counts. The various stakeholders in and around the organization – and this expressly includes the contemporary media – can also be expected to take part in the permanent status ‘confirming’ and ‘denying’ processes affecting service professionals. These professionals’ managers and the numerous colleagues, not to mention the clients they are also expected to work with, may participate in these processes as well. The service professionals are indispensable to the services. The same may very well be true for their entitlement to some professional spaces. But even the most established of professions must have found out, by now, that one’s professional status is no longer self-evident at all.

6 ‘What am I doing here?’ The client experience

What am I doing here? I am flat on my back in a National Health Service hospital hoping, praying, that the rigors and fevers which have racked me for three months will turn out to be malaria – although, after many blood tests, they have not found a single parasite. I have been on quinine tablets for thirteen hours – and my temperature seems to be sliding down. I feel my ears. They are cold. I feel the tip of my nose. It is cold. I feel my forehead. It is cool. I feel inside my groin. Not too bad. The excitement is enough to send my temperature soaring. Bruce Chatwin, What Am I Doing Here?

The ultimate ‘other’ In this chapter, we will try to follow the process of service delivery from the clients’ point of view. Many services may try to view it differently, of course, but you can basically describe the client’s role as that of the ultimate ‘other’ in the organization. It is usually assumed that this specific category of otherness is only relevant with migrant clients, but, as a number of experts in the field now suggest, any service professional dealing with any individual client on a face-to-face basis can expect some unusual surprises (Nykamp 2001: 58). What do the services’ representatives really know about the impact of the first meeting on their clients? Or about the effects of their clients’ informal social networks on their own services, or of the specific social capital that an individual client may have amassed? From a client’s viewpoint, questions like ‘How can I deal with this issue?’ and ‘What can I resolve myself, and what is better solved by others?’ are mostly framed by this context. The actual emergence of a client’s demand can usually at best be seen as a ‘mutual construction’ process in which both parties are involved, and in which at least some space is available for the clients’ contribution. However, when we look at it from the clients’ perspective, we may also discover that, eventually, the ‘real’ demand is usually already established, not so much by the clients themselves as, and to a much larger extent, by the organizations’ representatives. Moreover, and again from the clients’ perspective, it may very well turn out to be that the practical relevance of themes such as ‘freedom of choice’, ‘self-determination’ and ‘the client’s own responsibility’ should be reconsidered. When seen from the clients’ perspective, the latter may not be put into practice to the degree that an external observer might expect.

122  The client experience And finally, when we look from the clients’ perspective, we may also find out that, after their initial negotiations with the services, the clients’ lives may become essentially intertwined with the regimes of these organizations, and that the same may be true for the exit options available to the clients. Accordingly, the issue of ‘client loyalty’ may turn out to be quite complicated, in the end.

The relevance of ‘everyday life’ Our observations of clients should always commence in their own environment, and in their own ‘everyday lives’. The private sphere, as discussed in Chapter 2, is very important, here. This may involve all of the interpretations we have thus far discussed, from the haven in a heartless world where you’re always welcome, to the place where you expect to be taken care of, on a day-to-day basis, as well as that place where you choose your own lifestyle. In fact, and although we believe that each individual has his or her own preferences in our individualizing culture, we also believe that one’s private life is usually shared with a number of relevant others. Traditional communities and families may continue to play an important role here, despite our ‘individualizing expectations’. Statements like ‘I want to live exactly like my parents!’ or ‘I want to be totally different from my parents!’ may still present these same parents as the ultimate reference point to legitimize one’s individual choices. And, as we argued earlier, a concept such as ‘our culture’ is also put to individualizing uses. The same is true for the often much more one-sided and much less permanent ‘communities lite’ (Duyvendak 2004), that is, those places where you are only expected to have something in common with others as long as you remain committed. Accordingly, even the most ‘individualistic’ of preferences are usually shared with relevant others, even if the latter are only ‘relevant’ to the extent that they recognize the ‘difference’ a person is trying to make. All of this has its consequences for how the clients interact with services as well. The American medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman (1980) has, for instance, shown that people are constantly making everyday decisions and choices in this informal sphere. He described the informal networks in which people make these decisions as the ‘popular sector’. He places this sector, by definition, next to the ‘professional sector’ of the organized service world. He primarily focuses on the health care sector and describes this popular sector as ‘the lay, non-professional, non-specialist, popular culture arena in which illness is first defined and health care activities are initiated’ (Kleinman 1980: 50). The same may very well apply to other services as well. In his follow-up argument, Kleinman manages to set the world somewhat on its head, even though this observation may also contain some truth for various services beyond the world of health care: The customary view is that professionals organize health care for lay people. But typically lay people activate their own health care by deciding when and whom to consult, whether or not to comply, when to switch between treatment alternatives, whether care is effective, and whether they are satisfied

The client experience  123 with its quality. In this sense the popular sector functions as the chief source and most immediate determinant of care. (ibid.: 51) Informal social networks The numerous social networks that potential clients are involved in are also important in how the latter ‘manage’ their service providers. These networks consist of family and friends and the rest of the people a client meets on a regular basis. These networks serve a number of functions when it comes to the client’s commitment to the services. First, family members and other people from the immediate surroundings of a potential client, including the client’s ‘communities lite’, are sometimes able to resolve certain problems. This is an aspect that more and more service providers have begun to take into consideration. In the health care sector, it is commonly referred to as family support. In other sectors, it is called ‘mutual assistance’, ‘selfhelp’ or ‘social support’, and can also be activated by the services. The Internet may be involved, as well. Second, the client’s immediate surroundings sometimes end up getting involved – invited or not  – in the question of whether certain steps taken toward seeking some kind of formal assistance are legitimate. Is a problem serious enough to seek help? And is the problem actually even a problem? It may be ‘God’s will’ or ‘the ancestors’ spirits’, or just one of our daily discomforts. The follow-up question is often: ‘Can’t we just handle this ourselves?’ And if that isn’t possible, what else do ‘we’ think one should do? Does the issue require action, and, if yes, by whom? A psychiatrist? A religious leader? A healer? A school teacher? In fact, many services did not discover these issues until they were confronted by clients with migrant backgrounds. These ‘others’ seem to think differently from ‘us’ in this respect. Most of the above examples naturally involve instances related to assistance and care, but when it comes to other issues, the clients are just as likely to turn to their informal networks. Per person, the latter usually involve – assuming that someone has enough social contacts, although this may not always be the case (Hortulanus et al. 2000: 57) – numerous networks simultaneously. There are families or communities where ‘everything’ is shared by ‘everyone’, but, generally speaking, people usually consult their immediate family and friends about (un) pleasant personal issues. Someone who plans to purchase a computer may seek out very different conversation partners. At this point in the process, most service providers are still way out of the picture in these potential clients’ lives, although, as we have seen in Chapter 4, many services are seen to be actively approaching their potential clients in this essentially private sphere. Social capital Various socially defined differences between clients play an important role in this informal sphere. In social science literature, these differences are usually

124  The client experience established in terms of the client’s ‘social capital’, just as there is material or economic capital, which focuses on the financial capacities of an individual, and cultural capital, which focuses on one’s personal tastes or ‘good manners’. Someone’s educational (or human) capital relates to one’s level of education (Bourdieu 1979). Even clients can be experts in a certain field. Social capital, however, is specifically referred to as someone’s ‘network capital’ and it is considered particularly significant in the service world. It helps people activate all of the other forms of capital and, along the way, becomes an indication of someone’s social status. According to Alejandro Portes’ well-known description, the term ‘social capital’ refers to ‘the capacity of individuals to command scarce resources by virtue of their memberships in networks and broader social structures’. He further emphasizes that ‘the social resources themselves are not social capital; the concept refers instead to the ability of the individual to mobilize them on demand’ (Portes 1995, cited by Engbersen 1990: 17; see also Portes 1998). What is essential here is: ‘This ability … does not inhere in the individual, as the possession of money (material capital) or education (human capital) does, but it is instead a property of the individual’s set of relationships with others. Social capital is a product of embeddedness’ (Portes 1995, ibid.). This social capital not only influences someone’s access to various economic, cultural and educational capitals, but it also determines the social competences performed by private individuals. For this reason, it often proceeds beyond the usual scope of most informal social networks. It usually involves wider social links. In fact, it is usually assumed that people with abundant social capital do also have their own informal networks in and around these wider social links. The college friend who became a surgeon, the acquaintance from the golf club who can be approached as a consultant. With the individual services this is part of the services’ explicit strategies, but it can also be true for any other service. Many services, however, usually deal with people who have to survive on a lot less (or other types of) social capital. This may have been one of the reasons why, in the past, among the working classes, the notion of seeking out a lawyer when you were in trouble just wasn’t even considered. Today this preference for the more ‘available’ solutions within a ‘given’ social sphere can also be observed among some migrant groups. The social workers at a social service institution report having far fewer migrant clients than the more ‘practical’ social counsellors at the same institution. However, they also report that migrants might prefer practical solutions and that, when it comes to divorces, unemployment situations, debts, or problems involving a landlord or their bosses, they are not really interested in ‘talk’. (Van der Haar 2006) For some migrant groups, the transition from their informal social networks to a broader social foundation (and, accordingly, to a ‘more relevant’ social capital) is often seen, if not by the migrants themselves, then at least by a number

The client experience  125 of relevant others, as a sign of their successful ‘integration’ into the dominant culture. A research project showed that Moroccan entrepreneurs just starting out in one of the larger Dutch cities consciously avoided contact with the local chamber of commerce and with the local commercial banks. This research project revealed that this happened partly because they were not aware of their existence. It also revealed that these entrepreneurs often found it difficult to live up to certain Dutch standards (for example, sound bookkeeping). But some of these new entrepreneurs claimed quite explicitly that these institutions were quite irrelevant to their concerns. Many of them started their businesses with money, personnel and clients from their own social circles because ‘they are always ready to help me (and so am I) plus you can always trust them’. Entrepreneurs from the so-called second generation grew up in the Netherlands and thus usually possess more Dutch-based social capital to begin with. They might continue to supply ethnically defined products and services, but they increasingly begin orienting themselves also toward markets outside of their own social networks. Moreover, they work with personnel from outside their own ethnic network, too. They are also more likely to borrow money from Dutch banks and to approach other aspects of their businesses using Dutch norms. All of this in fact amounted to a ‘Dutchification’ of their social capital. (student field report: Moroccan Entrepreneurs 1999) One’s entrance into certain services is influenced by one’s social capital and vice versa. One’s participation in education and other services also serves as a source of social capital.

The mutual construction of ‘demand’ Thus, the client’s need for services always emerges from ‘somewhere’ in his or her daily life. However, there is often also an established ‘cultural agreement’ in place about the definition of the ‘problem’ and the appropriate solution. If you are ill you go to a doctor, if you want to learn something you take a class and if you want to build a house you contact an architect. Of course, the answers to these questions that the clients supply may differ substantially from those that are considered ‘generally established’ by the organizations. In the end, however, clients’ actual participation in this ‘construction process’ may very much be determined, beforehand, by the organizations’ available classifications, as will be demonstrated by the various versions presented below. They will also show, however, that there may still be versions available where the clients’ preferences prevail. No demand: involuntary commitment and/or treatment of a client A forced hospital admission and subsequent medical-psychiatric treatment assumes that there is some urgency to intervening in clients’ lives. The clients

126  The client experience have no say in the matter, and this may also be true for their immediate circle of relatives and acquaintances. One’s commitment to a so-called total institution is the classic example. The difference between a voluntary commitment and a compulsory one is crucial here. Sometimes the clients are placed ‘outside society’ because they are considered a menace to it. This is where the courts play a decisive role in the ‘construction’ of the actual demand. Sometimes these clients are seen as a risk to themselves or to their immediate environment. In these cases, the service professionals mostly end up making the final decision. From the clients’ viewpoint, these are usually the kind of services you would rather avoid. But somehow they know how to find you. This decision is usually very dramatic for the clients involved. The clients may not even have a clear picture of what is going on. They may or may not be able to explain afterwards what happened. From an interview with a child living in a children’s home. Question:  What is the function of a children’s home? Answer: Kids can go there. Question: Yes. Answer: You end up living here when adults can no longer take care of you. They make sure you grow up properly; they take pretty good care of you. (Meerdink 1999: 34, trans.) Our society has all sorts of regulations that are there to protect these clients from the adverse effects of the ‘involuntariness’ or the coercive aspect of the admissions process into an institution. Being in need Needs obviously play a role in collective dramas such as natural disasters and wars, but that is not what we are talking about here. The theme of needs can also be applied to personal tragedies such as the loss of a regular income, or a roof over one’s head, or when one is no longer capable of taking care of one’s own daily survival. We can assume that people ‘in need’ often experience this situation quite intensely, and that many of them can no longer survive without the assistance of others. There are situations of acute need but there are also situations where, according to an expert or the clients themselves, one can deal with a delay in the necessary assistance. One can also be held personally responsible to at least partially take care of the need oneself. In our contemporary social states, the clients are often expected to demonstrate that they are actually ‘in need’ before their entitlement to the services is established. Here the selection bureaucracies come into view, and it is their representatives who usually decide whether or not someone is entitled. Some clients may continue to be able to actively handle their individual entitlement to social security

The client experience  127 or a house. Some clients may seem to passively experience this classification process because they have already lost their sense of perspective. But there are also clients who for instance need care because of their age or their intellectual limitations. They usually allow their ‘representatives’ or ‘agents’ to express their choices for them. It is often those with intellectual limitations who need care the most and who are the most confused by the process, even if their informal network is capable of playing a substantial role. It should be noted here that, once they come into contact with the selection bureaucracies, the clients and their representatives are basically totally delivered to the available procedures. At best, they act as information providers for a classification that mostly takes place behind the scenes. In the end, they may not even recognize themselves in the ‘categories’ that have been applied. Having a problem A problem occurs when the clients and/or their environments clearly realize that something has to happen, but do not know how to identify and manage what is going on. This can of course involve an acute problem – a need – that needs to be addressed immediately. But here it is usually the professionals who determine what the ‘construction’ of the case will be. The invasive professional experts operate in this realm, as do many of the ‘softer’ professional experts we encountered earlier. The clients are particularly vulnerable when it comes to the more invasive professional interventions. The service providers may consider these potential ‘cases’ as unique, but usually they do not, because they are essentially expecting to treat them as an ‘example’ of their own classifications. For the individual clients, however, the situation is often essentially exceptional, and the experience of being classified may be a dramatic experience, if only because the clients have to undergo a very complicated set of assessments. Many clients are unable to cope anyway. A client with psychiatric problems: ‘I’m so confused. I don’t know what to do any more. And so I don’t make any treatment decisions myself. I am just not up to it and, anyway, I don’t have the knowledge. Luckily the people busy with my case have given me all the necessary instructions’. (Berendsen 2000: 52) But even clients who are inclined to co-operate may eventually run up against the etiquette of the experts. A patient’s story: ‘I arrive at the outpatient clinic for a diagnostic test. I am greeted there by a doctor who tells me sternly about the risks of the test: “It is your own decision, Madame”. He gives an evasive answer to my questions (“What percentage of these cases are unsuccessful using this treatment? Can you provide the figures for this hospital?”) “Madam, that I cannot say”. The

