Technology, social services and organizational innovation or how great expectations in London and Cardiff are dashed in Lowestoft and Cymtyrch

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate important aspects of the policy implementation process in UK welfare organizations. We draw on two evaluations in which we were each involved — those of the Integrated Children's System and the Children's Fund. Our interpretive frameworks share a concern to foreground the significance of the local, informal, and ground level, but do so in ways that acknowledge the encompassing governmental and policy contexts. We illustrate and assess the significance of multiple policy aspirations, the significance of local implementation contexts, the diverse ways in which practitioners gain and subsequently develop knowledge of how policy works, and how such knowledge moves about in organizations. We indicate the kinds of expertise that social service workers bring to and achieve as actors within policy innovations, and how they may manage and in some cases seek to control knowledge shifts between providers and users of services. We infer the inadequacy of conventional top-down models of implementing policy innovations.

Keywords:

• policy innovation
• organizational innovation
• technology
• knowledge work
• networks
• social work

Acknowledgements

The evaluation projects drawn on in this paper were the result of team work. We acknowledge our colleagues' formative role in making it possible for us to envisage this article: all members of the National Evaluation of the Children's Fund team, Margaret Bell, Ian Sinclair, Jackie Rafferty, Paul Dyson, Jasmine Clayden and all ICS team members.

Notes

¹ We have stolen the essence of the subtitle of Pressman and Wildavsky's book (1973) Implementation — How Great Expectations in Washington are Dashed in Oakland. The studies of innovation in this article were the responsibility of London and of devolved government in Wales. Lowestoft and Cymtyrch are small towns in England and Wales.

² There was not a nationally supplied ICS system but a number of systems being implemented, ranging from home grown to commercial suppliers, through locally agreed business solutions.

³ This statement was taken from the UK government website at: http://www.everychildmatters.gov.uk/strategy/childrensfund/, accessed 17 July 2008.

⁴ For a full account of the methodology see Bell et al. (2007). For some of the main findings see Shaw et al. (2009) and Mitchell and Sloper (2008).

⁵ There are significant debates among sociologists as to whether core group expertise is more than a social construction (cf. Collins & Evans, 2002).

⁶ Shaw and Clayden (forthcoming) deal in detail with the relationship between technology and professional knowledge and practice within the ICS.

⁷ A significant area that we do not pursue in this paper follows from the frequency with which more extensive policy innovations are associated with external evaluations. Knowledge about the process of evaluation will be disseminated locally in ways that shape implementation of innovations.