10.2190/WR.13.2.b 0876883548786646 2 Unpicking the Managerial Stitches: Strengthening Critical Action in the Public Sector Workplace 115 132 20081118 20081118 20081118 20081118 0876883548786646.pdf http://baywood.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=0876883548786646 2 Marion Macalpine Sheila Marsh Thames Valley University, London, United Kingdom This article draws on research and education with public sector managers in the UK health and social care sector to expose the intensity and rapid spread of private profit within public services. It conceptualises this spread as key to "high managerialism," which, rather than improving public services, enables the incursion of capital into the public realm with corrosive impacts. These include the perverse results of performance targets, distorted priorities, and dehumanised practices, which impact crucially both on public sector workers and on the public. We chart the shift from control through direct performance management techniques to the use of more nuanced, discursive resources for control. These include market structures and assumptions and "morphing" of public services into new forms akin to corporate models. Key contours, from the international arena to the individual manager, are interpenetrated by market discourse; this can "stitch" managers into a "common sense" notion of how to act within the structures of high managerialism: a business mindset held in place through fear and silence. The article describes how through our role in management education we draw on managers' possibilities and motivations to challenge this "common sense," using three interlinked strategies to work with them and help "unpick the stitches." These strategies challenge the normalisation of market assumptions; name and connect what is usually implicit and disconnected; and take a campaigning approach to action. Our work focuses on supporting the agency of individual managers who lead key public services to take a critical perspective, build on public sector values, and act for progressive change in their workplaces as well as for public service improvement.

Acker, J. 1990. Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organisations. Gender and Society, 4(2): 139-158.

Battram, A. 1998. Navigating complexity: The essential guide to complexity theory in business and management. London: The Industrial Society.

Butler, J. 1997. The psychic life of power: Theories in subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Callon, M. (Ed.). 1998. The laws of the markets. Oxford: Blackwell.

Center for Responsive Politics. 2008. Revolving door. Retrieved from <a target="_blank" href='http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/index.asp'>www.opensecrets.org/revolving/index.asp</a>

Clarke, J., & Newman, J. 1997. The managerial state. London: Sage.

Curtis, A. 2007. The trap: What happened to our dream of freedom? Retrieved from <a target="_blank" href='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvq0HaKiwJk'>www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvq0HaKiwJk</a>

Davies, J. 2007. After Eden, things look rosy in the social enterprise garden. Health Service Journal, February 1515.2.07: 14.

EVCA. 2007. EVCA makes the case on behalf of private equity to Socialist Group meeting at European Parliament today. Retrieved from <a target="_blank" href='http://www.evca.eu/PressRoom/PressRoom.aspx'>www.evca.eu/PressRoom/PressRoom.aspx</a>

Fairclough, N. 2006. Language and globalisation. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Giddens, A. 1991. Modernity and self identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Gramsci, A. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.

Hall, S. 2003. New Labour's double-shuffle. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 27: 319-335.

Hall, S., Held, D., & McGrew, T. (Eds.). 1992. Modernity and its futures. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Harlow, E., Hearn, J., & Parkin, W. 1995. Gendered noise: Organisations and the silence and din of domination. In C. Itzin & J. Newman (Eds.), Gender, culture and organisational change: 91-107. London: Routledge.

Keaney, M. 2002. Unhealthy accumulation: The globalization of health care privatization. Review of Social Economy, 60: 331-357.

Lawson, N. 2006. Review of "Liquid Life" by Zygmunt Bauman. Renewal, 14.1: 90-91.

Leighton, D. 2006. The culture of the new capitalism: Daniel Leighton interviews Richard Sennett. Renewal, 14.1: 42-52.

Levy, D., & Newell, P. 2002. Business strategy and international environmental governance: Towards a neo-Gramscian synthesis. Global Environmental Politics, 2(4): 84-101.

Lister, J. 2005. Health policy reform: Driving the wrong way? London: Middlesex University Press.

Macalpine, M., & Marsh, S. 1999. Can you have "critical management" as well as improve services? Paper presented at the First International Critical Management Studies Conference, Manchester, UK.

Macalpine, M., & Marsh, S. 2005. On being white there's nothing I can say: Exploring whiteness and power in organisations. Management Learning, 36(4): 453-474.

Macalpine, M., & Marsh, S. 2008. The "swampy lowland": Using hyperlinks to navigate the multiple realities of partnership. In E. Ferlie, P. Hyde, & L. McKee (Eds.), Organising and reorganising—Power and change in health care organisations: 139-153. London: Palgrave.

Macalpine, M., & Marsh, S. Forthcoming. Supervising action research: A space for critical influence on organisational practice. In T. Le Trent-Jones, M. Voronov, D. Weir, & J. Wolfram-Cox (Eds.), Critical management studies at work: Multidisciplinary approaches to negotiating tensions between theory and practice. London: Edward Elgar.

Marsh, S., & Macalpine, M. 2002. Perversity and absurdity in "high" managerialism: The role of management educators. Retrieved from <a target="_blank" href='http://www.swampyground.org/Perversity%20paper.doc'>www.swampyground.org/Perversity%20paper.doc</a>

McMaster, R. 2002a. Introduction to the Special Issue of the Review of Social Economy on institutional change in health care provision. Review of Social Economy, 60: 323-329.

McMaster, R. 2002b. A socio-institutionalist critique of the 1990s' reforms of the United Kingdom's National Health Service. Review of Social Economy, 60: 403-433.

McLean, I. 1987. Public choice, an introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.

Murphy, J. 2006. Critical challenges in the emerging global managerial order. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 2(2): 128-146.

Newman, J. 2001. Modernising governance: New Labour, policy and society. London: Sage.

Niskanen, W. 1971. Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Chicago: Aldine.

OECD. 1995. Governance in transition: Public management reforms in OECD countries. Paris: OECD.

Pollock, A. 2004. NHS plc:The privatisation of our health care. London: Verso.

Shiva, V. 2005. Earth democracy. London: Zed books

Sklair, L. 2002. Globalization: Capitalism and its alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Treleaven, L., & Sykes, C. 2005. Loss of organizational knowledge: From supporting clients to serving head office. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 18(4): 353-368

Turner, M., & Hulme, D. 1997. Governance, administration and development: Making the state work. London: Macmillan Press.

Vaughan, V. 2007. PCT could slash 90 percent of staff. Health Service Journal, February 1: 7.

Whitfield, D. 2001. Public services or corporate welfare: Rethinking the nation state in the global economy. London: Pluto Press.

Whitfield, D. 2006. New Labour's attack on public services: Modernisation by marketisation? How the commissioning, choice, competition and contestability agenda threatens public services and the welfare state. Nottingham, UK: Spokesman.

Williams, P. 1997. Seeing a colour blind future: The paradox of race (The 1997 Reith lectures). London: Virago Press.