128  The client experience doctor shows no empathy for the pain I am about to undergo with this test. The next time, however, I am greeted for the same test by another doctor, in this case an extremely friendly one who takes the time to give me all the necessary information and answers my questions as well as he can. “Is there anything else you need to know?”’ (quoted by Verbeek 1999: 31, trans.) To the services’ representatives these classifications amount to ‘expert’ decisionmaking processes, by definition. To them, the clients’ role is usually limited to a supportive, information supplying activity. However, some clients feel encouraged to present themselves as ‘experts’ (De Swaan 1979), whenever this decision-making process takes place. Moreover, in the medical world, the clients are sometimes confronted with elaborate and objective risk analyses to inform their own decisions – ‘This operation offers you an x per cent chance of surviving y number of years’. In the end, however, this ‘professional focus’ may also influence the quality of the decision making. Potentially chronic patients, for instance, may end up being very well informed about the medical aspects of their condition, at the expense of the many ways in which their daily experiences may also be affected by it (Mol 2002). Then a professional focus may even present some severe limitations to the relevance of the clients’ own experiences to the case. Some clients, for instance, may very well be busy with things not concerning the medical aspects of their decisions. A woman with multiple sclerosis: ‘I kept losing things. I suddenly wasn’t a mother to my own children, at any rate that is how I felt. I couldn’t take care of them any more. The people who used to see me on the street and knew me, began avoiding me. After a year I lost my job. Everything had changed’. (quoted by Verbeek 1999: 28, trans.) In the face of this reality, one might even reconsider the notion of ‘informed consent’. Taking care of one’s everyday necessities But luckily not every service has to deal with this kind of sorrow and misery. This is the case, for example, when it comes to those services that have to be ‘available’ to them, and that are expected to provide them with their everyday necessities. In our society, these kinds of need are often ‘tacitly’ determined, as it were, by an average standard of living. And although this allows some room for debate, this average is generally related to the income levels of the people. This general standard of living usually covers those things that are generally considered ‘normal’ in a given environment: a home to live in; water, gas and electricity; daily food items; a fridge; a washing machine; a TV and possibly a car. The individual’s access to various public services also belongs to this category. It includes the sewers, water and energy as well as the standard services within

The client experience  129 the framework of the welfare state, such as public transport and even education. These services are often called ‘population-oriented services’ because, in many of our welfare states, they usually follow local demographics. They are simply expected to ‘be present’ and to perform their functions ‘quietly’. As we argued earlier, when one turns one’s alarm off, goes to the bathroom, takes a shower, then fetches the newspaper while one is making coffee, one is unconsciously dependent on a number of different services. Moreover, many of these services usually mark their clients’ daily routines. Performing one’s personal preferences Personal preferences assume a certain amount of freedom of choice. They have a lot to do with modern consumerism and with various aspects of individualization. They usually also concern one’s everyday necessities, but with the difference that all clients are expected, here, to fill in their own personal preferences. The clients are all expected to make their own choices, on the assumption that the services will automatically take care of all of these preferences, in their turn. Thus our society offers every size and style of eating establishment, of clothing store, holiday spot, nightlife establishment and appliance store. Although privatization hasn’t really worked out for public utilities such as gas and electricity, it has been successful in the world of communications. Although potential clients may encounter massive inconveniences when they try to approach these communications companies, this has certainly not prevented Internet providers and mobile phone service providers from becoming substantially ‘personalized’ in what they have on offer. This is particularly true when we look at the variety of gadgets and possible mobile phone subscriptions that are available. As we have already seen in Chapter 4, however, the marketing efforts associated with the ‘personalizing’ mass services may also lead to annoying instances involving invasions of the privacy of these potential clients. On the one hand, there is always the risk that these services promise more than they can actually deliver. A Dutch insurance company in an ad once boasted that ‘We will assist you immediately!’ The TV commercial shows the back of a man’s head. It grows increasingly bald as the man vainly attempts to make human contact with the call centre of ‘some insurance company’. A range of very different voices can be heard: ‘That is my colleague’s job, but she’s on vacation!’, ‘He’s out to lunch’, ‘After all, sir, what is a mere month in a person’s lifetime?’, ‘Don’t worry, sir, that happens all the time!’ and ‘Oh, I see the problem, you didn’t fill in the back of the questionnaire! I mean, what do you expect?’ One can only hope that this company will live up to the expectations of its advertisement claims. (field notes) On the other hand, the freedom of choice that is assumed here may actually lead to some major stress for many potential clients. First, freedom of choice is not always

130  The client experience that important to the clients themselves. With the current privatization scheme of the utilities, countless options are offered by the companies, but it remains to be seen whether these options are really that interesting to potential clients. Second, freedom of choice itself can also be pretty annoying. Not being able to choose is a by-product of a society where everything revolves around this freedom. But, third, as Jeremy Rifkin argues in The Age of Access (2000), even the most interactive among the services have far more influence on a client’s choices than is usually suggested. He also argues that, because the actual range of choices is determined by the company, the client may eventually become ‘totally dependent on … forces that he or she little understands and over which he or she has less and less control’ (Rifkin 2000: 103). Experiencing a fleeting impulse What is even more difficult for service providers – but easier once they succeed – are the client’s fleeting impulses translated into a variety of demands, which are by definition not bound to any particular time or place. The clients are obviously not prepared, but the organization has to be, or at least it has to pretend to be available on site at the right moment. These organizations typically try to attract their potential clients with phrases such as ‘a moment to yourself’ or ‘time for a little something’ after a long work day, but eventually it’s the clients who must decide to take the bait. Meanwhile, not much else is expected of the clients other than letting themselves be guided through the organization’s site where they can do their consuming. This is true for supermarkets but also for shopping malls. In the end, however, it is the aggregate whims of a mass clientele that decides the future of an organization. For instance, in the realm of the modern mass media and entertainment industries, entertainers may very well believe that they are expressing their artistic talents, but it is the masses who will eventually decide via their purchasing behaviour. But, other than that, this is a fairly effortless type of consumption for the clients. The clients are familiar with what they need to do, because the service is essentially a part of their everyday culture. Everyone who regularly eats at McDonald’s knows you have to wait in line for your turn, whereupon you must instantly make your choices known based on the standard menu. A McDonald’s client doesn’t ask an employee: ‘Could you bring me the menu and meanwhile can you get me a Martini soda!?’ And don’t try telling them how you would like your salad prepared. However, there are also some other reasons why individual representatives of these ‘fleeting’ masses may sometimes be confronted by some unpleasant surprises. Someone may suddenly notice that the standard menu has been altered. Or someone else may go out to buy that cute little vase only to hear it is no longer available, because ‘there is currently very little demand for it’. Negotiating one’s aspirations What we mean by aspiration is basically any personal desire a customer may have. It implies that the services on offer are important to the clients because they

The client experience  131 believe they truly add something to their lives, and that they can derive something special from them. Thus we see that it is the ‘symbolic’ meaning of the service that is important to the client (Du Gay et al. 1997). These services may not involve a need (even if there are some clients who do consider them that way: ‘I just have to have that Alfa Romeo!’) The service experience is generally not considered problematic either (although some clients may disagree: ‘I would just die without it!’) yet, it is not uncommon for a customer, in cases like these, to end up identifying strongly with the services offered. The prototype for this kind of service provision is found in the luxury item sector (designer clothes and gadgets, trendy restaurants) and in some of the professional services that work back stage, and on commission (tailors, artists or architects). But there are also services that the clients seek out themselves because they want to invest in their lifestyles and in their future options. Investments in the future may lead these clients to a seek out status-improving versions of some straightforward professional solutions: the private clinic, the renowned psychiatrist, a chic lawyer and the more privileged versions of education. Even missionary organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International can take advantage of these distinguishing effects. The services themselves often specifically target these aspirations. Moreover, these services experience also that ‘the chosen’ are often quite pleased to discover that there is an entrance exam for certain courses, or that a prospective participant has to meet specific requirements (‘We require a minimum of five years management experience’). To these clients, this means they have already accomplished ‘something’ before they have even begun. Defining the assignment At first glance it may seem that the patron clients are central to the negotiations and that they are entitled to decide everything, by definition. But, from the client’s angle, the service may still be addressing a real need or problem. These clients expect the service professionals to be the real experts, and may feel inclined to leave the relevant decisions up to them. But apart from this conscious decision to ‘submit’ to the service, in other cases the patron clients may still appear as equal partners. They may take the lead in the actual process of mutual classification, if only because they (or the institutions they represent) are also the ones who will eventually be expected to pay. We argued earlier that even these commissioning clients (or institutional representatives) can end up entangled in a complex web of power effects. For instance, whenever Dutch governmental organizations contract out large-scale public works, there are all sorts of rules and regulations that govern the procedures. Moreover, most patron clients of this kind also have their own political contexts to ‘manage’. In fact, terms such as the clients’ ‘informal social networks’ and ‘social capital’ may take on entirely new meanings in this specific context. In the end, such commissioner clients may ultimately be involved with quite powerful institutions, who will ultimately only demonstrate the lack of power of these commissioner clients themselves (RMO 2004).

132  The client experience

Performing the core service as a client: enduring organizational domestication The actual process of service delivery can finally commence after access has been negotiated. In this phase, as we have already seen in Chapter 4, the client usually has very little control over the actual settings provided by the services. How the clients move through the organization is usually predetermined by the organization and its regime. This part of the process usually entails some domestication of the clients. But, having said this, it should also be stated that the clients’ experiences are not entirely predetermined by these organizational arrangements. In fact, each individual may react quite differently to a given situation. Some clients may feel like a game ball being tossed around by circumstances, while others may feel like going with the flow. Still others may consider the entire process a battle that needs to be fought, and there may also be some clients who see everything as an individual challenge (Kramer et al. 2003: 86). So, given the various ‘scenarios’ of the domestication of the clients, reactions may even differ from client to client. Performing the standard services yourself ‘You’re hired!’ was the headline in The Economist’s 18 September 2004 supplement on the influence of information technology on our daily lives. The anonymous journalist observed: ‘Meet your airline’s latest employee: you! You may not have noticed, but you are also now working for your phone company and your bank.’ The author classifies this kind of ‘standard’ client behaviour as the ultimate form of outsourcing, while at the same time trying to give clients the feeling that they are actually ‘in control’. Interactive electronic gadgets, search engines, the ability to follow a case or a purchase order via the Internet – much of it depends on your own initiative and abilities. But this is also true of the physical arrangements of providing this selfservice to clients. Service providers not only expect clients to make their own decisions, but, as we mentioned earlier, they also require their clients to perform some of the work themselves, and, generally speaking, this ‘client participation’ is entirely framed by the organization. You choose your standard items at IKEA, take them home yourself, and assemble them using the enclosed instructions. In fact, some of our public services also require client input of this kind. Sanitation service is a mass service that involves disposing of clients’ rubbish. But clients are required to participate. They must separate organic from non-organic garbage, and separate chemical waste, glass and paper from the rest. All of these different kinds of rubbish have to be disposed of properly, and often at different places. The remaining waste has to be put in regulation bags or containers, and can only be put out at designated times, and at designated spots along the truck’s route, and only on collection days. Otherwise it won’t be picked up.

The client experience  133 In these cases, the ‘imposed’ commitment of the client to the standard process may be enforced by ‘the law’, and infractions may lead to a client being fined. It is usually assumed that services that operate primarily on an electronic level make things easier for the client. In some cases, things are entirely controlled by these non-human actors. The human factor may eventually even be mimicked by a computerized voice that reacts to a client’s voice and guides him or her through the ‘individual’ course of action and then activates the relevant infrastructure behind the scenes. As to the advantages this may have, The Economist mentions that the ‘round the clock access’ as well as ‘no crowds, traffic or pesky salespeople’ are precisely the kinds of detail a client can appreciate. These interactive programmes may have some disadvantages as well. On the one hand, and as Thomas Landauer (1995: 156–57) suggested: As a customer … you are awed and delighted when told that although the store is out of your size sweater in blue you can have one in green or another style, delivered Tuesday, and, by the way, that the correction you requested for the returned sushi calendar has been made, and thank you, Mr. Landauer – pronounced correctly. On the other hand, these systems only work well when all of the information is correct and if the rounding off of the service provision turns out as expected. For instance, it is no accident that the ‘just in time’ arrangements for distribution and support are often nicknamed ‘just not in time’ by those who operate them behind the scenes. These services are lucky that their clients accept these inconveniences as part of the bargain. They usually end up complaining and letting off steam in private, or over drinks with friends! Waiting for a decision to be made In the complicated decision-making processes the selection bureaucracies perform, client participation is very much encouraged nowadays. Officially, many clients now have to take ‘their own responsibility’, which amounts to doing everything within their power themselves, to avoid becoming dependent on the provision. These new expectations are often inspired by the service’s financial considerations, although they tap into the individualization discourse as well. But, in general, it is assumed that the organization ultimately makes the relevant decisions, which, as we have already seen, is the case when it comes to the processing of individual claims involving complicated laws, or with the independent assessments in the health care sector that determine whether a client is entitled to health care and, if so, what kind. When viewed from the client’s perspective, this type of organizational processing may lead to some unexpected experiences. One interesting observation, for instance, is that these procedures create a boundary or limin (Latin term for threshold or barrier), an in-between phase in which the client is actually expected to await the outcome of the decision-making process, but which may also imply that, during this phase, one is no longer what

134  The client experience one used to be, to accommodate one’s new status (Van Gennep 1960 [1908]: 21). As Arnold Van Gennep noted, one ‘passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state’. This liminal state applies to people awaiting ‘admission’ into social security. One of its effects may be a certain degree of depersonalization. But the liminal aspect of this phase may also reinforce other uncertainties people experience, whenever they have to wait for results without knowing what to expect as to the ‘when’ and the ‘what’ of the decision. Asylum seekers, social security applicants, sick people waiting for a diagnosis may undergo as much inconvenience from this state of uncertainty as from the fear of the results (Gastelaars 2003a; Berendsen 2000). No wonder there are so many client complaints about offices being ‘unreachable’ during this particular part of the process (De Nationale Ombudsman 2006, 2007). This kind of ‘institutional limbo’ may actually discourage clients from taking any responsibilities themselves. Waiting for the results Many expert service professionals who work behind the scenes consider the signing of the contract as the moment they can actually commence their work. These expert producers in particular expect their clients to do nothing but wait for the results, which is not that different from traditional services such as tailors, couturiers and artists. But this pattern is also characteristic of advertising agencies, as well as research and development projects. The patron clients had an important voice in the early phases of the negotiations, should be committed to the agreed-upon transaction and are now expected to wait for the outcome. It is no coincidence that these clients often insist on a supervisory committee that will help them to better monitor the process. Like others, this type of client usually finds it difficult being so powerless during the waiting period. But, because some of these clients are quite ‘empowered’, by definition, they may actually try to take matters into their own hands. Managing the process When co-production is the organization’s goal, the clients are not only expected to take an active part in the initial negotiations but they are also expected to actively participate in the process of service delivery itself. When we take a closer look, however, we see that power issues are involved, and this time, they may work in favour of the clients. The clients – the patron clients in particular – are often in a position to manipulate the situation, specifically whenever service representatives are hoping to acquire new projects. Moreover, the most vulnerable aspect of these patron – service relationships is the mutual performance of trust, and the patron’s impression may turn out to be decisive. And finally, we have seen already that the service professionals who actually perform the service ‘on location’ may feel that they are being completely ‘delivered’ to the patron client’s regime.

