Enterprise, hybrid professionalism and the public sector

The public sector is highly dependent upon professions, professionals and professional work. Medical doctors, nurses, police, public persecutors, judges, teachers, social workers – they all provide essential public service, which implies treating individual cases in the light of public objectives and formalised policy programmes. In the ‘era of enterprise’ public professionals have been immersed – many would say ‘captured’ – by neo-liberal regimes, managerial ideologies and well-organised sets of instruments that belong to the so-called ‘New Public Management’. Many of the authors who have discussed conflicts have examined coping responses, and many other authors investigate how professionals actually deal with pressures. Professional and organisational/market/entrepreneurial actions should remain separate, and organisational/entrepreneurial action should be reduced as much as possible in the case of services like health care, welfare, safety and education. Professionals and other staff members work together in order to realise sound case treatment that is case treatment that is valuable, timely, efficient and satisfactory.