Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a significant contribution to current debates over the future of the public services. Professionalism has been and is a major feature of the British welfare state. Yet the political, social and economic context in which the profession emerged and flourished is changing rapidly. The professional ideal of disinterested expertise serving the public interest has lost much of its original gloss. Professional status and careers are threatened by major shifts in the structure of the welfare state which can be summed up as the decline of the ôbig governmentö bureaucratic model. Professions themselves face challenges to their special claims to expertise and public service from: politicians, senior managers, new social movements and pressure groups, technological change and not least from those citizens whom they aspire to serve. Beyond Bureaucracy? asks how these new challenges are changing the professions? and how are the professionals themselves adapting?
