Managerialism and Social Work Practice: Essay on NDIS and BSL

This essay delves into the concept of managerialism, examining its application within contemporary service organizations, particularly focusing on its influence on social work practice. The essay identifies managerialism as a key theoretical debate and explores its manifestation within the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL) and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). It analyzes the impact of managerialism, including privatization and competitive funding, on organizations. The analysis includes discussions on how managerialism shapes service delivery, accountability, and the relationship between service users and providers. The essay also discusses the implications of managerialism for social work practice, considering the shift towards market-driven principles, performance-oriented working conditions, and the challenges faced by human service organizations in balancing efficiency with their core values. The essay draws on various academic references to support its arguments and offers a critical assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of managerialism in the context of social work.

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Managerialism
Name
School

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Managerialism
Managerialism is a term used to denote the application of marketplace principles, in
organizations, that pursues specific management ideas. The ideas are basically centered on
making business organizations more efficient in each and every organizational way of working.
In simple ways, it enforces an organization to pursue management strategies, bring in
performance oriented working conditions, promote accountability, inculcate competitive spirit in
employees and strive toward organizational goals and objectives.
Managerialism as a principal encourages rule of law within an organization set and fixed by the
management and provides managers with authority to determine how he/she would manage the
organization or department. To put it firmly, managerialism establishes rules of managers and
gives legitimate powers to control subordinates as they deem necessary (Klikauer, 2015).
Managers enjoy special rights and powers and they are the biggest supporters of the concept as
they drew distinctive strength and status from managerialism within an organization as well as in
society. To justify managerialism, managers often use the catch phrase, ‘good management
practice’ to justify their authority and autonomy over sub ordinate employees.
Managerial practice in an organization is dependent on how manager uses certain
techniques that brings about desired cultural change required to perform tasks and activities.
Managers steer organization to its competitive goals and objectives and eventually toward its
mission and vision. Managers’ techniques and tools involve performance management, target
setting, and accountability for each and every allotment. Mangerialism is practiced in most

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business organizations in today’s marketplace and is primarily market driven that emphasizes
management directed solely toward growth and expansion of businesses.
According to (Deem and Hillyard , 2007) the influence of managerialism extends in
every hook and corner of academia across universities where competitive spirit, culture of
competition, and expansion is propagated. Deem (1998), defines managerialism as a way of life
adopted from private sector business practices: especially the way private sectors attach
importance to efficiency, excellence and effectiveness in each and every tasks and activities
performed (Deem, 1998). Kilkauer (2015) also says that managerialism has become increasingly
prevalent in modern day society and influences every sphere of our social, economic, political
and cultural aspects. This Kilkauer’s words absolutely hold true in each and every regard,
especially the political arena where politicians are now held accountable for every promises they
make to people (Klikauer, 2015). Democratization of information through web services has made
accountability easier; people can now access almost all the documents pertaining to the
importance of their well being with regard to promises made by politicians. All of these give
managerialism the universal legitimacy and successfully persuades people that it is the best way
to ensure accountability, better services, and growth (Barberis, 2012).
Arguably, the most notable influence of managerialism is seen in health and human
service organizations. Health and human service organizations, since the late 1980s, have
changed drastically due to the impact of managerialism. Health and Human service
organizations’ in Australia as well as in other parts of the world have been through intense
financial crunch due to limited funding opportunity available. The limited funding opportunity is
mainly due to two important factors; government policies that seek to control costs associated
with maintaining health services and the growing numbers of such organizations all across

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Australia. Government now plays the role of direction setter, regulator and funder; it is not
involved in providing services directly to the people. Government, in order to cut costs, sold its
assets to private companies and introduced competitive funding environment. As a result, human
health organizations which were strictly not for profit earlier are now also open to private
companies. This has completely changed the dynamics in which these organizations operated
earlier; limited funding opportunity and urge for survival has compelled them to adopt attributes
such as competition, compiling of cohesive business strategy, performance oriented working
conditions and accountability system (Berends, 2014). To put it simply, human health
organizations have adopted managerialism as a way of management. Application of
managerialism in these organizations is also called new public management (Melo, 2014).
Managerialism as noted earlier has impacted many human and health organizations and
their operations. It has already been said before that managerialism has changed the very way
these human and health organizations operated. Managerialism asserts that service users are
clients and good services to clients is paramount to the survival of any organization. On the other
hand, human and health organizations apart from business organizations have some unique
features. One of them is that services provided are within full control of the organization and
consumers would not have any say on it. Managerialism has made it obligatory for organizations
to demonstrate the benefits that they would provide to their clients thus handing over the control
of services to consumers. This demonstration requirement by organizations compels them to
acknowledge that need for a better management with enhanced working principle is a must
(Shepherd, 2017).
Moreover, proponents of old school thought argue that new public management has
narrowed down the distinction between human health care organizations and private business