The client experience  135 However, and as indicated earlier, even the most powerful patron clients may be hampered by the other stakeholders involved in the process as it unfolds. For instance, even the patron clients’ direct colleagues – for instance, the other members of their own management team – may take different stances regarding a problem presented to the service. The colleagues may have their own reasons keeping a board room conflict alive, or disagreeing with the patron client about the future of their organization. These complications can certainly damage the patron clients’ position, which may actually require some profound ‘managerial expertise’ on the part of these clients. Undergoing treatment Clients undergoing invasive expert interventions – traditional and otherwise – have long been used to the fact that they will eventually be rendered subservient to the process as it unfolds. This applies to both the expert interventions and most of the episodes prior and subsequent to them. The clients must deal with the established routines as determined by the professional regimes. The latter may even include their regular movement from one place to another in and around the organization. The clients must always be available to the service professionals, and to the various support activities as well. In most hospitals, patients still lie in bed for a large part of the day while waiting for the next phase of their treatment. There are fixed times for meals, for visitors and for other daily routines such as washing. The doctors visit them during their rounds. The patients are brought in for a scan or an operation at predetermined times to predetermined places. Patients are expected to just automatically agree with the proposed treatments to be performed. What one notices is that the client’s informal networks, and also the clients’ social capital, mostly disappear into the background. The clients are in fact completely domesticated into these services at this point, into a regime that is entirely determined by the professionals’ expert tactics. A client who tries to create some elbow room on his or her own cannot necessarily expect much sympathy from the professionals. In a TV documentary about the communication processes in a hospital, the conversations between doctors and patients in their beds were observed. The doctors usually remained standing and literally clung to the patient’s charts (their statuses). The patient was most often found lying in bed and mainly responded to the various questions asked. One patient in particular showed especially strong abnormal behaviour. He asked a lot of questions and, in another instance, even took the initiative himself (‘Please sit down!’). This man clearly aroused some astonishment among the staff. The impression he made on the doctors was seen a little bit later in the documentary, in a doctors’ meeting behind the scenes. There we could hear the doctor complaining

136  The client experience that she ‘could not get the necessary information’ and ‘could not do her work properly’ this way. (field notes) Moreover, these expert tactics may continue to change over time. Nowadays, patients are hospitalized only for the short term and are required to get back on their feet as soon as possible because it has been professionally determined that this is better for convalescence. The patients who used to be confined to their beds are now up and walking around fairly quickly. In a similar manner, it has also been scientifically established that a client who is treated as an individual ultimately finds it easier to accept a doctor’s orders than a client who is simply treated as a ‘case’. Even the doctors have begun to appreciate that patients unable to understand what is going on often end up unintentionally interfering with their own treatments. Even these new ‘client-oriented’ repertoires are often applied irrespective of the individual clients’ expectations. And if clients fail to comply it is simply called ‘resistance’ by the service professionals. Performing responsibilities on your own There are many changes currently taking place in the services as a consequence of the many individualizing tendencies in our culture. Individual counselling options led the way, but taking some of your own responsibility has certainly become a part of many of our current public services. The present revamping of the education system, as it relates to the introduction of the ‘new learning’, is an example that deserves to be explained at some length. It confronts us with the inevitable paradoxes of an ‘individualizing’ professional regime. The old discourse was supposed to go like this: In the old days, there was just one curriculum for everyone. There were fixed schedules, fixed seating charts and regular activities that determined how the major services were to be performed. There were well-defined moments when the clients were expected to contribute. Students participated in class or during the discussion hour; they took tests and they performed presentations; they took exams. Even the open periods (of one hour or more) and free time (lunch hour and afternoons off) were pre-established for all students. The new discourse was to establish the following redefinition of the actual learning process: The so-called ‘new learning’ is focused on the processes of how relevant information can be gathered rather than on memorizing the given information. The new label became ‘acquiring the appropriate competences’ rather than ‘learning by heart’. Moreover, with the help of flexible schedules, a computerized infrastructure and the Internet, students could pursue their studies individually, with periodic contributions from their teachers. The

The client experience  137 curriculum now consists of separate projects based on individualized learning trajectories and, in many respects, the students are expected to discover their own paths. The role of the professional has changed from teaching to coaching. The professionals are only expected to perform at the students’ request. Modern students are no longer dependent on the passive acquisition of knowledge or on the practising of predetermined skills. For the most part, they learn on their own. Everyone – the students, their parents, the teachers and their schools – are now expected to deal with this discourse, and to somehow manage the action nets that are associated with it. Naturally, this new discourse that has taken hold in the Dutch education system is by definition controversial, or so it may seem. Some advocate even more freedom, while others, for obvious reasons, want to return to a more structured regime. But, generally speaking, it can be taken for granted that, in the new regime, the school and its service professionals expect more from their students than they used to. Thus the students now have to ‘learn how to learn’ on their own. Moreover, they must learn to ‘manage’ their own motivation, and to monitor their own progress. The question remains, how individual students, with their often very different socio-cultural backgrounds, will ‘manage’ these new expectations. Some students, not to mention their parents, have already learned how to use this new ideology against the school and its teachers. An assertion such as ‘It’s my own responsibility, isn’t it?’ quickly acquired a new significance as a strategy of resistance. Moreover, and depending on their social capital, of course, some parents even prepare their children at home for the confrontations with their coaches (student field report: The Secondary School 2000). It should also be noted that some things remain essentially the same. For instance, the clients have always been ‘forced to participate’ in the education system, whatever curriculum was presented. Moreover, students in the past have also been expected to either pass or fail this curriculum in an essentially individual manner. Students have always been judged individually by their teachers and by their schools. They always got their own grades and their own diplomas. Remarkably enough, these elementary principles of education have remained intact during this entire overhaul of the preferential learning process. The ‘new’ students may again end up being domesticated into an inevitable course of action, that is primarily ‘organized’ by the school. Experiencing physical domestication We observed in Chapter 4 how the services can control their clients’ movements through the processes of service delivery that constitute their various service cores. A concrete example of this was the routing of clients through the mass services, from supermarket to Schiphol. But the traditional intramural settings that provide care and supervision are a typical version of this kind of physical domestication of the clients.

138  The client experience The concept most frequently used to describe this situation is based on Goffman’s (1961) pioneering work concerning total institutions. This term referred to institutions where clients were cared for around the clock, seven days a week. Although some of the sharp edges have fallen away since Goffman’s analysis of half a century ago, these institutions can still be characterized in terms of their all-encompassing regimes. When it comes to the involuntary institutionalization of basically healthy clients, the service professionals in these institutions can be quite dominant, by definition, because these clients are basically not permitted to leave. So it is no wonder that the service professionals performing the various tasks in these institutions expend a lot of energy trying to maintain their distance from their clients. We also saw how clients commonly respond to this distancing strategy by creating ‘countercultures’ of their own, which, ironically enough, are sometimes also utilized by the institution itself, as part of its regime. An example of the latter is provided by various institutions in the Dutch juvenile detention sector. They have actually transformed this ‘counterculture’ into the basis of their regimes. They make use of the fact that these ‘cultures’ usually establish hierarchies among the clients themselves, and thus encourage individual inmates to improve their position. The institution provides the rules, but the ‘superior’ inmates are now essentially rewarded whenever they succeed in teaching other inmates to do the same. The most important consequence of incorporation in intramural arrangements providing care, however, is the so-called hospitalization of these ultimately dependent clients. These clients become totally dependent on how the organization fills up their everyday lives. The general conclusion has always been that this condition needs to be rectified by the institutions’ employees (Rapoport 1960). The remarkable thing, however, is that the clients themselves need not necessarily experience any of this as particularly unpleasant. To them, this hospitalization effect invariably means not wanting to leave the ‘safety’ or at least the ‘predictability’ of the institution. Dealing with the unexpected yourself Meanwhile, the services providing care are increasingly placing the emphasis on individualization and, with that, on the personal networks providing care. In the latter case, the formal arrangements are expected to hand over some of their control over everyday affairs to their clients and their social networks. When seen from the client perspective, an important effect of the latter is that the clients themselves are now expressly required to become self-sufficient and to ‘take their own responsibility’. And, as we have seen, this kind of ‘care providing’ arrangement has become increasingly interwoven with those everyday household activities that are normally considered part of everyday life. This interweaving often leads to unexpected situations for many clients.

The client experience  139 First of all, there is the issue we raised earlier, that of clients who have forgotten these elementary skills or have never acquired them (Gastelaars 2003a, 2003c). Some clients have never run their own household. Second, when intramural care arrangements switch over to independent living situations, one often notices a little too late that these clients have grown quite accustomed to the system’s routines (Johnson 1998). Clients find themselves suddenly being ‘forced’ to do everything themselves. They have to do their own grocery shopping and fix their own meals; decide when and what to watch on TV; when to go to bed and when to get up. It also entails going to school by yourself, going out on the town, maintaining friendships and love relationships, finding a job when the time comes. (student field report: Local Networking 2006) When they succeed, some clients may actually discover hidden talents, while others may never acquire these skills. Clients who have led independent lives in the past may also be confronted with the ‘unexpected’, but in a quite different way. They have to come to terms with the fact that their skills are diminishing as they gradually grow older. They get sick. They become more accident prone. This group in particular has to deal with the fact that they are no longer in control. Gabrielle Verbeek (1999) has pointed out that they often feel forced to accept assistance. Some of these clients may even find themselves unexpectedly burdened by the everyday management of their chosen personal arrangements. Verbeek shows one client arguing: ‘I really don’t want to contribute that much myself anymore. I’m still very busy dealing with my life. I’ve established my own business. I’m very busy working on my own development. I don’t want all that other stuff’ (Verbeek 1999: 34, trans.). Other clients establish organizations of their own or at least assume the task of managing their own personal networks (Verbeek 1999: 35). However, these clients may also run into some issues that used to be reserved for ‘real’ service professionals, such as the actual ‘management’ of proximity and distance. The people who work for them may be theirs, so to speak, but they will never end up becoming real ‘friends’. No wonder that many of these clients appreciate some level of support. Finding a way to belong Services create their own worlds and those clients who maintain a long-term relationship with a service, may actually end up feeling like they belong to the organization. Supermarket customers, for instance, find it pleasant to be personally greeted by a cashier. One might even feel at home in a hospital or in a school. Meanwhile, volunteer organizations take this sense of belonging one step further, although most of their clients may no longer be all that concerned with the collective spirit. In fact, their clients’ actual sense of commitment may even be more inspired by trends and style, or because their social involvement looks good on their CVs.

140  The client experience And yet, the ‘club’ may remain essential to them, because, at least for the time being, it may turn into an ‘essential’ aspect of the individual courses of their lives. A study shows how a team of talented water polo players were playing at the top of their game. They were all strongly committed to the sport. They were all male. Moreover, in the Netherlands, water polo’s upper echelons are mostly ‘white’. And yet, within these apparently uniform commitments and identifications, there are also some substantial variations. The study specifically investigated their commitments to each other, to their sport and to their team. The research distinguished a variety of scenarios in which these commitments were expressed. First, the majority of the players – the researchers call them comrades – feel that their bond with the team are as important as their performance. They are also the macho types who find the physical aspect of the sport important. They are not afraid of physical confrontations, and are interested in the team’s hierarchies. Second, however, there are also the inquisitive types who can be defined as social climbers and who are mainly interested in their own personal growth; they put a strong emphasis on willpower and perseverance, but are also quite individualistic. They are thus more likely to go their own way. Meanwhile, and third, the calculating types try to determine whether the sport still has enough to offer them, because they are, more than anything else, interested in competition. The latter are often also more educated that the others. Unlike the inquisitive types, they gladly assume the position of team leader. But education-wise they are a minority, and as a consequence, they feel different from the rest. And finally, and fourth, there are the commuters who are more interested in personal equilibrium. They invested a lot more, comparatively speaking, in their lives beyond sports. These four types may all be present in one sports club; they can even be found on one and the same team! (Anthonissen and Dortants 2005) Even the key members of an otherwise quite homogeneous club may turn out to be quite different, not only in terms of their individual backgrounds but also in the levels of commitment they produce. To sum up The clients’ actual experiences may turn out to be quite varied. More important for the present argument is that we have also seen that this depends, to an extent, on the actual process of service delivery as is foreseen by the organization. Two dimensions may be relevant here. The first relates to the voluntary nature of the clients’ access to the organization (or on their degree of self-determination at the start). In the previous section we discussed the often quite involuntary aspects of various ‘demands’. The second dimension, however, is also quite crucial to the clients’ experience. It relates to the actual client relationship that is to be performed.

The client experience  141

voluntary

under pressure

non-committal

encounter

confrontation

Invasive/long term

CLIENT RELATIONSHIP

CLIENT ACCESS

partnership/ ownership/ (lifelong) commitment

liminality/ domestication/ counterculture

Figure 6.1  Organized client experiences.

It is labelled here as ‘invasive’, at one extreme, and as ‘non-committal’ at the other. The label invasiveness relates not only to invasiveness of the actual client relationships, but also to their duration and to the degree of client commitment that is performed. In their turn, the ‘non-committal’ relationships can be seen as essentially short term, non-invasive and superficial. As is shown in Figure 6.1, these ‘organized experiences’ may range from a superficial encounter to a profound organizational or professions domestication. But again, it should also be stated here again that the clients’ experiences are not entirely predetermined by these organizational arrangements. Each individual may react quite differently and each situation may turn out to be quite unique.

Winding up (and starting over again) for clients Hirschman’s (1970) options of ‘exit’, ‘voice’ and ‘loyalty’ stem from a description of the relationship between employees and their organizations. However, these concepts can also be applied to clients. In fact, labels such as ‘freedom of choice’, client ‘empowerment’, ‘self-determination’ and ‘client responsibility’ all appear to relate to the client’s option of ‘voice’. Moreover, the presentation of the transformation phase in the previous section may lead to some new insights in connection with the question of client loyalty. Diverse issues such as client dependence, client domestication and even the longterm commitment of the clients themselves may eventually limit their empowerment vis-à-vis the service. Even if the processes are not very satisfactory from the clients’ point of view, these issues may eventually provide clients with reasons to stay.

142  The client experience However, another important question that Hirschman poses is: are there any exit options available to the clients? This question becomes particularly interesting whenever there are misunderstandings between the organization and its clients about the terms of their mutual commitment. With some services, for instance, it is fairly easy for clients to sever the relationship, and the organization may have to try to convince them to stay. In other cases, however, the clients may be discharged by the organization, even if they are not yet prepared to leave. It may be interesting to find out how the clients deal with these kinds of situation and whether the organizations always prevail. But, having said this, we should also realize that the termination of a service is fairly straightforward to all of the involved parties most of the time. The product is either purchased or it is not. The social security benefits are either denied or extended; the benefits may even be rejected by the clients themselves when they find a job. The diploma has been earned or the client has failed; the illness has been treated and the patient has recovered, or has been diagnosed as incurably ill. In a medical context, when the client dies it may be considered a straightforward ‘termination’. The clients or their representatives are either satisfied or they are not. If not, the clients usually have the option of filing a complaint and/or of going elsewhere, although this can be a rather painful process for the average client. In any case, whenever another service assumes a client’s case, his or her movement through the process of service delivery begins all over again.

Conclusion: the clients’ experiences matter (or maybe not) Most of the processes of service delivery we have described here can be considered as ‘given’, from an organizational point of view. Of course, it may be that many clients actually abhor the fact that most of the processes of service delivery have become too complicated for them. This ‘given’ complexity may actually aggravate their individual conditions. And yet, one can safely assume most of the time that the service experiences have become part of ‘our culture’ and that the clients know what to expect (and what not to expect) from a specific service. Although some clients may be better prepared for this than others, one can assume that most clients understand the specific client relationships they are about to enter. We can also assume that, although the clients’ experiences are actually framed by the organizations, most of the clients are quite willing to comply most of the time, if only because they are somehow taught that this is expected of them. The latter in particular may amount to a quite impressive experience to the clients. And although one may assume that most clients are actually willing to cope, one should not be too surprised, either, to find out that there are always some clients who are not satisfied by the process and file a complaint. The latter will certainly be the case when there are some serious doubts as to the performance of the organization. But it will also be the case whenever the transactions turn into involuntary ‘confrontations’, or are experienced as an outright ‘organizational harassment’ by the client. To clients it is quite important to at least have the impression that their experiences count.

