This paper examines the "managing out" phenomenon in Australian public social work administration, tracing how economic rationalism and globalization-driven welfare reforms since the 1980s have transferred social service oversight from government agencies to not-for-profit (NPO) and non-governmental organizations. Drawing on theorists such as Jim Ife and Malcolm Payne, the paper critiques the utilitarian underpinnings of market-based public administration and analyzes the resulting structural reconfiguration of social work practice. OZChild Australia is used as a case study illustrating how NPO agencies have absorbed formerly state-administered functions. The paper also considers implications for professional ethics, capacity building, and the duty of care within an evolving public-private partnership model.
The paper demonstrates effective synthesis of theoretical frameworks across multiple disciplines — social work theory, public administration, international human rights law, and organizational change management — to build a multidimensional argument about a single policy phenomenon. Rather than applying one lens, the author triangulates across Ife, Payne, and Austin to show how "managing out" is simultaneously a fiscal, professional, and ethical issue.
The paper opens with a theoretical provocation (Ife's critique of the AASW Code of Ethics), establishes the historical context of welfare reform since the 1980s, introduces the "managing out" concept via Austin, then broadens the lens to international social work bodies before narrowing again to the OZChild case study. It closes by returning to the macro-level tensions between globalization, market forces, and professional social work ethics — a classic funnel-and-return structure.
In 2008, social work theorist Jim Ife made public his critique of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Code of Ethics (AASW, 2002). Referencing John Solas and the propensity and limits of official advocacy within the scope of national social work practice, Ife describes the preemption of social justice by market forces in the nation's policy, where utilitarianism — the basis of economic rationalism and crude empiricism — has come to dominate the field of governance and social service known as public administration. According to Ife, "utilitarianism forms the basis of many of the policies, practice manuals, and managerial practices that form the context within which social workers work." Not surprisingly, he maintains, adherence to utilitarianism is ultimately a detriment to those it serves.
Ife's assertion about the AASW and its influence and connection to the national administration of public good in Australia is the focus of this study. Responsive to "managing out" fiscal waste within the Australian government in the last decade, this essay examines the innovative approaches crafted by former public administration officials and staff as they sought responsible measures of managing reinvestment capacity — and especially in relation to the delegation of those obligations, both financial and professional, within the country's emerging infrastructure of not-for-profit (NPO) community organizations.
Since the 1980s, the force of economic rationalism as a method of managing national public administration in response to globalization has had a significant impact on the dissemination of once-coherent structures of vertical oversight in the provision of the social welfare state. Welfare reforms in Australia and elsewhere suggest that the utility of the former service delivery structure is clear evidence of Ife's assertions, whereby a process of "managing out" top and middle management instituted a new era of budget allocation-based policy decisions. With the devolution of the global economy since 2008, the promotion of systemic strategies intended to curb excess expenditure coincided with the advent of those reforms — and particularly shaped the nature of managed care in social work administration.
As Austin argues in his 2002 article Managing Out: The Community Practice Dimensions of Effective Agency Management, there is an increasing shift from a primary focus on internal operations to external community-based organizations, as public administration looks to inter-organizational relations or "partnerships" as a solution to the downsizing conundrum left by once-ample administration. What has emerged from this process, amid a storm of criticism, are inconsistencies in "monitoring and managing the boundary between the external environment and internal organizational arrangements."
The groundwork for the "managing out" phenomenon was effectively laid in the 1990s, and this is evidenced in the field of social work perhaps more than anywhere else. Practice settings were being reconfigured to carry maximum caseloads, prompted by extended service populations and fiscal pressures. The large influx of immigrants to Australia during the 1990s obviously exacerbated caseload limits, and major reassessments were already underway as professionals advocated for policy to establish a parallel administrative infrastructure to the existing welfare state — one developed in collaboration with licensed NPO and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Theoretical consideration of "managing out" in public social work organizations benefits from comprehensive studies of practice theory. As reviewed by Payne (2005), these offer a general framework for discussing the field's paradigms and positions in agency management. According to Payne (2005), the "construction of social work" is a feedback loop connecting the various points of oversight and service in social work praxis: (1) the client-worker-agency arena; (2) the agency-professional arena; and (3) the political-social-ideological arena.
