First published in 1998, this volume has been a significant contribution to current debates over the future of the public services. Professionalism has been and is a major feature of the British welfare state. Yet the political, social and economic context in which the profession emerged and flourished is changing rapidly. The professional ideal of disinterested expertise serving the public interest has lost much of its original gloss. Professional status and careers are threatened by major shifts in the structure of the welfare state which can be summed up as the decline of the big government bureaucratic model. Professions themselves face challenges to their special claims to expertise and public service from: politicians, senior managers, new social movements and pressure groups, technological change and not least from those citizens whom they aspire to serve. This volume asks how these new challenges are changing professions and how professionals themselves are adapting.

Recent changes in public service industrial relations have created major public policy problems. This book introduces the main issues and theoretical perspectives of industrial relations in local government and the public services more generally. The problems of industrial relations are illustrated by case studies of a Thatcherite Conservative and a left-wing Labour Council in Britain. The author pays particular attention to the problems of sustaining management authority roles in elected public agencies. The series is designed to provide up-to-date comprehensive and authorative analyses of public policy and politics in practice and focuses on contemporary Britain. It embraces not only local and central government activity, but also central-local relations, public-sector/private-sector relations and the role of non-governmental agencies.

First published in 1998, this volume has been a significant contribution to current debates over the future of the public services. Professionalism has been and is a major feature of the British welfare state. Yet the political, social and economic context in which the profession emerged and flourished is changing rapidly. The professional ideal of disinterested expertise serving the public interest has lost much of its original gloss. Professional status and careers are threatened by major shifts in the structure of the welfare state which can be summed up as the decline of the big government bureaucratic model. Professions themselves face challenges to their special claims to expertise and public service from: politicians, senior managers, new social movements and pressure groups, technological change and not least from those citizens whom they aspire to serve. This volume asks how these new challenges are changing professions and how professionals themselves are adapting.