Complaints and Negotiations about Professionalism in the Social Welfare Sector in Germany. Ethnographic Insights from a Childcare Center and a Youth Vocational Assistance Service

In light of the societal and socio-political transformations currently unfolding in Germany, particularly with regard to managerialism, neoliberalism, and new public management, there is a diversity of discourses on the question of what constitutes professional work in the social sector. These discourses pertain either to the efficiency or standardization of professionalism, or to situativity, focus on individual cases, and aspects of care and relational work. Technical or organizational understandings of professionalism are either seen as threats to traditional professionalism, or as a complement to and extension of it. Lately, social work has been perceived by the critical public as an error-prone endeavor, resulting in a tendency to blame agents and their organizations. This has led to a heightened awareness of the necessity to act professionally in every situation. The emergence of competing conceptions of professionalism at the discursive level gives rise to the question of how organizations and their employees respond to the issue of improper performance. When complaints emerge from within or outside the organization, negotiations become evident regarding the version of professionalism that is upheld, criticized, accepted without question, or dismissed. This investigation employs participant observation in a day-care center and a youth vocational assistance service to demonstrate that the manner in which criticism is handled reveals which actors are recognized as having the authority to judge who is professional and which perceptions of professionalism gain common ground in each instance. These findings are situated within an organizational ethnography of the two organizations in question. A comparison of these two socio-pedagogical fields, which are subject to different forms of professionalization and regulation, reveals that negotiation occurs in a variety of ways, yet there are also notable similarities. This is primarily shaped by a set of conditions and structural frameworks that are both analogous and distinct.