RESEARCH GROUPS

The permanent study group Welfare State Governance & Professionalism is dedicated to analysis of welfare state reform and of transitions in welfare state arrangements – with particular attention to health care, welfare and education –, as well as analysis of the accompanying restructuring of such professional services. The aim is to provide an intellectual platform for scholars of public administration, public management, organization research, social policy, sociology of professions, health care management and educational sciences, to work together to describe, to explain and to study the impact of the recent restructuring of European welfare states for professional services and the quality of the services they render.

The objectives of the Study Group are to:

• To understand which welfare state reforms have been adopted in European countries in recent years and, it is hoped, compare them with trends in non-European countries;
• To investigate the impact of societal changes on welfare policies and services and how these are adapting to new social needs;
• To analyse the critical issue of reform processes, in particular with regard to the relationship between theories, policies, policy design, decision making and implementation processes;
• To study the implications of reform for professional services, professionalism and professional action, within changing administrative and organizational settings;
• To relate reforms to the quality of services rendered, in order to understand whether and how welfare state reforms are ‘improving’ services;
• To explore the evolution of concepts such as societal value when applied to welfare polices and services;
• To elaborate new conceptual frameworks that should be interdisciplinary and to propose policy statements and coherent implementation strategies, relating processes to outcomes.