From pure to hybrid professionalism in post-NPM activation reform: The institutional work of frontline managers

ABSTRACT To enhance knowledge about how hybrid professionalism develops, we examine the strategies adopted by frontline managers in handling requirements of transformation from pure to hybrid professionalism imposed by post-New Public Management (NPM) activation reform. Drawing on a multiple case study in the Norwegian labour and welfare administration, we outline three managerial strategies for handling these requirements—commodification, protection, and hybridization—and the forms of institutional work by the managers they involve. We find (1) that the development of hybrid professionalism is an exceptional, more than a dominant strategy, (2) that it is contingent upon the professional background and the entrepreneurial leadership traits of frontline managers, and (3) that it involves the ability and capacity of frontline managers to engage directly with the areas where the tensions between the organizational and the professional demands are most vivid (e.g. the targets, objectives and methods of activation). This engagement enables managers to align the (pure) social work professionalism with the administrative and standardized modes of contemporary activation work, rather than the professionalism being challenged or alienated by them. Although the hybridization strategy may be demanding for the professionals, it seems to be a central condition for fully operationalizing post-NPM activation reforms.