CRUcial Times Issue 24 - Editorial

Jane Sherwin

In any organisation, Managers need to manage, and those who fund organisations need to know that money is wisely spent. One of the challenges for both groups is to find a management style and an organisational structure that allows the main activities of the organisation to be done, and to be done well. The demands of financial management, human resource management, information systems management, and pressures from funders along with industrial requirements, presents managers with a landscape littered with tasks that take up valuable time and thinking space, and results in endless paperwork and meetings.

It is not surprising that managers and funders try to deal with these demands through increased use of data collection, performance indicators, assessment criteria, and standardisation processes. These processes become increasingly complex and circular: regulations are developed to further standardise the way organisations do things; and policies are developed to further cement the expectations of staff and for directing them to do the right thing. As organisations grow in size, so do the formal processes.

In this context, Technocratic Managerialism, with its pseudo-scientific overtones, is very seductive. Generic, content-free managers are more likely to be ensnared by such management styles because they lack the knowledge or wisdom that would allow them to focus on the real business of the organisation. When an organisation devotes itself to procedures and processes, the power that is held within funding bodies and service systems becomes even further entrenched, and focus is diverted away from the well-being and true interests of the individual people whose needs should be served by the organisation.

It is crucial that those who manage or work in human services are able to recognise and name this form of management, and to be conscious about its inherent limitations. It is vitally important that managers have operating assumptions that will lead to processes whereby people with disabilities, and their families, are supported to find fulfilling lives, and are not further alienated from real life at the hands of rigid organisational structures and processes.

Problems that arise in the lives of people with disabilities and their families are not technical matters, requiring technocratic solutions; they are issues that exist in social, physical, moral, and political domains. The things that are helpful to addressing problems are those that allow people in organisations to engage in relationships with people, not transactions. Solutions are helpful when they recognise and foster authority that rests with individuals and families; provide scope for individuals and families to try solutions that grow out of their own situations; promote the well-being of individuals and families as the building-blocks of our communities; and further the capacity of people with disabilities to be engaged in ordinary life.