Abstract:

Social work organizations under technological governance are increasingly administrative. Previous studies focused on the administrationalization of the overall management, but ignored the administrationalization of service management. The case study of three government-funded social work organizations in Shanghai aims to examine how social work organizations interact with the government to form a standard condition in the context of service outsource. The results show that social work organizations have demonstrated a strong trend of standardization, which is reflected in the convergence of management structures, the normalization of targeted purchase of services, and the technicalization of service provision. On the one hand, this has improved the efficiency of social work organizations to better meet the needs of the government. On the other hand, it has brought about challenges related with technical governance: structural inertia, administrative efficiency and multiple management, which affect the professional development of social work.

Key words: government’s purchase of services, government-funded social work organizations, standardization