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organizations beyond acceptable level (Lynch, 2018). They opine that human health care
organizations stand in total contradiction with private business entities and the unintended
consequences brought about by managerialism is not good in the long run for human and health
care organizations. According to them, the most notable difference between private and human
health care organizations is the value they bat for and that health care organizations would lose
its sheen once it compromises with its value for the sake of managerialism (Berends, 2014).
NDIS is an organization that provides supports to the disabled people which was under
the ambit of the commonwealth and Australian state governments. NDIA (National Disability
Insurance Agency), the regulatory body of NDIS, is responsible for executing disability support
to the people. By 2013, around 4400 people with disability till 65 years of age registered under
the NDIS scheme across Victoria. NDIS expects this figure to go up till 105,000 by this year.
NDIS partnered with Brotherhood of St. Lawrence (BSL), another humanitarian
organization that seeks to alleviate poverty from across Australia (BSL, 2016). BSL aims to
tackle poverty with their various grass root programs; they develop their policies based on
research evidences to go about their task of removing poverty. BSL delivers their services across
the state of Victoria and they support people of all ages to improve their livelihood (BSL, 2019).
The study of BLS-NDIS reveals three important facts that point to the changes influenced by
managerialism.
At first, NDIS came into existence as a result of privatization and competitive funding
environment imposed upon by Government of Australia. It may be noted that services provided
by NDIS came under the ambit of commonwealth and government of Australia. The
establishment of NDIS can be seen as a political program that aimed to bring about impactful
changes in human and health service organizations. This political program can be defined as an

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attempt to enforce managerialist principles that advocates benefits of consumers through
extension of efficiency criteria and also includes other two aspects of privatization i.e. equity and
expansion.
Secondly, the joint collaboration of BSL and NDIS to provide dedicated services to
clients is the fallout of managerialism or new public management. Hughes and Wearing (2007)
argues that the introduction of privatization and new public management in human and health
care organizations turned out to be devastating for small community based organizations.
According to them, companies as a result of competitive funding environment endured difficult
times surviving alone as one entity and amalgamated together to form larger organizations to
pool greater resources and increase marketability. When the competition for funding is intensely
tough, then larger organizations with better resources pool and marketability stand a better
chance to survive and grow in the market (Hughes, 2007).
Lastly, the accountability aspect of managerialism is observed in case of NDIS way of
operations and accountability. NDIA says that its agency ensures transparency in each and every
regard to build trust as well as respect among disabled persons as well as among their loved ones
and family members. According to NDIA, this level of traansperancy was never seen when the
scheme fell under the ambit of common wealth and government of Australia. NDIA also
emphasizes transparency with regard to its design and implementation. If someone is denied a
particular service, then he or she is given complete information on why they were not provided
the desired service. The website of NDIA provides with all the information that assists
consumers or clients in acquiring them. Information include, operating guidelines, quality
performance reports, and other fact sheets. All these information helps people to a greater extent
when they are checking their prospects.

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References
Barberis, P. (2012). The Managerial Imperative: Fifty Years Change in UK Public
Administration. In P. Barberis, Public Policy and Administration (pp. 327-345).
Berends, L. (2014). Management and Practice in Health and Human Service Organisations.
Oxford University Press.
BSL. (2016, 03 24). Brotherhood of St. Laurence. Retrieved 04 19, 2019, from
https://www.bsl.org.au: https://www.bsl.org.au/media/media-releases/brotherhood-to-help-
implement-ndis/
BSL. (2019). Brotherhood of St. Laurence. Retrieved 04 21, 2019, from http://www.bsl.org.au/:
http://www.bsl.org.au/
Deem, R. (1998). New Managerialism and Higher Education: The Management of Performances
and Cultures in Universities in the United Kingdom. International Studies in Sociology of
Education , 47-70.
Hughes, W. (2007). Organizations and management in Social Work. Sydney: Research Gate.
Klikauer, T. (2015). What is Managerialism? In T. Klikauer, Critical Sociology (pp. 1103-1119).
Lynch, K. M. (2018). The Transformation of Work in Welfare State Organizations. In New
Public Management and the Institutional Diffusion of Ideas. Routledge.
Melo, S. (2014). Quality Management and Managerialism in Healthcare. Managerialism: A
Historical Overview , 1-31.
Shepherd, S. (2017). Managerialism: an ideal type. Studies in Higher Education , 1668-1678.

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