7 The new management About ‘process’ and ‘control’

‘I think I soon learned to manage.’ ‘To manage?’ ‘To keep my head above water. Oh, I didn’t mean “to be a manager” in the sense you are talking about. I mean just surviving to the end of the week, or the month more likely, without getting into too much trouble or upsetting too many folk.’ ‘But is that really different from “being a manager”?’ ‘Perhaps it isn’t. I don’t know. I must admit that in spite of all the courses I’ve been on and all that management book stuff that I have swallowed, I still rely on my wits, my devastating charm, to do the job.’ (Interview fragment, Watson, In Search of Management)

‘How do you manage?’ Although the above quotation may suggest otherwise, Tony Watson, in his ethnographic study In Search of Management (1994) reveals that many managers view their organizations as machines. The incentive often comes from the organization’s top or from powerful stakeholders in the organizations’ environment, especially the financial ‘partners’. The same is true for the services in and around the public domain, particularly now that they are all under permanent reconstruction. The introduction of the new public management, as well as other factors, means that these organizations are now being judged in terms of quantifiable parameters. It may not come as a surprise that, under these circumstances, or so Watson argues, managers are often ‘pressured to be technical experts, devising rational and emotionally neutral systems and structures to “solve problems”, “make decisions”, “run the business”’ (Watson 1994: 13). They are encouraged to view the organization as ‘organized’ in a traditional way, that is, as the static outcome of a determined plan, at least for the time being. Despite the flexibility of the current streamlining, the managers are to make ‘it’ work and to make sure that ‘it’ reaches its targets as intended. Accordingly, and in a manner of speaking, the organization can be treated as a machine. It may not come as a surprise, either, that, with the services in mind, these managerial intentions have caused considerable debate. There are many critics who will argue that the new management is primarily there to reinforce the

144  The new management domestication of the service professionals. There are also critics who point out that more room should be provided for the various external responsibilities that many service professionals are currently facing. Some critics even insist that these managers should ultimately be blamed for the many inconveniences the clients are currently encountering. Inconveniences that may aggravate the clients’ risks! Add to this the ‘senseless’ accountability efforts that have been introduced, and one realizes – or so quite a few of the critics insist – that the service professionals shouldn’t be held responsible every time the services fail. No wonder that Watson, like many other critics of the new management, encourages the managers to break with their fixation on their rationalizing efforts. In fact Watson believes that they don’t even achieve what they originally set out to accomplish. He argues that ‘These “scientific” and rational-analytic practices … leave managers so distanced from the “managed” that their capacity to control events is undermined’ (ibid.: 13). Moreover, Watson also believes that ‘good management’, is primarily an issue of the production of legitimacy, to ‘running an organization so that the variety of people who want something out of it will go on supporting it in such a way that it is able to maintain its existence into the future’ (ibid.: 10). To this may be added that they must also be able to ‘manage’ the lively power circuits in and around their organizations (cf. Clegg 1989). But central to Watson’s beliefs is the people work that is involved in the daily management on and around the work floors. The complications arising from the service work we have been discussing in the previous chapters cannot but reinforce this particular point. Therefore, this chapter will not only pay attention to the currently dominant technical approach and particularly to the managers’ persistent preoccupation with standards. It will also address the ‘people skills’ and the ‘process skills’ that are also part of day-to-day managerial efforts, not to mention the ‘power issues’ that are also involved.

Flexible streamlining: delivering services by design Many observations regarding the services are less about the specific nature of the services and more about the consequences of the new (public) management that is currently being introduced (Grönroos 1990; Normann 1991; Pollitt 1990; Clarke and Newman 1997; Noordegraaf 2004). In most instances, the discussions focus on the consequences of the flexible streamlining of the services, to use the phrase introduced in earlier chapters. And, as a rule, this flexible streamlining is linked ‘spontaneously’ to an extensive interest in accountability issues, and to a preference for calculable goals. According to these observations, the services are more than ever seen as organizations in the classic meaning of the word. They are seen as consciously established social entities that extract their resources from their environments with an eye on the ‘production and maintenance’ of their services, and on the organizations’ survival. Accordingly, most services are now increasingly being rationalized, irrespective – or so it seems – of the diversity of their various core activities.

The new management  145 In fact, the rational structuring these managerial interventions condone is mostly expected to ‘constrain’ the processes of service delivery that are at stake, rather than, to use Anthony Giddens’ familiar terminology, ‘enabling’ them via their structuring effects (1984: 169ff.). And yet, it can also be assumed, as we have seen in Chapter 4, that many of the services are trying to do the latter as well. This section, however, will focus mostly on the constraining effects of the various ‘standards’ the new managers employ. It will discuss, first, the most thorough versions of flexible streamlining, which amount to an all-encompassing redesign of the primary process of service delivery, in terms of a so-called Business Process Redesign (BPR). The latter, in particular, involves the rationalization of most workplace activities insofar as they do allow for such standardization. The scope of the second version, standardization, is much more modest, at least at first sight. It contains the development of standards that are more or less fixed, to describe the actual products, processes and skills involved in a particular service (cf. Mintzberg 1983). It leaves the actual processes of service delivery intact and appears to be there simply to ‘objectify’, and thus ‘ratify’ what is already going on. The third version focuses on evaluation standards. These can be specified as those standards (‘the thermometer’) and the parameters (‘degrees Centigrade’) and norms (‘a temperature of over 37.6° indicates a fever’) that can be established to measure the outcomes of a process of service delivery, and evaluate them as well. They are there to make the organization’s performances more ‘transparent’, that is, more accessible to external assessments. In principle, they are developed ‘at some distance’ from the processes concerned.

Design and redesign The conscious design and redesign of the primary processes of service delivery involve the ‘rational’ analysis of the various processes, with particular attention paid to the question of how their efficiency can be increased. The principal question here is how these processes can be so arranged that everything runs smoothly and can also be considered effective. But, as a rule, the actual processes are also related to specific production norms. A very well known approach involving the latter was introduced in the 1990s by Hammer and Champy. The far-reaching assumptions of their famous Business Process Redesign (BPR) concerned ‘the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance’ (Hammer and Champy 1995: 216). These authors were particularly interested in the introduction of critical measurements in terms of flow, volume and yield, and the encompassing redesign of the existing activities was to follow this order. Large-scale organizations, often resulting from mergers, were usually considered the most likely candidates for their treatment but, to its makers, there is no apparent reason why it should not be applied on a smaller scale as well. The outcome is basically a systematic redesign of the primary processes, with the production norms in full view. The various activities are thoroughly investigated and standardized, according to the principles

146  The new management of ‘one best way’ that are associated with this kind of material rationalization (see also Chapter 2). In the service world, these procedures were pioneered by the mass services, with many other services following their lead. Materially, this approach focuses on ‘the process as a whole’, and it breaks with those traditional practices that allowed separate departments (or even divisions) to provide separate services (or parts of products) that had to be ‘assembled’ elsewhere. The alternative arrangements were called ‘process oriented’ because they explicitly tried to rationalize the actual routing of the client through the process we described earlier. The division of labour had to be rationalized as well. So, what we have observed in Chapter 4 as a more or less spontaneously emerging succession of phases now became the object of a well-considered design that encompasses the supporting services as well. This approach is often framed in purely quantitative terms, but of course, there are also more qualitative versions available, here. An example of the latter are the process descriptions performed under the guidance of the Dutch Quality Institute (INK 2003) format that has been widely applied in and around the public domain in the Netherlands. Apart from the mass services, there were also many selection bureaucracies and professional services ‘subject’ to these types of process improvement. Around the public domain, these changes are invariably presented as specifically ‘client-oriented’, although, as we have seen, they may in fact turn out to be quite baffling to the clients. Furthermore, they often put an end to many service professionals operating as ‘generalists’, with their tasks effectively being split up and specialized into numerous smaller contributions. Many of these services introduced a systematic distinction between their ‘front offices’ and ‘back offices’. In fact, the front offices take care of the ‘moment of truth’, that is, the first contact with the clients. Accordingly they may perform the selection efforts the organization performs, and at least part of its classification efforts  – ‘One window for all’. They are followed by the ‘back offices’ that not only perform the supportive activities behind the scenes, but, in fact, provide a variety of streams, involving the various core services the organization may perform in a face-to-face situation. The process arrangement developed along INK lines by the Dutch national police – with some variations per region – looks like this. The first stream is called (1) Registration and Service. This is the front office. It includes the call centres and reception desk activities. These activities can be performed for the most part by employees who are not trained as police officers. They may be the first people citizens meet in a police station when they want to file a police report. This process also serves as the first classification, which all of the subsequent phases depend upon. The first follow-up stream concerns (2) Emergency Assistance. This is a 24-hour-a-day service that reacts to emergency calls. It consists of officers in police cruisers with an IT-connection who cruise around waiting for trouble to arise. The second follow-up stream, (3) Surveillance and Control, are the so-called street cops who do the actual

The new management  147 ‘policing’ of public spaces. In the Netherlands, this is called ‘blue on the streets’. Stream (4) Investigation concerns the specialized tasks of criminal investigation. This work is performed behind the scenes for the most part and is usually profiled as subservient to the justice department. The Attorney General is generally seen as their most important client. (student field report: Police Report 2005) The assumption is that those professional services that work with large numbers of clients are, in fact, particularly well served by this streamlining process, although at first this may seem contrary to expectations. We have already seen how in Dutch hospitals the operating rooms have begun to look more and more like well-oiled machines that are organized around the most efficient possible deployment of surgeons and their extensive and costly surgical equipment. The options of making the (expensive) equipment available for use at the weekends and maybe even twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, are also currently under consideration. Moreover, there is already a growing number of standard surgical interventions available which are readily organized in specialized ‘production streets’ performing ‘knees’ and ‘cataracts’. Of course, the support activities are also in the process of being re-organized. For instance, it is often suggested that facility management is becoming increasingly professional, with the term ‘professional’ meaning that those activities are now also rationalized in an ‘efficient’ manner. The term ‘facilities’ in many organizations still implies a fairly variegated collection of diverse activities, from the mailroom to catering, from security to cleaning services, and it often also includes the department involved in developing and maintaining the computerized infrastructure. Logistics design, however, has now developed into a fairly specialized activity. As a rule, it involves the task of placing all of the relevant movements of information, goods, money and people in a row, with the organization’s objectives and quality demands in mind. Moreover, the various tracking systems are often expressly related to the organization’s financial overview and to the various auditors who now often monitor the operations of the services involved. The main idea behind the actual redesign in most services is that the existing geography of practices should be made more consistent. But we see that, in many places, this streamlining has led to an unprecedented increase in the so-called ‘objective’ complexities of the process as well. This is related to the division of labour and the degree of differentiation and specialization of tasks (Mintzberg 1983: 153). But, as we have already seen in Chapter 4, it must also affect the ‘subjective’ complexities of the organizations, that is, their complexities to the experience of people moving through the process (Czarniawska 1992). In fact, these streamlined processes may inadvertently create a baffling experience, both to the service professionals and to the clients.

148  The new management A patient entering a hospital for the first time cannot avoid the registration desk in the lobby. That is where she must present an insurance card. If she is not yet part of the system she will be issued a new patient card. Then she has to go to the department desk to confirm the initial encounter with the specialist she has been referred to. If all goes well, this department should already have the old dossier ready or have prepared a new one. Here they enter the patient’s information into the dossier. The patient, may, however, feel that she has to constantly retell her story. (field notes) The service professionals, in their turn, are usually confronted with numerous problems associated with their mutual co-operation and transfer. Etienne Wenger, whom we quoted earlier, labelled the various computer formats that are now in use as ‘boundary objects’ because they are not only to link the various activities together, but should also be comprehensible to all the parties who work with them (Wenger 1997: 105 ff.). But he also points out that these boundary objects often communicate a lot less than expected, and that the various parties are usually forced to improvise the communication that is supposed to automatically take place.

The impact of standards The second type of streamlining mentioned in our introductory remarks amounts to the creation of standards. It usually involves the systematic improvement of the qualities of the organizations’ everyday work. Here, it is taken for granted that the daily performance of the services that are involved may actually have a number of ‘unmanageable’ aspects. The core questions remain, however, how to ensure that the actions of the service professionals who are concerned are as reliable as possible, and how to ensure that, during the performance, certain quality standards are maintained. In his classic Structure in Fives, Charles Mintzberg (1983) devoted generous attention to this type of standardization, because he considered it an essential tool for the co-ordination of organized activities on the work floor. In this section, we will make use of Mintzberg’s conceptualization and look at the standardization of the product, the standardization of processes and finally, the standardization of the skills of the service professionals who are concerned. Standardization of the product What Mintzberg was aiming for with his ‘product standardization’ was the development of standards as well as of ‘critical values’ or norms that could be easily imposed upon the outcomes of the work. With production companies this usually involves the physical product specifications that are imposed on the products. They make it possible to also set quantitative targets. The intended results can then be precisely established as ‘x’ products of which a minimum of ‘x – y’ have to meet ‘such and such’ quality standards.

The new management  149 This kind of standardization is obviously compatible with material mass production, which has also been subject to mechanization. It does not make much sense to create loose parts in a step-by-step process if they ultimately do not fit together during the assembly process. That is where detailed specifications take their proper place. But it may be difficult to also apply these specifications to services. And yet, first, they are quite easily applied to the physical infrastructure and to the support activities that are usually performed behind the scenes. As a matter of fact, there are now many services that have actually managed to significantly increase their efficiency this way. These quantitative specifications may affect the surface areas of rooms and the – also health-related – norms for furniture, instruments and materials, from soccer match necessities to the technical equipment necessary to perform surgery on a human body. Moreover, and second, many services involve the supplying of standard products to their clients as a matter of course. This includes the furniture provided by IKEA and the hamburgers on McDonald’s menu. But a newspaper also calculates the page space devoted to advertising, while TV programmes have well-documented formats and durations. Third, the physical arrangements related to the actual process of service delivery can be standardized as well. The positioning of products in a supermarket are mostly measured in metres, as is a store’s physical layout. This also involves precise calculations gauging the expected numbers of clients and their circulation. The same applies to the length, scope, frequency and manpower necessary to perform a specific trip on public transport. ‘Real’ service provision, however, mostly involves the qualities of the direct interactions with clients. It is no wonder then that, unlike manufacturing, the commercially oriented service literature describes the services as ‘intangible’, by definition (Normann 1991: 15). This is related to the fact that most services are actually produced in interaction processes between people. And yet, more and more services are producing standards with the aim of describing precisely that. Thus the services in the social security sector now often discuss their ‘production’ in terms of the actual number of dossiers processed, or in terms of their arrears. Meanwhile, schools calculate it in terms of the number of courses they provide and the number of students enrolled; they are expected to provide figures for the number of students actually attending, or the percentage of students that pass. Police investigators calculate the number of dossiers they actually file with the Attorney General, and they are then requested to include the percentage that is actually accepted. In fact, these standards allow the new management to establish a target in terms of a precise number of ‘specific’ transactions, although it is usually left open how these targets are actually reached in everyday practice. The workplace assignment often ends up being something in the order of ‘you have to reach your target, but you can figure out how you want to proceed on your own!’ This type of description is also increasingly used to establish the budgets the services currently need to present to their financiers (‘x knee operations annually at y euros per operation’) as part of their annual planning. These budgets often

