Desarrollo de mercados de tecnologías para el acceso a la energía en zonas rurales de Perú

Social workers and their employers have an ethical duty to ensure that the organisations they work for operate in a just manner. A just social work organisation must convince those it employs and those whom it serves that social work is something worth upholding as good in itself, and that the operation of social work organisations will lead to good and just outcomes. Social workers and their employers therefore have to act in a way which shows those who contribute through paying taxes that their organisation operates in a fair way treating all with equal respect. It must enable citizens to contribute to how the service is planned, organised and delivered to them. At an organisational level this process enables citizens to give legitimacy to social work organisations and recognise that social work’s aims are to achieve social justice for those whom it serves (Rothstein, 1998). Public bodies now have a number of legal duties relating to social justice matters. For example, equal opportunities legislation requires public bodies like local authority social service departments to operate in a manner which does not discriminate on the grounds of physical ability, gender and race, and is soon to include age. The Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2001 requires all public authorities in carrying out their work not to commit any act constituting discrimination, although some public bodies are excluded, for example the security services and military units. Local authority social service departments must act to eliminate unlawful discrimination and to promote equality of opportunity and good relations between persons of different racial groups.

In respect of the treatment of social work and social care employees, the code for social care employers (www.gscc.org.uk) expects employers’ organisations to operate in a way that enables social workers and social care workers to work according to their own code of practice. Point 2 of the employers code is clear in this regard:

2 As a social care employer, you must have written policies and procedures in place to enable social care workers to meet the GSCC’s Code of Practice for Social Care Workers.

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5.8 Behave in a way, in work or outside work, which would call into question your suitability to work in social care services.

It will also introduce you to the following academic standards as set out in the social work subject benchmark statement:

3.2.5 Skills in personal and professional development

Honours graduates in social work should be able to:

G _{reflect on and modify their behaviour in the light of experience;}

G identify and keep under review their own personal and professional boundaries; G manage uncertainty, change and stress in work situations;

G handle inter-personal and intra-personal conflict constructively;

G _{understand and manage changing situations and respond in a flexible manner;} G challenge unacceptable practices in a responsible manner.

This includes:

Implementing and monitoring written policies on: confidentiality; equal opportunities; risk assessment; substance abuse; record keeping; and the acceptance of money or personal gifts from service users or carers.

2.2 Effectively managing and supervising staff to support effective practice and good conduct and supporting staff to address deficiencies in their performance;

Having systems in place to enable social care workers to report inadequate resources or operational difficulties which might impede the delivery of safe care and working with them and relevant authorities to address those issues; and

Supporting social care workers to meet the GSCC’s Code of Practice for Social Care Workers and not requiring them to do anything that would put their compliance with that code at risk.

To enable social work institutions to operate in a just way there are two basic assumptions which underpin this principle. Firstly, service users, social work employees and their man- agers should be able to influence the social work processes and organisational practices in their employing organisations. Secondly, these organisations must take responsibility to ensure that they can respond and reshape those processes and practices in response to all legitimate demands (see Miller, 1987).

If social workers are to work in an ethical manner then they will have to engage with the ways in which their organisation:

G organises their work; G resources their work; G supervises their work;

G enables service users’ participation.

This means that social workers need to consider the nature of the managerial and organi- sational contexts which shape their working lives. In particular, they need to ensure that their professional autonomy is enhanced appropriately and, where it is constrained by policy and procedure, that this is exercised fairly and for the benefit of service users. The problems social workers face in their employing organisations is often translated into issues around professional discretion, in which some anti-managerialist discourses see any imposition of rules and procedures on social workers as necessarily a bad thing. As Evans and Harris (2004) argue, the increase in guidance, procedures and rules should not imme- diately be equated with greater control over professional discretion; excessive rule-making may create more discretion, which in itself may not be positive either. This can be the case where a proliferation of rules which may be contradictory or which become overly com- plex, leaves social workers to use their discretion, by default creating rules of thumb through the thicket of bureaucratic control. Rules and procedures can operate positively or negatively. In a positive sense, they can clarify and enhance social workers’ ability to access services and enable service user’s social justice, by ensuring that services are delivered

fairly according to agreed criteria which are open and transparent. In a negative sense, poorly conceived rules and procedures can enable managers and professionals to hide behind them, to use them as an excuse for inaction or to create the opportunity for pro- fessional abuse of power.

Social workers, if they work for local authority social service departments, find themselves part of an organisation which is organised bureaucratically. To work effectively to deliver services to large groups of service users, work has to be delivered in a rational and trans- parent way. This form of working is often best suited to bureaucratic styles of organisation. Let us define what we mean by an organisation and then what is meant by bureaucracy through an internet search for definitions.

An organisation:

G describes a group of people acting to achieve a common goal (http://enwikipedia.org/ wiki/Organization);

G deliberate arrangement of people to achieve a particular purpose (www.wordnet. princeton.edu).

The definitions above describe both a way of working together to achieve a common goal and the actual disposition of people into different roles and responsibilities to achieve the most efficient outcome. Roles and responsibilities have been formally organised and man- aged to achieve a particular purpose.

A bureaucracy

G a form of organisation marked by division of labour, hierarchy, rules and regulations and impersonal relationships (www.crfonline.org);

G a system in which people are expected to follow precisely defined rules and procedures rather than to use personal judgement (www.wps.prenhall.com);

G rule by bureaus of appointed officials. Group of agencies marked by a clear hierarchy of authority in charge of implementing collective choices made through political institu- tions. Formal organisations that carry out policy through written rules and standardised procedures based on the specialisation of duties and striving for the efficient attainment of organisational goals (http://socialsciencedictionary.org);

G a sociological concept of government and its institutions as an organisational structure characterised by regularised procedure, division of responsibility, hierarchy and imper- sonal relationships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaucracy).

