Technologies of Change: The Public Sector
Alison I. Griffith, PhD
Faculty of Education
York University
In Canada's globalizing economy, the public sector is being
transformed: to reduce costs, increase accountability to taxpayers, and introduce work practices closer to a private sector mode. These changes – sometimes called the "new public management" – constitute a new organization of work in the public sector. They include the 'outsourcing' of work to private companies, the 'downloading' of responsibility for institutional resources and the private sector, and the introduction of new managerial and financial approaches aimed at improving the efficiency
and accountability of those working in the public sector. Discussion of
changes in human service delivery has tended to focus within the boundaries of particular organizations. I suggest that through the vehicle of collaborative research, it would be possible to develop a broader view of the ways in which social institutions are being transformed within and across traditional institutional boundaries.
Although institutions differ widely in their organization, contemporary social change is inter-institutional. The changes might best be described as involving the development and introduction of new institutional technologies. The term “institutional technologies” refers to the formalized, technically developed, and rationalized procedures that regulate the everyday operations of institutions. As the public sector is changing, these ordinary work routines are becoming ever-more digitized, and more similar, across institutional and national boundaries. The new institutional technologies include standardized, often computer-mediated, always textually-mediated work processes that link professionals and non-professionals in social institutions. They provide the administrative ground on which various levels of management in a social institution can assess and coordinate action.
The transformation of social institutions in the public sector of the new economy reaches into the lives of most Canadians, and particularly into the traditional sphere of women’s work. The majority of the participants in the public institutional sector, sometimes called the "sphere of reproduction,” are women. The professionals employed in social work, education, nursing, and community health, as well as the support workers (e.g. practical nurses, educational assistants, and intake assistants) are primarily female. So, too, their institutional work is oriented to that part of society in which women have primary care-taking responsibility – the family, the child, the disabled. Thus, the transformation of the public sector is also a transformation in women's professional, non-professional and family-based work, values and identities.
In this presentation, I will outline the problematic of this research topic with a view to setting up questions for further consideration during the conference.