150  The new management serve as the foundation for the final settlement as well (‘too many/too few knee operations in year p’). Furthermore, these standards are increasingly being based on norms regarding the number of working hours that can be ‘put in’ per transaction, and that eventually helps to establish its ‘costs’. The latter can, in their turn, yield an estimate of the number of ‘paid hours’ that an individual service professional is allowed ‘to book’. The next step is trying to reduce the price per item via a division of labour between cheaper and more expensive service professionals. And so on and so on. These standards thus tend to have more and more consequences for the everyday practices in the service world, although there will always be a sort of gap between these ‘standards’ and the ‘actual’ day-to-day performance. No wonder many service professionals see these standards as an infringement of their day-to-day work. Standardizing the process Process standards, in their turn, involve the standardization of a specific succession of actions, or of decisions that need to be taken, in the course of the implementation of a certain task. They are supposed to inform everyone about what is supposed to happen in a certain well-defined situation. They often accommodate the standardization of the time management involved as well, in terms of the ‘speed’, ‘timing’, ‘sequence’ and ‘duration’ of the actions. They may even involve the required type of co-ordination, and include the boundary objects to support it. This standardization may be influenced by local efficiency considerations, but just as likely by the desire to render the process accessible to those outsiders who wish to determine whether everything was performed in the ‘established’ way. These process standards have already been in effect for a long time in selection bureaucracies, and particularly in those in a juridical context (see also Chapters 1 and 3). A contract can also be considered a process standard because what is expected from the various parties is established beforehand (see Chapter 4). A procedure usually amounts to a succession of steps that must be performed, including the accompanying rights and duties that are assigned to the various parties. This can also take the form of a succession of decision-making moments, with an indication of who must be involved and when, and who should not. In fact, our democratic decision-making processes rely on this form. These standards can subsequently be used to evaluate the actual performance of both the organization and its professionals and in some situations of the client, as well. For instance, procedural mistakes in criminal law can lead to charges being dropped against the accused. Meanwhile, clients who fail to follow the proper procedures may end up losing their social security benefits. A democratic decision that ends in a dubious manner may have to be renegotiated. These process standards have been quite familiar for a long time to those expert interventions we have previously called invasive. Their standards involve those professional prescriptions for action that we usually call protocols. As a rule, these protocols are produced by the service professionals themselves, and the same is true for the computerized decision-making processes that are currently being

The new management  151 developed to support such expert professional actions. Furthermore, the standardization here concerns the succession of actions a service professional has to perform, and, here, they are not primarily defined by their sequence or by their speed. They are defined by their preferred content. These standards may serve the organization’s efficiency, but they usually relate to the ‘best practices’ as acknowledged by these professionals themselves. Compared to many other standards, they are actually produced ‘from the bottom up’, and this is also the way they are usually performed in everyday practice. The standards usually refer to preferential courses of action, but each individual professional may find reasons for deviating from them, on the condition that an expert professional argument is provided (see also Chapter 2). These process standards naturally ‘organize’ what needs to be done but they also protect the quality of the professionals involved. In the medical and paramedical worlds, just about every activity now has its own protocol. In the sectors we have previously called soft, however, they are often specifically related to complicated cases. A somewhat older teacher at an elementary school explains: ‘nowadays I have a folder full of action plans: Asperger, mentally handicapped, ADHD, dyslexia, deceased family members’. (Volkskrant, 12 May 2005) There are also increasingly more protocols available concerning how to handle unusual or extreme situations. Examples of these include the so-called ‘repressive’ interventions related to psychiatric care or what to do in the child care sector when one is presented with an allegation of child abuse. And, finally, there are protocols that cover almost all instances of violence, racism or sexual intimidation, both among the service professionals themselves and between these professionals and their clients. A common problem with these protocols is that, as a rule, they do not offer enough room for ‘situated negotiations’. That is why in everyday practice they are often considered something you have to keep in mind but not something you can use as a compelling prescription. To many service professionals, these standards should never replace their responsibilities. Standardizing skills It is no wonder that some prefer to focus on the standardization of skills when applying the issue of standardization to the professional activities that may be relevant to a service. The actual standardization of skills  – Mintzberg has also noted this – is usually performed outside the organization. It has long provided the most accepted response to the question of how to make the work of any kind of professionals more predictable, without limiting the professional spaces they need to perform their professional duties. The diploma, the education level and the number of years of experience have long been considered the obvious standards

152  The new management in the evaluation of a professional’s skills, but, in the current practices involving Human Resource Management (HRM) they are now often replaced with a standard enumeration of the actual competences that are required for a specific activity in a specific organization. The principle in all of these standards sounds a little like this: you place qualified people in positions with the expectation that they possess the skills necessary to do the job properly, and that they will act in a satisfactory manner. These qualifications may relate to the gradual process of expert learning as described in Chapter 5, they may also be expressed in terms of a specific number of years of practical experience, or of someone’s ‘seniority’ in a field, or, nowadays, in terms of the ‘personal development’ that is required for a specific position. As we have seen at some length in Chapter 5, the kinds of skill that are specifically associated with the services have shifted significantly in recent times. This concerns the current relevance of the so-called relational and process skills that are now considered relevant to most services. Moreover, the current interest of many services in the cognitive skills is also standardized and has led to the development of various forms of ‘knowledge management’ that are enforced ‘behind the scenes’. The assumption is that it is possible to somehow determine what knowledge is particularly relevant to an organization, and to share it among all of the service professionals involved via a standard computer format (see Takeuchi and Nonaka 1995). As I suggested above, a standardized version of competence management is also introduced to most service providers under the label of Human Resource Management (HRM). To some, this involves the individual employees taking part in the company’s training efforts and being offered individual career guidance and coaching. More often it is focused, however, on one’s actual accumulation of the ‘competences’ that are specifically required for one’s performance. In fact, it often focuses on the process skills and the relational competences that are now considered indispensable to most services. Accordingly, the so-called core competences an organization requires point not only to the skills – expert and otherwise – that are specifically relevant to the organization’s core service. Some more ‘general’ competences are usually enumerated as well. A secondary school places an ad soliciting for teachers in a national morning newspaper (Volkskrant, 13 August 2005). The candidates must be willing to perform as both teachers and trainers but also as individual counsellors. All this amounts to core competence number 1, and is consistent with the current new learning I described in an earlier chapter. Moreover, the job description makes it explicit that other competences are also desirable for a candidate to succeed. The latter involve one’s ability to work with others, learning skills, an entrepreneurial attitude and, last but not least, a capacity to deal with a considerable diversity of students. (field notes) Many organizations have developed a standardized set of evaluation criteria with which they intend to periodically establish the presence of the desired competences

The new management  153 with their service professionals. They establish the related consequences as well. If someone’s actual performance is labelled ‘stagnant’ one too many times, a person will receive notice that ‘one stands little chance’ of advancing career-wise. That is the current meaning of the phrase ‘up or out in five years’ mentioned in Chapter 5. But, again, the question is how these kinds of norm can be related to the service professionals’ actual performance, particularly where their ‘relational’ and ‘process’ skills are involved.

Managing the services’ accountabilities: evaluative standards-in-use The third standardizing activity we named is basically related to the services’ accountability to the outside world. The question here is whether there are any standards and parameters available which can be observed at some distance from everyday practices, but can at the same time increase our insight into the performance of the service. Naturally, cost considerations usually play an important role in this context, but as we noted earlier, the services may also be concerned with other values. There are usually other stakeholders involved besides the financial partners, who may also be entitled to a periodic report (Day and Klein 1987). The continuity of care or even the voluntary commitment of its members, especially in those services concerned with values such as professional quality, equality before the law and so on, it is often agreed, should not be overshadowed by financial considerations. At present, however, this very agreement is constantly under fire. Moreover, the services in all of these cases seem to be incapable of avoiding the pressures of ‘quantification’ (WRR 2004). Many of the performance contracts (or service-level agreements) that are now being signed by a service may indeed contain a wide range of criteria, among which some may specifically relate to their actual content. But as a rule, even the latter are framed in quantifiable terms. Examples of these standards (and of the accompanying norms) include police department reaction times to emergency calls to telephone number 112 (in the Netherlands, 999 in the United Kingdom) and the waiting times and the numbers of people on waiting lists in the health care sector. Hospitals have also seen the development of inspection criteria (and the accompanying critical values) in terms of the calculated risk of incurring a bed sore, a hospital-contracted infection or a relapse of the same ailment, for individual clients of a specific hospital (Berg 2005). These standards are often developed in the clients’ best interests, but they may end up adding considerable complications to the average client’s life. But, most of all, they are expected to improve both the ‘transparency’ and the ‘social responsibility’ of the service. Despite the fact that the actual development of these criteria may be subject to considerable debate, they are often presented as ‘a given’, once they have been established and put in place (cf. Bowker and Star 1999). Moreover, it is a wellestablished fact that such efforts at external accountability often lead to ‘perverse’ effects in everyday practice. (cf. Strathern (ed.) 2000)

154  The new management These standards are usually applied from a distance, as far as the everyday negotiations on the work floor are concerned. Accordingly, it is taken for granted that they never actually reflect what is going on locally, and that this consideration should always be included in their ‘evaluation’. But, instead, they often end up perversely directing the day-to-day negotiations on the work floor. In fact, the standards may actually lead to a shift in the organization’s goals. A very well-known example of this is the age-old practice of the police preferring the writing of tickets to physical surveillance, because the effects of the former can be quantified while those of the latter cannot (Hasenfeld 1983: 171). Power effects These standards and protocols may involve considerable power effects. First of all, they may become very obvious in the development phase: who is allowed to develop them? Are they developed by experts who work behind the scenes or are they actually produced by those who claim to represent ‘our’ professionals on the work floor? Second, there may also be a number of power effects involved in the local application of these standards. Whose standards are they, anyway? To whom will they be applied? And what will be the consequences if the latter do not live up to these external requirements? And, third, the actual standards-in-use may locally be ‘renegotiated’ by all relevant parties, with each new transaction that is performed. The informal repertoires that can be noticed in most selection bureaucracies may prove a case in point. And finally, even quantifiable results can be manipulated by the powers that be, both inside and outside the organization. Financial reports are notorious examples of the age-old practice of creative bookkeeping, but this may turn out to be the case with other types of standard as well. Accordingly, it is not solely a ‘lack of rationality’ that causes the failure of these standards to produce the ‘uniformity’ and the ‘transparency’ they are designed for. It may very well be the outcome of the permanent negotiations on the work floors, not to mention the power effects concerning the many external stakeholders and public debate.

Inventing ‘culture’ to keep ‘people’ under control Whenever contemporary managers can no longer avoid actually having to be involved in local negotiations, they often bring up the concept of culture, as the ultimate solution for a variety of problems in which the actual ‘sense making’ efforts of the various parties in and around the work floor appear to be involved. Scientifically speaking, this concept usually deals with the numerous ways in which people actually make sense of their own behaviour and that of others, and of their physical and social environments. It even relates to the ‘symbolic’ meanings they attach to these things (Geertz 1973; see also Frost et al. 1991). Essentially, the impact of this concept cannot be confined to the organization’s boundaries. But, whenever contemporary managers bring it up, it is usually in terms of the

The new management  155 possibilities it appears to offer to control this ‘cultural dimension’, in order to confirm the ‘homogeneity’ of their organizations. Accordingly, the concept of culture appears to be specifically popular to these managers, whenever the more disturbing effects of the various ‘subcultures’ in and around the organizations need to be taken care of. Moreover, the managers may also prefer to rely on this possibility of ‘controlling’ the cultural dimension, whenever the fragmentation effects of ‘individualizing negotiations’ seem to cause organizational distress (Martin 1992, 2002). In doing so, these managers simply seem to ignore the repeated statements of organization anthropologists, such as Joanne Martin (1992, 2002), that, scientifically speaking, the homogenizing (or unifying) effects of ‘culture’ are actually quite limited. These same anthropologists, point for instance, at the actual day-today processes of sense making, which often serve to enhance the organization’s permanent differentiation into ‘subcultures’ or groups (Koot 1997). And, finally, these authors do also believe that how individuals actually ‘identify’ – or, as it might be, ‘be identified’ with, by others – with the cultural attributes that may be related to them at any given point in time, may actually confuse most managerial attempts at ‘solidification’. The latter may even give rise to permanent processes of (re)negotiation of the ‘uniform’ meanings presented by the management by all people involved (cf. Kunda 1992). And yet, when we assume that – to repeat Watson’s words – ‘running an organization so that the variety of people who want something out of it will go on supporting it’ (Watson 1994: 10) this must also involve the everyday sense making of these people. In one way or another, this does also require a proper ‘management’ of the various ‘cultural identifications’ that are involved. Yet the intended effects must be a far cry from ‘controlling the culture’ (Glastra et al. 2000). At best they amount to a ‘culturing of managerial control’. Cultural homogenization as a managerial design Most managers prefer to avoid these individualizing uncertainties and do their own structuring instead. That is why so many managers associate ‘culture’ with its unifying possibilities. Since Peters and Waterman (1982) showed that better enterprises are held together by a binding mission, many managers have actually begun to aspire to the beneficial effects of a unifying corporate culture. These managers often let themselves be guided by images and metaphors that appear to speak for themselves. They are meant to serve as a source of inspiration for the service professionals but can also be used as a marketing tool to inspire clients or impress the outside world. The myth of ‘design furniture for ordinary people’ was the founding philosophy of the home products retailing chain IKEA. This vision became reality when the now-famous IKEA catalogue began being distributed door to door. The catalogue helped make IKEA very attractive to ‘all people’ and was considered by many to be IKEA’s big marketing move. Moreover, the IKEA dream was also translated into a unique shopping experience. A visit with the

156  The new management whole family to one of IKEA’s stores basically takes an entire afternoon. The stores are usually located on the outskirts of a city and everything is pretty much taken care of, from a ball pool for the children to a ‘Scandinavian’ restaurant. The IKEA dream naturally also has a lot to do with the etiquette of its staff. Behind the scenes there is even a kind of ‘IKEA hug’ that physically expresses the general delight of IKEA’s service professionals (although they are not expected to perform it ‘in front of their clients’). The world-wide sweatshops where the IKEA bargains are produced by people earning incredibly low wages are probably not involved in this IKEA dream. (field notes) So, in the above example, we observe some ‘community’ aspirations in the context of an entirely ‘rationalized’ organization. Moreover, the story may sound quite different without the persona of the founding father, who creates that ‘family feeling’. IKEA’s distant factory workers are excluded from this community. In spite of the management’s systematic and well-considered efforts to bring about such a unifying ‘collective commitment’, it should not really come as a surprise that these attempts at creating collective identification processes usually end up producing a lot of fragmentation. Most organizations do not allow for such homogeneity in the day-to-day processes they perform. The differentiation perspective: the organizational relevance of local communities and subcultures As it now stands, most services involve a certain level of cultural differentiation. This means that they usually consist of various ‘subcultures’. As a rule, such subcultures are attached to specific groups and involve shared experiences and processes of sense making, or specific values and routines. What matters here is that people basically seek out a sense of security within their own group. In the uncertain environments of contemporary organizations they may even be more inclined than ever to do so. These kinds of group affiliation may be produced by all kinds of ‘cultural’ identification that individuals may choose for themselves or that may be chosen for them by others. The latter involve such characteristics as age, gender, skin colour, race or place of birth and many others. Moreover, some of these ‘externally produced’ subcultures may even be acknowledged by the organization – for instance, by ‘positive actions’ – but, as a rule, they are specifically encouraged from the outside (Gastelaars 2002a). There are also groups that essentially have a functional origin from ‘within’. They are, at first sight, ‘produced’ or ‘reproduced’ by the organization itself, but may also be reinforced by current socio-cultural developments. As a consequence, the internal reactions may be quite mixed: a new ideology such as the ‘new learning’ may unite its most ardent supporters inside the organization, but it may also unite the organization’s internal opposition. Moreover, specific groups of service professionals may feel encouraged to ‘stick to their own kind’, as a consequence,

The new management  157 for instance, of the ‘loose coupling’ that may be the unintended effect of the extensive division of labour that is now so often put in place, including the ever lengthening ‘service chains’ that develop. As was described earlier, each new ‘department’ may eventually create a world of its own. These subcultures have always been part of the so-called professional system. Mintzberg (1973: 4), for instance, associated these professional subcultures with the principle of mutual adjustment that, according to him, has always been part of professional bureaucracies, and this argument can be extended to many of the services we discuss here. These subcultures are (re)produced by the mutual rivalries between professional groups, or between various projects within one individual service, or even between the people who work in front of and behind the scenes. In the past, most of these subgroups were invariably met with managerial distrust. An often quoted example are the so-called practice ideologies that, according to Robert Rapoport (1960), could very well develop among the dedicated service professionals providing care on a day-to-day basis. These ‘systems of ideas that are held with great tenacity and emotional investment, that have selfconfirming features, and are resistant to change’ (Rapoport 1960: 269, cited in Hasenfeld 1983: 119) could very well develop into some sort of ‘counterculture’ among professionals. However, some management theorists have more recently changed their minds and now propose that managers should learn to appreciate the value of local ‘communities’, and that the latter not only apply to the traditional expert repertoires. On the contrary, it is suggested that these communities of practice are particularly relevant to the ‘fragile social order’ (Korczynski 2002) that affects those service professionals who must meet their clients on a face-to face-basis and keep meeting their financial targets at the same time. Moreover, various researchers – among them Julian Orr (1990) and Etienne Wenger – have pointed out that these ‘problemsolving’ communities may also be quite relevant for the professionals who perform their technical work behind the scenes, and out of sight of the clients. In a famous study, Orr and others observed the repairmen of a particular brand of copying machines. The repairmen kept encountering the same problem but they soon noticed that the machines’ standard error message did not indicate the actual cause. This, in turn, led to never ending discussions among the repairmen. ‘The gist of the story, then, is that there is, first, a red herring, an E053 error code which is not to be believed, and which may be followed by a second error code, F066, indicating the true culprit, a shorted dicorotron. Failure to remember the connection between the E053 which is not a problem and a shorted dicorotron could mean a long, frustrating, futile attempt to diagnose the problem’ (Orr 1990: 178). They developed their own informal ‘users manual for experienced repairmen’ which, of course, could not be found in any of the official copy machine manuals. Obviously, Etienne Wenger’s concept of communities of practice also fits into this line of thought (Wenger 1997; Wenger et al. 2002).

