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Trust as a Criterion and Heuristic Approach to Sociopolitical Consultation

An Alternative View on Ethics and Values of Professionalism in Social Work

Work and Technology Institute, Gelsenkirchen

This article deals with the impact of economic-orientated reforms of the welfare state and social administration on professional services. Trust in professionalism is connected with new institutional economic approaches of professional action. In particular, the principal–agent theory is applied to the relationship between social worker, social service organization and service user in order to concentrate on incentive-oriented problems and asymmetric information in trust-based performances. The main thesis proposed here says that professionals have dual accountabilities: they deal with two distinct principals of organizations. New public management approaches introduce incentive and sanction systems of explicit contracts between social worker and employment agency. Concerning the interaction between social worker and service user, there is a dominance of particular, social and psychic incentive and sanction systems of the organization based on trust. The analytical instrument ‘dual-principal– agent model’ demonstrates that trust – as criterion of professional practice – offers a new approach for shaping recommendations on the institutional level. This article gives an analytical and theoretical foundation for economic-orientated institutional ethics in the discussion of professionalism.

Key Words: agency theory • ethics of profession • new public management • principal–agent theory • professionalism • social services • trust

Current Sociology, Vol. 54, No. 4, 663-678 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0011392106065096


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