In this exploratory study, several conditions are identified as facilitative to a mandate of accountability to the welfare service users premised on a social process of cooperative inquiry. Firstly, constructive pressure from an extraneous surveillance power is necessary to instigate the structural inclusion of the welfare service users, without which the prevalent power asymmetry between the welfare service users and the professional service providers cannot be easily rocked. Secondly, enhanced social encounter and sustained interaction between the welfare service users and the service providers is the basis for emergent trust and alliance facilitative to an eventual power sharing that a mandate of accountability to the welfare service users demands. Thirdly, an ideological allegiance to the liberatory orientation of social work professionalism is imperative to nurturing the service providers' political commitment to the course of partnership with the service-using principal that a mandate of accountability to them requires. Realization of the service providers' accountability to the welfare service users invariably lies in the dialectic interaction between managerialism and professionalism. / Meanwhile, the study identifies different manifestation of the user involvement rhetoric between service units serving the elderly and the disabled persons (the "frail" group) and those serving clienteles with psychosocial or moral deficiency (the "deviant" group). It is the contention of this thesis that the greater strength and wider scope of user involvement as featured in the institutional structure of service units in the "frail" group does not necessarily correspond to a state of power symmetry that allows authentic argumentation between the professional service providers and the welfare service users in their discursive encounter. Given the multifarious strategies enabling the service providers to exert control over the welfare service users, the service providers' attitude in their relationship with the welfare service users is crucial for effecting change in the prevailing power position of the welfare service users. Materialization of a mandate of accountability to the welfare service users is hence premised on the prevalence of a cultural code that can embrace a more egalitarian relationship with the welfare service users among the service providers. / The last decades have seen a wide-reaching quest for reforms in the Hong Kong public sector. Among the multifarious managerial changes imposed on the Hong Kong welfare sector, the Service Performance Monitoring System instigated in 1999 embraces the irrefutable rhetoric of accountability that subjugates welfare service units in Hong Kong to a renewed mandate of managerial control premised on performance measurement and the enhanced involvement of the welfare service users. It is this policy context that revitalizes the user participation ethos that the profession of social work has always been supporting. By the mixed methodology of survey and case study, the research on which this thesis is based endeavours to locate the structural properties of the commonly incepted user involvement mechanism among the Hong Kong welfare service units, and to discern the processual dynamics in the discursive space enabled by the structural inclusion of the welfare service users. This is meant to advance our understanding on the ways by which user involvement enables a mandate of accountability premised on a cooperative inquiry with the welfare service users. / The study identifies a generally limited strength and scope in the user involvement initiatives adopted by the welfare service units. The discursive encounter between the service-using principal and the service-providing agent was also fused with tension. The tension was manifested in the service providers' unease at the accountability discourse, which legitimized the authority of the welfare service users in the management structure of the service units. In a service environment where the managerial discourse and the professional discourse used to compete for dominance, both the managerialist and professional tenets were employed by the service-providing informants to confront the tension and neutralize the implied power of the welfare service users, however meager it was. Whilst structural inclusion of the service users is a necessary condition for tackling the management risk arising from necessary entrustment to the service-providing agent, this thesis contends that structural re-engineering by itself is insufficient to ensure the advancement of the service-using principal's influence in their accountability relationship with the professional service providers. / Leung Tse Fong, Terry. / "November 2005." / Adviser: Bong-ho Mok. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4336. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 301-315). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:cuhk.edu.hk/oai:cuhk-dr:cuhk_343740 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Contributors | Leung, Tse-fong., Chinese University of Hong Kong Graduate School. Division of Social Work. |
| Source Sets | The Chinese University of Hong Kong |
| Language | English, Chinese |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, theses |
| Format | electronic resource, microform, microfiche, 1 online resource (xv, 315 p.) |
| Coverage | China, Hong Kong, China, Hong Kong |
| Rights | Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) |
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