158  The new management These authors, of course, do not deny that these informal groupings may lead to undesirable effects. Wenger, for instance, suggests: ‘They can hoard knowledge, limit innovation, and hold others hostage to their expertise’ (Wenger et al. 2002: 130). He further confirms that the formalization of these groups may even turn out to be counter-productive (see also Delbridge 1998). Moreover, it has also been pointed out that the power effects created by the networking structures that these local groups or projects usually produce (Castells 2001) may develop into a major managerial concern. But, interestingly enough, Wenger reframes these issues into a process challenge for contemporary managers. According to Wenger: ‘To allow communities to flourish, it is … important to pay constant attention and fine-tune the process as it evolves’ (Wenger et al. 2002: 159). Moreover, and as other theorists confirm, these loosely coupled ‘islands’ offer an exquisite opportunity to ‘manage’ a diversity of working processes and associated interests. Moreover, and as Karl Weick (1978) noted some time ago, the islands may actually produce some unexpected advantages, as well. The risk to the organization as a whole is not that great if only a single ‘island’ fails to flourish. However, the management of the ‘interdependence’ of these otherwise divergent forces (Mastenbroek 2002: 179ff.) might require some process expertise. The cultural fragmentation of the organization: the effects of ‘everyday life’ The general expectation, however, is that, in this period of individualization and diversity, individuals will stop identifying too readily with an organization, and that – to managers – this may also cause some harm. Individuals may at some given point in time decide to ‘identify’ with a gender, a certain age, a religion, an ethnic background, a region of origin or even a bad habit. These individual identifications may actually turn into ‘subversive’ collective orientations, particularly when the ‘owners’ feel that their organizations are excluding them. A recent example of this is provided by the smokers throughout the ranks of the organization, who have ‘found’ each other out on the sidewalks or any other place where they are still allowed to smoke. Moreover, this ‘personalized’ aspect of identification processes may also lie at the root of the service workers’ resentment that is invariably provoked by any ‘general’ cultural paradigm shift proposed by management. First, one should realize that most people do not appreciate being ‘forced’ out of the safety of their daily routines. But, second, one should also realize that individuals react to these kinds of changes in a manner that is also informed by their personal backgrounds. It is no wonder that so many managers use the psychological notion of ‘attitudinal change’ to indicate the ‘general culture shift’ they would like to see their service professionals undergo. However, they usually come up with a very selective interpretation of this concept. The predominant managerial interpretation of ‘attitude’ as a concept usually focuses on the service professionals’ ‘individual efforts and commitment’ because then, they can be directly related to each individual’s organizational

The new management  159 behaviour (Reber 1985: 65). They tend to deny the other meanings of this concept. In everyday life, for instance, the notion of ‘attitude’ is often applied to one’s personal views or to one’s specific experiences over a lifetime. It often relates to one’s personality or taste as well. Paradoxically, it is precisely this formal neglect of personality or taste, that may encourage some of the service professionals who are involved, to reframe the proposed ‘attitudinal changes’ as an invasion of their personal lives. The new relevance of relational skills Many managers may rely heavily on their relational skills. Watson pays particular attention to these skills in his ‘competence plan for good managers’ in which he summarizes the findings of his research (Watson 1994: 225–28). Some managers may even return to traditional notions such as ‘direct supervision’ (Mintzberg 1983: 4) to adjust their relationships with the work floor. The physical version of this kind of ‘supportive’ or ‘facilitating’ management is now often called ‘management by walking around’, but the intentions remain the same: face-to-face contacts between the managers and the managed. But again, these practices may also create some confusion among the latter, and, as a consequence, may even lead to some adverse effects. Direct supervision refers quite literally to an all-seeing manager who not only wants to remain informed about how everyone is getting along but also, and maybe even more so, about what is happening during the day-to-day processes. The service professionals on the work floor may experience the latter as surveillance. Another intended effect may be that exemplary behaviour counts. The supervisors draw their attention implicitly or explicitly to their own conduct and may, in fact, succeed in highlighting the required good behaviour. But, of course, there are also local supervisors who fail to live up to these standards. Third, this type of supervision can mean attention, confirmation or a pat on the back to the professionals on the work floor, but it can mean the opposite as well. Whenever this happens, the people on the work floor may even experience it as a lack of respect. Naturally, the local supervisor can act as the ultimate communication link between the organization’s top management and its work floor, and vice versa. But the very idea that your feedback counts can also be experienced as a betrayal by the service professionals involved. Watson specifically demonstrated that most of the technically oriented managers he interviewed and observed found it very difficult to cope with these adverse ‘surveillance’ effects.

Conclusion: process skills for managers Contemporary services certainly need a number of standards not only to keep their processes under control but also to account for their achievements. But, due to the

160  The new management almost exclusive identification of many of the current managers with these standards, they now seem to dominate the organizations. And, according to a growing number of critics, they may even end up stifling the more open ended negotiation processes that are relevant to the services. They may even end up stifling the services themselves. Apparently, most managers consider it their duty to keep everything that is happening ‘inside’ their organizations under control, rather than ‘managing’ the processes related to the day-to-day negotiations on their work floors. And even when they try to safeguard their organizations from anything that may harm them from the ‘outside’ they are inclined do the same. Instead of paying attention to the ‘hands on’ management of the power effects along the boundaries of their organizations, many service managers prefer a ‘reified’ kind of border patrol, such as the protocols that are enacted to guide service professionals’ actions on a daily basis, or the regular reports related to their formal accountability regimes. They may even rely on the ‘official’ communications departments of their organizations. This criticism, however, is not only directed at the operational managers who were central to the discussion in the preceding paragraphs, but also, and even more so, at their ‘strategic’ colleagues at these organizations’ tops. The latter, in particular, are now expected to appreciate the relevance of that process expertise that is required to negotiate the ‘public predicament’ of their services. They must be able to ‘manage’, more than anyone else, the impact of the many stakeholders around these organizations (Buchanan and Boddy 1992). The current predicament of many of our contemporary services indicates, however, that, in this respect in particular, quite a few of these managers may still have a long way to go.

8 Conclusion Where are we now?

Ms D. is the most disabled person I have ever met. Despite her considerable handicaps, she managed to become a professor in Amsterdam and Jerusalem. Accompanied by her wheelchair and her other necessities she regularly commuted between the two cities by plane. She actually managed quite well until she was confronted, to her utter dismay, with the unexpected effects of a ‘Special Year’ dedicated to ‘The Disabled’. Although this special year must have been invented to somehow improve the condition of people with her kind of disability, she ended up being forced to answer numerous impertinent questions over and over again on complicated forms she had to fill out for the airlines. These forms had to be processed months in advance of each individual flight. Prior to these new regulations, the ground stewardesses had always been able to solve most of her problems without much ado. Philip A. Idenburg (personal communication with the author, trans.)

Flexible streamlining vis-à-vis the permanent debate It may not be an accident that organization theorists have always considered the services – the professional services, in particular – as complex organizations (Perrow 1986). It can even be established at this point in time that this does not exclusively apply to the professional services any more: all other services in and around the public domain have also become quite complex. As our previous arguments have shown, so-called flexible streamlining must certainly have affected their so-called objective complexity. The latter is not only related to the internal division of labour but also to the number of management layers that has evolved, not to mention the current need for a formalized external accountability (Mintzberg 1983: 153). Moreover, and as we have argued earlier, the subjective complexity of the services is affected as well. To state this point again in Barbara Czarniawska’s (1992: 36) words: ‘An organization becomes [subjectively] complex when no one can sensibly and comprehensibly account for all of it.’ In this book, this essential ‘incomprehensibility’ of the services has really been an issue from the start, but at this point, it can be stated with some confidence, I think, that most of the services in and around the public domain have complicated their clients’ experiences. They

162  Conclusion: where are we now? may also have become much more complex than before, to the actual experience of the service professionals. And, as we have suggested in the previous chapter: even the managers may feel that they are losing control. But, as most ‘institutionalists’ would agree (cf. Luhmann 1984), whenever complexity is observed, some attempts are being made to ‘reduce’ this complexity. To some, this reduction of complexity is synonymous with ‘organizing’ and ‘managerial control’. One issue we will deal with, in this final conclusion, relates to the various paradoxes involved with this. Another issue, however, that we will need to address here, concerns the permanent debate that will always be triggered, first, by the services’ permanent interference with the ‘everyday lives’ of their clients. Second, it is also triggered by the sheer number of stakeholders that is now also involved with the everyday negotiations of these services, and by the associated power effects. The services might as well face it: they have always been quite vulnerable to public debate and there is no reason to assume that this will change. Their legitimacy has turned into a permanent concern. And, finally, I shall return to the local negotiations performing the services, and focus on their manageability for all.

Flexible streamlining and the paradoxes of managerial control One should not generalize about ‘the services’, of course, but nevertheless: the effects of flexible streamlining have been quite considerable among all services we have discussed. As we have seen in the Chapters 4 and 7, most of the services have actually redesigned their processes of service delivery to accommodate, among other things, the diversity in the demands of their clients. They have all introduced improvements of their classification efforts at their ‘front doors’. They have further introduced new infrastructures and have also tried to amend the repertoires of their service professionals to accommodate these intended improvements. Most of the services have even tried to ‘rationalize’ these rearrangements by means of an efficiency-oriented redesign or by the introduction of innumerable standards. And finally, they have all improved their accountability regimes along the way. We argued in Chapter 7 that most service managers are now primarily preoccupied with these ‘technical’ versions of managerial control. Some critics argue that it is precisely these ‘technical’ efforts that cannot but produce a paradox of control, by generating ever more managing efforts that do not produce the required effects in the first place (Noordegraaf 2004). Moreover, the new insistence on accountability and transparency may even have led these organizations to rely too much on their ‘institutionalized’ accountability efforts, as well. This may even have encouraged a so-called information paradox (Gastelaars 2002b, 2003b). The more an organization is required to provide all sorts of information, the more it will be inclined to keep all information it considers sensitive to itself. The media, in their turn, will be increasingly interested in revealing the withheld information. This flexible streamlining, however, was not only imposed to support the efficiency and/or transparency of these organizations. It was often also seen as an attempt to break through the inner-directedness of these organizations. The

Conclusion: where are we now?  163 services were expected to turn their traditional supply-oriented natures into a focus on the actual demands of their clients. But many of the services have come to acknowledge that this also may unintentionally have produced the opposite effect. The new client orientation does not always turn out to the advantage of the clients. This service paradox can be illustrated by the following quotation from an internal memo produced by a police district in the Netherlands: ‘Quality system, process orientation, human resource management, planning and control and even business-level agreements. We have worked very hard to improve our organization. Why, then, is the level of our clients’ satisfaction constantly on the decline?’ (student field report: Police Internal Memo 2003). These apparent contradictions may particularly be reinforced by the various non-human actors (Law 1994) that are now also put in place by most of the services. Contemporary services make use of innumerable standards. As a rule, there are a lot of computer formats involved in their everyday negotiations as well. They involve the boundary objects we discussed in Chapter 4, but they are also there – see Chapter 7 – to account for the services’ achievements. As a rule, one might expect the mass services and selection bureaucracies to be dominated by such non-human actors, at least to an extent, but in the previous chapters we have seen that all other services are also affected by their presence. The point I wish to make here is that, however useful they may seem to be to these services, these formats and standards often turn out to be quite ‘reified’ in everyday practice. In fact, they often are treated too much as a ‘given’ by all of the relevant parties (Bowker and Star 1999). Accordingly, these computer formats appear to be leading lives of their own. As the quotation with which this chapter started demonstrates, the clients often appear to be completely domesticated by these procedures and protocols-in-use. But the same is true for the service professionals. One even appears to forget why they have been put in place.