A bureaucracy such as that found within a social services department divides activities between different people with an identified hierarchy of responsibilities, so that in theory each person in the organisation knows who has which responsibility. Authority for com- pleting activities comes from the top down, so that power is designated down through each level of the hierarchy.

The abuse of professional power in the form of the damage that can be done by a bureau- cracy, within which those entwined in its grasp come to inhabit a nightmare world of contradictory and self-defeating rules, has been closely associated with the writing of Franz Kafka and the adjective Kafkaesque. Kafka’s book The Trial begins with the protago- nist Joseph K. waking one morning to find himself under arrest. He has not been previously informed that he has done wrong, and no one can tell him what charges have been brought against him. Even the officials who have come to arrest him don’t know – they’re just doing their jobs. Joseph K. spends the rest of the novel trying to discover these charges, attempting to outwit the excessively bureaucratic system that has put him under arrest, while at the same time trying to maintain a hold on his fragmenting personal life. As the forces against Joseph K. steadily grow stronger, he slowly comes to the revelation that the entire world may be under control of the court that is trying to condemn him (Kafka, 2004).

Another associated term which describes some of the essence of bureaucratic thinking is the term from the book and film Catch-22 (Heller, 2005). The story concerns bomber crews in the Second World War where the chances of survival were slim. We have all come up against certain circumstances where no matter what we try and do to chart a way forward, we are confronted with a Catch-22 situation:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle (Heller, 2005, p55).

This catch keeps the hero of the book Yossarian in the war because a concern for one’s own life proved that he is not really crazy, and to get out of combat you have to be crazy. The catch is used by the superior powers to uphold and increase their power, and yet it is harmful to those who do not have power in the first place.

This frame of thinking describes the way in which an organisation is able to live inside people’s heads so that their ability to act is neutralised through the way their thoughts and behaviour are influenced by these organisational and bureaucratic imperatives. A useful analysis of the impact of welfare institutions upon individuals has been provided by Foucault (1977) who investigated the procedures to control and punish criminals in the nineteenth century through the idea of a Panopticon, a prison designed by the utilitar- ian Jeremy Bentham. The prisoners were subject to constant surveillance through the architectural design of the prison where all prisoners could be watched from a central

point. The surveyed prisoner was induced to be obedient because he or she did not know when they were being watched. Although they may not be being observed, they must behave if they are and therefore control is achieved even when the observation by the guards may be absent. This results in the prisoner controlling their own behaviour almost automatically (Prado, 2000). A more commonplace example concerns police speed cam- eras placed by the roadside which may or may not be switched on, thus the motorist does not know if he or she will be caught speeding by the camera and therefore adjusts the speed of their car accordingly. Ultimately the motorist responds almost immediately as a speed camera sign is observed and adjusts their speed. This deliberate and largely uncon- scious response can also be evidenced in how some people are socialised into an inflexible bureaucratic mindset. Thus the operation of a bureaucracy which requires the utmost con- formity to rules has two effects:

G It converts deliberate obedience of regulations into habitual compliance with rules and norms. In this they become ‘mores’ reflecting a strong moral imperative for workers feel- ing they ‘ought’ to comply. A failure to conform to rules will result in a much stronger social response from your colleagues who resent your failure to behave appropriately. G The habitual compliance itself converts to adoption or internalisation of these norms. This rather pessimistic description of bureaucratic forms of organisation has been further reinforced through the work of Bauman (1989, 1994) who suggests that the bureaucratic way of working divorces ethics from the organisation of the work that the bureaucracy processes, so that people become bodies to be processed rather than human beings to be respected.

Now this ideal model can work properly only on the condition that all people involved in the work of the organization follow the commands they receive and are guided only by them (their actions are, as it is said sometimes,‘rule-guided’). And that means that people should not be diverted by their personal beliefs and convictions or by emotions – sympathy or antipathy – to fellow workers or to individual clients or objects of action (Bauman, 1994, p11).

For Bauman (1994) bureaucracies encourage moral ambivalence and ethical blindness, defending themselves and their employees against troublesome ethical criticism in two ways: G the phenomenon of ‘floating responsibility’ – which suggests that as long as the employee followed the rules faithfully and did what was asked by his or her superiors, no responsibility can be placed upon the worker for the effects of such allegiance that this may have on the objects worked on;

G ethical indifference – which neutralises and then exempts members of a bureaucracy from any moral judgement. Thus people are merely following the agreed principles and procedures which are neither good nor bad, but merely requirements to achieve the smooth running of the bureaucracy.

Comment

You will need to assess the circumstances leading to Mrs Williams seeking extra help. If you feel that there are special circumstances which has led Mrs Williams to require a fur- ther break and you assess her need is justified, then you may find yourself in conflict with the organisational imperative to ration care breaks in this way. Alternatively, you may agree that the social services department decision to ration services is justified to enable other carers to access some services. Or you may feel sympathy for both positions, in that Mrs Williams does have a pressing need which requires some action on your part but you also feel that, imperfect as it is, the social service department does need to ration services in order to spread a limited resource fairly around other carers.

On the face of it there are two initial responses that have been identified by writers such as Banks (2006) and Payne (2000). These can be characterised as a flexible or reflective response in contrast to a bureaucratic or procedural response.