Professionalism, Payment by Results and the Probation Service: A Qualitative Study of the Impact of Marketisation on Professional Autonomy

Matt Tidmarsh

Work, Employment & Society, 2022, vol. 36, issue 6, 1118-1138

Abstract: This article utilises Foucauldian understandings of the sociology of the professions to explore how marketising reforms to probation services in England and Wales, and the implementation of a ‘Payment by Results’ (PbR) mechanism in particular, have impacted professional autonomy. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a probation office within a privately owned Community Rehabilitation Company, it argues that an inability to control the socio-economic organisation of probation work has rendered the service susceptible to challenges to autonomy over technique. PbR was proffered as a means to restore practitioner discretion; however, the article demonstrates that probation staff have been compelled to economise their autonomy, adapting their conduct to conform to market-related forms of accountability. In this sense, it presents the Transforming Rehabilitation reforms to probation as a case study of the impact of marketisation on the autonomy of practitioners working within a public sector profession.

Keywords: autonomy; Payment by Results; probation; professionalism; transforming rehabilitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:36:y:2022:i:6:p:1118-1138

DOI: 10.1177/09500170211003825

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