The (re)production of legitimacy: the inevitability of public debate As we have seen in the previous chapters, the services have always been subjected to public considerations and are currently still very much the subject of public debate. They are embedded in the current socio-cultural developments and, as we must have realized by now, these socio-cultural developments may also have become a part of their internal negotiations. The same is true for the socio-political arena involving the various stakeholders who are now considered quite indispensable to the (re)production of these services. The services themselves may refrain from doing so, but some of these relevant others – inspections, for instance – might very well be entitled to remind the services of their existence by force of law. First of all, it is assumed by a number of authors that this socio-political arena has moved ‘inside’. This may best be illustrated by the ‘personalization’ of the responsibilities that now affects most service professionals on the work floor, as described in Chapter 5. Moreover, and although it is often expected that the current efforts at managerial control will always impair the capacity of these service

164  Conclusion: where are we now? professionals to manage such responsibilities, and that the omnipresence of the non-human actors we discussed earlier may certainly get in their way, it can also be argued that these responsibilities cannot be ruled out in everyday practice. The Dutch philosopher Eveline Tonkens, who was also a member of Dutch Parliament for some time, appears to have touched upon a generally acknowledged sensitivity when she argued: ‘Service professionals are getting ever more entangled in the pressures to register and account for what they are doing. As a consequence, the service provision, itself, comes under duress. Creativity and empathy are smothered by planning, protocols and reports’ (Tonkens 2003: 8, trans.). For the service professionals, however, this picture may not turn out to be as unequivocal as it seems. For instance, most of the services have also been forced to essentially ‘mind their cores’. As was made clear in Chapter 4, most of the services have actually managed to continue their ‘business as usual’ during renovation. Of course, most service professionals must have felt that they were put under considerable pressure by the various reconstructions they had to undergo, but this reconstruction may not have affected too deeply their actual professional practice. We have seen in Chapter 4, as well, that the new management must have often felt particularly obliged to spare those professional experts who are essential for their services’ performance. These traditional professionals, however, may be confronted with other service professionals, by now – the creatives of the advertising industry, developers, the now omnipresent consultants  – who have been granted some ‘unexpected space’, as well. Most service professionals, however, should face it: in spite of this ‘protection’ they are now essentially subject to public debate. Although this ongoing debate does most often affect the service professionals performing the so-called invasive expert interventions, quite a few of the services in and around the public domain now have become more ‘vulnerable’ than ever – and ‘sensitive’ as well – to the scrutiny of external stakeholders. I mention only a few: client organizations, media coverage, inspections. The services can also be affected by juridical procedures, by now, and these are often publicized as well. Accordingly, the service professionals may very well expect that more often than ever before they will be called upon, to ‘personally’ account for their actions. This is why the professional ‘responsibilities’ that were presented in Chapter 5 have become so crucial to the services, at this point in time. Moreover, there are also the vulnerabilities that are specifically associated with the fact that services often do tend to interfere with their clients’ everyday lives. The formal establishment of the client’s self-determination has become quite essential to many services. Moreover, the clients themselves are expected to answer an increasing number of requirements. They are now often expected to ‘manage’ their own access to the services; they may even be required to perform some responsibilities of their own before they are even admitted to the service. In many cases, they may even be invited to perform an ‘informed consent’. And, as it turns out, these so-called improvements of the clients’ position may not turn out to be unequivocal, either. To mention only one example: the informed consent of clients does often involve professional decision-making processes the clients

Conclusion: where are we now?  165 are not really able to evaluate themselves. All of these developments do trigger public debate. As we have also seen in various chapters, and particularly in Chapter 6, many of the clients may continue to feel that they are still delivered to these organization’s regimes once they have negotiated their access. But, most importantly, with some of these services, the clients may even be susceptible to quite impressive risks that may considerably affect their condition, and this may very well  – to quote C. Wright Mills’ (1959) famous dictum once again – turn their ‘private concerns’ into ‘public issues’. The smaller inconveniences that clients encounter do not often make front page news. But the media will certainly be alerted whenever something goes terribly wrong. And, more often than not, in a situation like this the many stakeholders that may be recognized in and around a specific organization may also feel explicitly encouraged to take part in the debate. As Victor Turner argued for the not-so-distant past, the arena in which this kind of debate takes place can be expected to simply perform as the ‘setting for antagonistic interactions aimed at arriving at a publicly recognized decision’ (Turner 1973: 133). It might specifically be focused on the issue at stake and reach a conclusion. But currently one can observe an almost permanent debate in which the ‘opponents may seek power over one another’s minds’ (ibid.: 134) almost regardless of the issue. Moreover, this debate now appears to focus more than ever before on the everyday negotiations of the services. Turner, one of the first ethnographers to develop the concept of the public arena, has also made it clear that whenever this occurs, the discussions can sometimes turn out to be quite ugly. He even points out that it may become inevitable that these debates will become increasingly explicit over time, and that ‘nothing is left merely implied’ (ibid.), whenever an issue is drawn into this type of public consideration. Then – to quote Turner – the ‘chips are down’. No wonder the services might be quite intent, by now, to avoid such situations. However, it can also be established that, in spite of this, they may continuously be forced to face them. In this type of situation, it may even become very difficult for them, to ‘hide in the light’ (Hebdige 1988). They cannot afford to just bask in the floodlights. In fact, their legitimacy may be at stake.

Manageability for all But, having said this, one could also argue that it would be wise to not leave the evaluation of what is actually going on up to this kind of public debate. Apart from the factual misunderstandings that may occur, the interests that are served by the debate itself, may not only deviate from those of the services but also from those of the services’ clients. And, not too surprisingly, the same may also be true for some of the managerial efforts in this realm. Most managers seem to rely too much on the ‘official’ legitimation produced by a ‘strict adherence’ to their various standards. ‘My people have acted according to protocol!’ More than any other kind of organization, the services should realize that they usually take part in the everyday lives of their clients and that the clients always

166  Conclusion: where are we now? participate in their processes. It cannot be ignored, either, that – despite the managerial attention paid to such issues – the client contacts cannot always be expected to be ‘right at first strike’. In fact, the actual experiences of the various parties involved in the process of service delivery may often turn out to be quite different from the ones they had expected, without essentially being ‘wrong’. The actual performance of a service always depends on the circumstances, to some extent. For instance, in this era of individualization, it may turn out to be quite unpredictable how even the most stable of expectations are actually negotiated by specific individuals. Moreover, with this kind of situated action, one can never rule out confrontations with some unintended  – and sometimes even undesirable  – consequences of one’s day-to-day actions. An ‘encounter’ may very well turn into a ‘confrontation’, at any point in time. A ‘relationship’ can always imply ‘domestication’. All of the parties involved in the everyday negotiations around the services may have to take some ‘unmanageable adversity’ into account. To be sure, this consideration is certainly not intended as one of the standard ‘apologies for the inconvenience’ that are now so often put in place. Nor should it be read as an excuse for the considerable risks that can always affect some of the services’ clients. Instead, this argument proposes encouraging the various parties present on the work floor to ‘locally reflect’ on what is actually going on, and to keep doing so during the course of the entire process. Even the clients may be encouraged to negotiate some local responsibilities of their own, provided they can count on some professional vigilance and support, not to mention some managerial attention. I would particularly like to argue here that one should never leave the ‘manageability’ of the public services up to the managers alone. On the contrary: given the current complexities of the services, it might be more appropriate to argue that all parties present should be encouraged to find ways to render these services ‘manageable’ in their everyday practice. One should also point out, however, that whenever they do this, these parties should not be allowed to focus on their own interests alone. Essentially, the services should remain ‘manageable’ for all.

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Subject and author index

Abbott, Andrew 14, 31, 34, 78, 168–9 Access 72, 91, 124,130, 132, 164; the regulation of 74, 76, 81; (in)voluntary 140–1; see also commitment Accountability 5, 13, 26, 89, 94, 102, 115, 116, 144, 153, 164; management of 153; regime 160, 162; see also bottom line, evaluation Acquisition 58; individual 80–1; see also advertising, marketing, mobilizing, recruitment Action net 9, 17, 18, 21–2, 25, 27, 28, 30, 36, 39, 40, 45, 59, 136–7 Adams, Barbara 109, 168 Advertising 49, 67, 68, 69, 70 Anarchy 10, 16 Anderson, Niels Åkerstrøm 21 Anthonissen, Anton 140, 168 Arena 122, 163, 165 Aspirations 130–1; the revolution of 67; organizational 156; see also demand Assessment 51, 75, 77, 78, 80, 97, 100, 127, 133; professional 78–9; by the client 81; see also classification, decision-making process, diagnosis Assignment 131, see also demand Association; voluntary 10, 16–17, 42, 43–4, 63–5, 70, 89, 90, 119; professional 31, 32 Attitude as a concept 158–9; see also professional Augé, Marc 83, 168 Banton, Michael 42, 44, 168 Barley, Stephen R. 18, 34, 168 Bauman, Zygmunt 73, 168 Baumann, Gerd 105, 168 Behind the scenes 5, 6, 19, 48, 52, 67, 68, 73, 74, 75, 82, 84, 85, 91, 96, 108, 113,

115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 127, 133, 146, 149, 152; see also expert work Berendsen, Loes 52, 127, 134, 168 Berg, Marc 153, 168 Best practice 151 Blau, Peter 52, 168 Bledstein, Basil 30, 168 Boogaard, Marianne 105, 168 Boddy, David 18, 20, 34, 101, 112, 160, 169 Bouman, Ole 87, 99, 168 Boundary 27, 46, 65, 82, 154, 160; professional 104, 108; roles 5; objects 148, 150, 163 Bourdieu, Pierre 124, 168 Boutellier, Hans 88, 168 Bovens, Mark 52, 77, 102, 168 Bowker, Geoffrey 153, 163, 168 Boyle, David 70, 168 Brand, Stewart 72, 168 Branding 70 Brint, Steven 32–3, 168 Brown, John Seely 49, 169 Buchanan, David 18, 20, 34, 101, 112, 160, 169 Bureaucracy 12, 26; modern 27, 35 Bureaucratic; culture 27–8; indifference 12, 27–8, 52 Bureaucratization and state formation 18, 26–9 Business process redesign 96, 145 Capital; cultural 124; economic 124; educational 124; social 19, 121, 123–5, 131, 137 Case 10, 136, 142 Castells, Manuel 59, 158, 169 Categorization 26, 29, 35, 37, 38 see also classification

Subject and author index  177 Champy, James 145, 171 Charisma 112 Chatwin, Bruce 121, 169 Choice 22, 25, 26, 38, 42, 51, 63, 69, 71, 72, 73, 76, 80, 81, 86, 90, 121, 122, 127, 129–30, 132, 139, 141; see also voice Citizen 12, 27, 35, 51, 106; -’s rights 35, 36 Claimant 10, 12, 51, 53 Clarke, John 13, 144, 169 Classification 28, 29, 52, 53, 66, 94, 125, 127, 128, 146, 162; of clients 75–81; phase 83, 91, 98; mutual process of 131; professional 79; work 50–1, 53, 75, 98; see also demand Clegg, Stewart 144, 169 Client, the concept of 19 Client-centeredness 1, see also client-orientation Client-friendliness 38 Client-orientation 38, 91, 136, 146, 163 Client relationship 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 46, 51, 54, 55, 57, 60, 63, 87, 90, 92, 140–1; internal 83; long-term 139; management of the 90, 99, 102–8 Client representative (or agent) 7, 80, 98, 127, 142 Cog 10, 119 Collective zeal 10, 16, 63, 65, 89 Collinson, David L. 119, 169 Commercial 1, 14, 17, 24, 25, 32, 33, 36, 37, 42, 43, 48, 64, 67, 68, 70, 73, 76, 99 Commitment 58, 63; bureaucratic 28; collective 89, 153, 156; commercial 64; individual 10, 16, 63, 65, 89, 122, 140; intrinsic 64; family 42; mutual 14, 47, 81; (in) voluntary 10, 16, 42, 43, 60, 61, 63, 87, 90, 123, 125–6, 133, 138, 139, 140, 141 142; see also demand Community 156, 157; lite 122, 123; of practice 119, 157; professional 14 Competence management 152; see also management of skills Complexity 5, 91–92, 93, 114, 118, 153; subjective 92, 147, 161; objective 147, 161; the management of 108 Confrontation 141, 142, 166 Constraining 145 Consumer 10, 11, 25, 37, 43, 69, 75, 129, 130; see also customer Continuity of care 9, 10, 15, 153

Contract 18, 58, 80–1, 90, 135, 150 Co-operation, 11, 66, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 110–11; institutional 88; of the clients 127; problems 148; see also division of labour Co-optation 81 Co-ordination 5, 85, 148, 150, see also mutual adjustment, division of labour Co-ownership 65 Co-production 10, 14, 57, 58, 86, 112, 134 Co-workers 103 Coping 127, 142; strategies 104, 111 Core 117, 164; activity 144; business 6, 16, 63; client 7; competence 152–3; function 50; member 10, 140; service 2, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 18, 19, 46–65, 67, 75, 90, 114, 116, 120, 152; task 5, 8; team 87; repertoire 93; values 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 Critical values 148, 153 Culturalist 105 Culture, the concept of 122, 125, 130, 154–9; corporate 89; counter 61, 138, 157, sub 155, 156, 157 Cultural: homogenization 155–6; differentiation 155, 156–8; fragmentation 155, 156, 158–9; agreement 125, see also negotiated order Culturing 37; of managerial control 155 Custom-made 26 Customer 48, 49, 50, 67, 76, 82, 99, 131, 133 Czarniawska, Barbara 9, 18, 21, 22, 92, 147, 161, 169 Day, Patricia 153, 169 Decision-making process 12, 36, 55, 75, 79, 97–8, 112, 126, 127, 132, 133–4, 143, 164; computerized 52, 53, 75, 76–7, 77, 80, 96, 151; expert 128; standardized 150 Delbridge, Rick 158, 169 Demand 121; aggregate 10, 11; the mutual construction of 121, 125–32, see also need, problem, everyday necessity, personal preference, impulse Dependant 10, 39, 42, 59, 60, 61 Dependence 15, 16, 39, 41, 59, 62, 88, 138, 141, 165; the management of 10, 15, 59, 60, 61 Depersonalization 51, 61, 134

178  Subject and author index De Ridder, Denise 78, 169 De Ruijter, Arie 68, 169 De Swaan, Abram 128, 169 Diagnosis 62, 78–9, 79–80 DiMaggio, Paul J. 9, 174 Direct supervision 159 Discourse as a concept 18, 21–2, 44–5, 136–7; see also discursive formation Discretion 12, 29, 75, 77, 118; ary space 52 Discursive formation 22 Division of labour 5, 19, 48, 83, 85, 113, 146, 157, 161; see also interdependence Domestic life: discourse concerning 18, 38–42; see also private sphere Domestication 144; professional 10, 13, 53, 55, 84, 94, 137, 141; organizational 19, 94, 109, 114–5, 118, 119, 132, 137, 140, 141; physical 87, 137; see also incorporation, regime Dortants, Marianne 140, 168 Douglas, Mary 38 Dreyfus H.L. and S.E. 99–101, 169 Drucker, Peter 65,169 Du Gay 12, 28, 37, 48, 49, 70, 131, 169 Duguid, Paul 49, 169 Durkheim, Émile 30, 169 Duyvendak, Jan-Willem 122, 169 Efficiency 7, 10, 24–5, 47, 90, 145, 149, 150, 151, 162 Elementary skills 41, 113 Elias, Miriam 105, 106, 169 Elias, Norbert 26, 170 Embodied 31, 99, 113 Emotion work 109 Emous, Kirsten 40, 170 Empowerment 35, 36, 141; see also voice Enabling 82, 145 Encounter 10, 11, 46, 47, 140, 166 Engbersen, Godfried 38, 52, 124, 170 Ericson, Richard V. 68–9, 170 Equality before the law 9, 10, 12, 28, 51 Evaluation 150, 151, 164; professional 50, 51, 60, 77, 78, 79, 98, 100, 103, 116; client 91; internal 117; external 116, 145, 153 Evaluative standards 153–4, 152, 153 Everyday necessity 128–9, 131 Evidence-based 8, 25, 57, 95–6; Exit 63, 122, 141 Experience 38; client 2, 3, 121–42; individual 35, 38, 110; programmed 82 Experiencing the organizational regime 132–41

Expert; learning 99–101, 152; intuition 101, 103 Expert production 10, 13, 53, 57, 85; behind the scenes 53, 56, 58, 95, 96, 97, 134 Expert intervention 10, 13, 53, 57, 61, 85; invasive 13, 54, 56, 58, 86, 99, 116, 127, 135, 150, 164; individualizing or ‘soft’ 54, 55, 56, 57, 79–8, 86, 102, 106, 127; see also professional Expertise 101, 120, 164; creative 48, 54, 117, 164; innovative 117; process 10, 19, 20, 55, 108, 111–12, 116, 158, 160; professional 10, 13, 17, 19, 31, 54, 56, 99–101; relational 10, 19, 20, 106–8, 116; see also skills Eyerman, Ann 109, 170 Fairclough, Norman 22, 170 Fine, Gary Alan 110, 170 Flexible streamlining 25–6, 48, 56, 66, 85, 94, 108, 109, 117, 144–7, 161, 162 Florida, Richard 18, 117, 170 Flyvbjerg Bent, 99–101, 111, 170 Fortes, Meyer 39 Fortuyn, Pim 112 Foucault Michel 21 Freidson, Elliot 2, 13, 31, 33, 170 Frost, Peter 154, 170 Gabriel, Yannis 36, 37, 170 Gastelaars, Marja 22, 35, 36, 42, 68, 69, 88, 134, 139, 156, 162, 168, 170–1 Geertz, Clifford 30, 154, 171 Gergen, Kenneth J. 105, 171 Geography of practices 19, 66, 147 Geuijen, Karin 61, 111, 171 Giddens, Anthony 145, 171 Glastra, F. 71, 171 Goffman, Erving 15, 53, 61, 138, 171 Grönroos, Christian 1, 6, 8, 67, 103, 144, 171 Gutek, Barbara 11, 14, 46, 50, 58, 171 Habermas, Jürgen 22, 23, 171 Haggerty, Kebin D. 68–9, 170 Hammer, Michael 145, 171 Hands on activity 52, 73, 77, 78, 160 Hasenfeld, Yeheskel 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 50, 59, 60, 83, 84, 85, 154, 157, 171 Hebdige, Dick 37, 67, 165, 171 Herrschaftsfreie Dialog 23 Herzfeld, Michael 12, 27, 28, 172