A synthesis of different theoretical schools, the contemporary model described by Payne and colleagues places institutional application in dialogue with policy, interpreting how social work fits into the broader dynamic of organizational change and connecting public administration of social services to market forces, management practice, professional development, and community relations (Ife, 1997).
The implications for the wider examination of social work as a community of practice are addressed in recent work on family law and its impact on the programmatic structure of social work institutions in common law jurisdictions like Australia (Gable, 2007). At the international level, those concerns are measured by the capacity of policy to influence social work practice as human rights advocacy (Scheper-Hughes, 1987; Stephens, 1995). In Australia, this has particular import where statute has incorporated international law — especially in regard to children's rights provisions.
If nothing more, the voice of Australian social workers served to redirect public consensus regarding change management strategies intended to accommodate a rapidly growing caseload population. Hence, social workers were early participants when "appropriate relationship" dialogue placed Australia's NPO community at the center of the public-private intervention debate. Policy perspectives generated during that era also set the framework for the subsequent incorporation of social services into the "managing out" of funds and oversight to programs formerly under the administrative authority of the Australian government.
Australia nonetheless speaks of comprehensive management strategies reflective of other national social service environments, where "networks" of practice are developing intricate measures of building services into policy through advocacy and toward the procurement of fiscal support for ongoing sustainability of NPO community organizations. Iterative of the "total inclusion" model proposed as a stopgap to state budgetary cuts of its prior cadre of administrative managers — when a pure welfare state model was still in place — the new "charitable" public-private partnership works within the rules and regulations of the state, while also offering critique of the government's sometimes inequitable distribution of allocations.
What seems almost paradoxical, however, is the reinforcement of complex managerialism within community organizations as they "ramp up" to meet funding criteria and state regulations. The rules governing changes in NPO service delivery criteria are increasingly reconfigured to align with the "normative" systems of governance seen in the corporate realm. Indeed, former public administration managers who work in the NPO sector routinely cite commercial business practice and standard change management strategies as the bar rises higher — consistent with the market-based protocols and performance expectations operative within state interests. One only has to engage with the compliance and reporting requirements placed on NPO social work administration and operations to understand the level of sophistication that community organizations must now exhibit in management practice.
Merely calling attention to state fiscal policy in relation to the social welfare state hides other forces taking place in Australia, as the national economy continues to flex options as a result of globalization and its capital and labor flows into and out of the country. Countering what Ife (1997) warned was the "wrath of the market" impinging upon adequacy in public administration of social work, the articulation of dissent by former government managers — now in constructive service to Australia's new system of NPO partnerships — came at a time when citizens wanted alternatives to state control and an express compact with a "duty to a reasonable standard of care" through public-private partnership.
Allan, J., Pease, B., & Briskman, L. (2003). Critical social work: An introduction to theories and practices. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin.
Alston, M., & McKinnon, J. (Eds.). (2005). Social work fields of practice (2nd ed.). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Austin, M. (2002). Managing out: The community practice dimensions of effective agency management. Journal of Community Practice, 10(4), 33–48.
Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA). (2010). Australian Government. Retrieved from
Gardner, F. (2006). Working with human service organisations: Creating connections for practice. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.
Ife, J. (2001). Human rights and social work: Towards rights-based practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ife, J. (2000). Local and global practice: Relocating social work as a human rights profession in the new global order. Eileen Younghusband Memorial Lecture, IFSW/IASSW Biennial Conference, Montreal, 31 July 2000.
Ife, J. (1999). Postmodernism, critical theory and social work. In J. Fook & B. Pease (Eds.), Transforming social work practice: Postmodern critical perspectives. London: Routledge.
Ife, J. (1997). Rethinking social work: Towards critical practice. Melbourne: Longman.
Ife, J. (1995). Community development: Creating community alternatives — vision, analysis and practice. Melbourne: Longman.
Ife, J., & Tesoriero, F. (2006). Community development: Community-based alternatives in an age of globalisation (3rd ed.). Frenchs Forest, NSW: Pearson Education Australia.
International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW). (2010). Retrieved from http://www.ifsw.org/
OZChild. (2010). Retrieved from http://www.ozchild.org.au/
Payne, M. (2005). Modern social work theory (3rd ed.). Chicago: Lyceum.
Scheper-Hughes, N. (Ed.). (1987). Child survival: Anthropological perspectives on the treatment and maltreatment of children. Boston, MA: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Stephens, S. (1995). Children and the politics of culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Always verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.