Subject and author index  179 Hierarchy 10, 12, 17, 26, 35, 108; professional 32, 33, 85–6; among clients 61, 138, 140 Hirschman, Albert O. 63, 141, 172 Hochschild, Arlie Russell 35, 40, 109, 172 Hortulanus 123, 172 Hospitalization 136; effect 61, 138 Huczynski, Andrzej A. 24, 172 Human resource management 37, 152, 162 Human rights 35

Kamenka, Eugene 26, 27, 172 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss 111, 172 Katz, K.L. 73, 172 Klein, Rudolf 153, 169 Kleinman, Arthur 122, 172 Koot, Willem 155, 172 Korczynski, Marek 6, 35, 157, 172 Kramer, Sander 132, 172 Kruijthof, Karen 8, 85, 86, 172 Kunda, Gideon 18, 34, 155, 168, 172

Ideal type 17, 27, 115 Idenburg, Philip A. 161 Identification 35, 37, 155, 156, 158, 160; object of 131 Impulse 130 Inclusion 41, 62 Inconvenience 19, 49–50, 53, 72, 103, 114, 129, 133, 144, 165 Incorporation 88; organizational 40; procedural 51 Individual negotiations 14, 41 Individual services 10, 14–15, 57, 69, 80–1, 86–7, 90, 102, 106, 124 Individualization as a discourse 18, 21, 35–8, 35–8, 133, 166 Information 52, 68, 73, 74, 80, 97, 98, 127, 133; provider 12, 51, 78, 79, 127, 128; paradox 162; storage 97; strategies 68–9; skills 97 Informed consent 55, 79, 128, 164 Infrastructure 57, 162; computerized 5, 6, 11, 25, 26, 48, 51, 57, 67, 74, 82, 85, 91, 108, 132–3, 136–7; just-in-time 109, 133; physical 47–8, 49, 132–3, 149; see also support Institutionalist 17, 162 Institutional clients 12, 53, 80, 98 Institutionalization 9, 21, 31–2 Intangibility 149 Interculturalization 71; see also management of diversity Interdependence 110; pooled 83, 85, 108; sequential 84; reciprocal 85; the management of 110, 158 Interpretive 17 Intramural arrangement 15, 40, 41, 60, 137 see also total institution

Landauer, Thomas K. 49, 76, 172 Lang, Tim 36, 37, 170 Larson, Magali Sarfatti 30, 172 Lasch, Christopher 36, 59, 172 Law, John 19, 84, 163, 172 Legitimacy 6, 17, 18, 21, 32, 43, 44–5, 65, 123, 144, 162, 163–5 Leisure 42–3 Liberty 42–4 Lifestyle 37, 41, 62, 68, 88, 97, 131 Liminality 134 Lipsky, Michael 11–12, 29, 52, 172 Line of visibility 67 Loenen, Titia 40, 172 Logistics 82, 147; see also support Loosely coupled 10, 14, 32, 56, 88, 157, 158 Loyalty 63, 122, 141 Luhmann, Niklas 162, 172

Johnson, Kelley 139, 172 Johnson, Terence J. 14, 172 Juridical form 13, 18, 29, 36, 53, 55, 58, 91, 102, 164

Machine 9, 10, 11, 24, 48, 113, 119, 143, 147, 157 Maister, David 34, 37, 90, 101, 173 Manageability 17, 20, 47, 92, 118, 143, 148, 162, 165, 166 Management of diversity 28–9, 37, 40–1, 49, 105, 110; see also otherness March, James 98, 173 Marketing 49, 68, 69, 113, 129, 155; research 68 Martin, Joanne 155, 173 Mass production 25, 149 Mass service 5, 10, 9–11, 12, 46–7, 49, 57, 71, 73, 76, 82–3, 90, 113, 119, 129, 130, 132, 137, 146, 163 Mastenbroek, Willem 158, 173 McDonaldization 9, 25 McLaughlin, Kate 1, 173 Media 2, 7, 17, 55, 64, 70, 112, 120, 130, 162, 164, 165 Meerdink, Jorien 126, 173 Meijs, Lucas 44, 173

180  Subject and author index Member 10 Menu 76, 130 Merton, Robert 38, 52, 173 Metz Tracy, 9, 42, 43, 173 Mill, John Stuart 43, 173 Miller, Daniel 76, 173 Mills, Charles Wright 165, 173 Minson, Jeffrey 36, 173 Mintzberg, Henry 5, 32, 46, 48, 56, 81, 145, 147, 148, 151, 157, 159, 161, 173 Mobilizing 63, 124 Mol, Annemarie 128, 173 Moment of truth 8, 103, 146 Monitoring 16, 48, 60, 74, 87, 95, 97, 134, 137; see also signalling Monopoly of violence 26, 27 Morée, Marjolein 104, 175 Morey, Daryl 152, 173 Morgan, Gareth 59, 173 Mutual adjustment 85, 157 Need 126–7, 129, 131 Negotiated order 8 Network 87, 124, 158; informal (social) 19, 89, 121, 123, 124, 125, 127, 131, 135, 138; institutional 88; open 59; personal 10, 15, 40, 42, 60, 62, 69, 80, 88–9, 113, 138; professional 10, 15, 59 Newman, Janet 13, 144, 169 New public management 1, 2, 3, 17, 18, 144 Nixon, Sean 67, 173 Nonaka, Ikojiru 97, 117, 152, 174 Non-human actors 19, 25, 84, 133, 163 Non-place 83 Noordegraaf, Mirko 28, 144, 162, 173 Normal(ity) 38, 40, 41, 60, 62, 80, 88, 128 Normann, R. 1,8, 82, 83, 103, 144, 149, 173 Nykamp, Melinda 121, 173 Organization as a concept 5, 18, 22, 143, 144, 162, 163 Orr, Julian 157, 173 Otherness 40, 112, 123; dealing with 104–6 Outsourcing 66, 70, 77, 91, 92, 132 Ownership 10, 16, 17, 158; client 63, 88; shared 58, 65, 89, 112; of repertoire 114 Paradox of control 162 Parsons, Talcott 38, 173 Patron client, as opposed to participant

client 7, 58, 59, 81, 86–7, 91, 131, 134 Participation 36, 42, 55, 62 ; client 15, 86, 132, 133 Partnership 10, 14, 57; professional 32 Pels, Dick 112, 173 People sustaining activities 59 Perrow, Charles 161, 173 Peters, Thomas J. 65, 174 Person in charge 10 Personalization: of agreements 63; of care 80; of expertise 99; of negotiations 62, 80; of mass services 70, 129; of preferences 122, 129–30; of responsibilities 115, 119, 163; of skills 31, 99 Physical: appearance 72; arrangements 73, 82–3, 84, 85–6 107, 149; contact 71–3; delivery 76; distance 107, 139; entrance 72; image 91; location 72; movement 86; presence 86; separation 87, 91 see also repertoire Pollitt, Christopher 144, 174 Popular sector 122 Population-oriented services 72, 129 Portes, Alejandro 124, 174 Positive action 36, 156 Powell, Walter W. 9, 174 Power effects 20, 32–4,61, 94, 98, 108, 112, 116, 134–5, 154, 158, 160, 162 Practice ideology 157 Prescriptive altruism 39, 40 Pringle, Hamish 64, 174 Privacy 43, 69, 129 Private sphere 38–9, 42–4, 69, 89, 122–3 Privatization 9, 12, 69, 129–30 Problem 127–8, 131, 143, 157 Procedure 10, 12, 50, 51, 83–4, 101, 127, 163; standardized 150 Process of service delivery 6, 7, 8, 11, 13, 14, 19, 20, 25, 26, 44, 47, 57, 62, 66, 68, 75, 87, 90, 91, 117, 118, 120, 134, 137, 142, 145, 166 Process management 143 Processing 10, 50–3, 133; see also selection Professional 18, 26, 33, 34, 38, 59, 63, 77, 102, 147; accreditation 32; attitude 101–2; autonomy 13–14, 19, 31–2, 56, 94, 95, 96, 98, 114–5, 116–8; claim 115; code of conduct 32, 55, 102; control 57; discipline 14, 32; discretion 12, 78; indifference 12; intuition 74, 101, 103, 105, 112; jurisdiction 14, 31,

Subject and author index  181 32, 79, 85, 108; logic 3; orientation 115–20; privilege 29, 30–1, 101; quality 2, 9, 10, 13, 91, 116, 148, 151, 153; sector 122; service 2, 10, 12–14, 17, 18, 28, 50, 54, 56, 57, 78–9, 84, 87, 90, 131, 146, 147, 150, 161; status 30–1, 32, 33, 103, 116, 119–20; system 31, 157; unselfishness 30, 33 see also repertoire, responsibility, regime Professionalism 18–9, 29–35, 40, 46, 64, 85, 94 99, 100 Project structure 10 Protocol 24, 57, 96, 150–1, 154, 160, 163, 164, 165 Prottas, Jeffrey Mandtich 29, 174 Providers of care and surveillance 10, 15–16, 40, 51, 119, 138 Providing care and surveillance 59–63 Public as opposed to commercial/private 7, 9, 11, 12–13, 32, 69, 90, 98, 128, 129, 132 Putnam, Robert D. 16, 43, 174 Rapoport, Robert 138, 157, 174 Rationalization 2, 18, 22–6, 46, 56, 144, 145, 156; material 22–4, 25, 94, 145–6; formal or technical 22, 24–5, 25, 95 Reber, Arthur S. 158, 174 (Re)construction 2, 5, 18, 19, 24, 26, 65, 66, 75, 143; of the services 26, 66–92, 113, 114, 164 Recruitment 67, 70, 71 (Re-) distribution of care 18 Reflexivity 115; local 118–9, 119, 166 Regime: client 87, 88, 135; institutional 61, 87–8, 138; organizational 21, 81–2; processing 83–4; professional or expert 13, 84–6, 135, 136, 136–7 Reliability 26, 73, 91, 103, 105, 148 Relieving 82 Repertoire 93, 94, 103, 162; core 93; elementary 18; formalized 31; individual 93; informal 154; physical 100; professional 13, 19, 34, 93, 113– 19, 164; Responsibility 62, 89, 94, 99, 107, 113, 114, 118, 119, 136, 137; bureaucratic 27–8, 29; client 14, 15, 22, 29, 121, 133, 134, 138, 141, 164, 166; external as opposed to internal 115–6, 144; local as opposed to central 59, 118; organizational 65, 82, 153; parental 39; professional 10, 13–14, 19, 31, 55, 86,

93, 94, 99, 100, 101–2, 113–119, 151, 164; process 112; public 98, 114, 117; shared 10, 15, 58, 112, 118, 119 Rifkin, Jeremy 130, 174 Risk 19, 49, 52, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 64, 97, 101, 103, 114, 118, 128, 144, 153, 165; selection 73–4 Ritzer, George 9, 25, 174 Routine 59, 83, 86, 88, 100, 101, 129, 139 Routing of the client, 19, 47, 57, 66, 82, 91, 137, 146 Rubin, Lillian B. 107, 174 Rule of law 12, 18, 27, 28, 32, 35 Scott, Richard W. 5, 174 Sect 10, 16 Secularization 44 Selection 50, 53, 73–4, 75, 146; phase 91 Selection bureaucracies 2, 11–12, 27, 28, 51, 76–7, 83–4, 90, 98, 126, 133–3, 146, 150, 163; see also street level bureaucracies Self-control 18, 34, 38, 39, 104, 109; managed 57; professional 39; see also self-management Self-determination 10, 14, 22, 35, 36, 41, 57, 121, 140, 141, 164; see also voice Self-expression 37–8 Self-management 32 Self-realization 36–7; guided 37; spontaneous 37 Self-regulation, professional 55 Self-reliance 41; see also self-sufficiency Self-sufficiency 138 Sennett, Richard 98, 119, 174 Sensitizing concept 9, 17 Service: the concept of 6–7; chain 66, 87, 91–2, 157; level agreement 58, 92, 153; service paradox 163 Service professional: the concept of 19 Seth, Vikram 21, 174 Signalling 60, 88 Sills, David L. 42, 44, 168 Situated action 100–1, 118, 151, 166 Skills 94, analytical 94, 96–7; cognitive 94–9, 152; creative 94, 98–9, 117; deliberation 94, 97–8; development 95–6, 117, 164; elementary 113, 119; innovative 117; knowledge 94–5, 117; people 103, 104, 144; personal 104, 112, 113; process 34, 94, 108–13, 144, 153, 159–60, 152, 159; professional 65,

182  Subject and author index 94–9; relational 34, 94, 96, 102–8, 113, 152, 153, 159; rhetorical 112; for clients 136–7, 139; management of 152; see also standardization Slater, Don 76, 173 Social rights 35 Stakeholders 6, 65, 87, 135, 154, 160, 162, 163, 164 Standardization 24, 145, 148; of the product 148–50; of the process 148, 150–1; of skills 148, 151–3 Star, Susan Leigh 153, 163, 168 Stigmatization 53 Strange, Susan 13, 174 Strathern, Marilyn 153, 174 Street-level bureaucracy 11–12, 27, 28 Street-level bureaucrat 10, 11, 29, 52, 103 Structuring effects 9, 10 Supplying 10, 46 Support 5, 6, 11, 26, 48, 51, 52, 57, 82, 83, 85, 91, 108, 113, 133, 135, 146, 147, 149, 151 Surveillance 17, 68, 83, 84, 159; in association with care 9, 10, 15–16, 17, 59–62; 87, 88–9 Symbolic meaning 67, 68, 70, 72, 117, 131, 154 Takeuchi, Hirotaka 152, 174 Taylor(ist) 24, 109 Techno-structure 48, 97 Thompson, Marjorie 64, 174 Time 71–2; clock as opposed to lived 109–10; management 109–10, 150 Tonkens, Evelien 37, 164, 174 Total institution 10, 15, 87–8, 138 Transformation phase 81–9 Treatment 135–6

Triage 75 Trust 58, 125; the mutual production of 107, 134 Turner, Victor 165, 174 Turnover 11 Van der Haar, Marleen 57, 102, 105, 124, 171, 174 Van Gennep, Arnold 134, 174 Van Vliet, Frieda 40, 175 Van Wijk, Ellen 34, 56, 99, 117, 175 Verbeek, Gabrielle 80, 128, 139, 175 Vermeulen, Jeroen 22, 171 Voice 63, 141 Von Borries, Friedrich 49, 175 Vulto, Marij 104, 175 Vulnerability 49, 89, 134; client 127; professional 108, 114–5; of the organization 64, 69, 114–5, 162, 164 Walkup, M. 111, 175 Walzer, Michael 39, 175 Waterman Jr, Robert H. 65, 174 Watson, Tony 111, 143–4, 155, 159, 175 Weber, Max 22, 23, 27, 175 Weick, Karl E. 14, 32, 56, 175 Welfare state 28, 35, 36, 44, 56, 69, 97, 129 Wenger, Étienne 19, 66, 118–9, 148, 157–8, 175 Westin, Alan F. 42, 43, 175 Wilensky, Harold L. 13, 31–2, 175 Wilson, James Q. 27, 175 Winding up 89–91; for clients 141–2 Zeithaml, V.A. 91, 175