Svenska forskares framställning av New Public Management i socialt arbete : En kritisk diskursanalys av samtidens sociala arbete

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this study is to investigate how Swedish researchers portray a counter-discourse of New Public management in contemporary social work thru a Swedish context. The selection of empirical material is limited to Manifest: för ett socialt arbete i tiden which is an anthology with different research grants. The empirical material is limited to two chapters in the book; ”Det sociala arbetets kontrollmaskineri” written by Marcus Herz and ”Privatisering av individ- och familjeomsorgen” written by Marie Sallnäs and Stefan Wiklund. For analysis of the empirical material a critical discourse analysis will be applied which also is a part of social constructivist theory. When analysing Winther-Jørgensen and Phillips (2000) interpretation of Norman Faircloughs three-dimensional model will be applied. The goal with the critical analysis is to expose linguistic constructions that has been dominated by society for analysis. In this way liberation from incorporated images and power relationships can be received by challenging them. A counter-discourse occurs when different meanings try to take place in the same domain. This means that different values collide in the same domain and therefore they can be challenged.  NPM has a salience roll in social work but many researchers are questioning if it is the right way to go for the social work. The conclusions show that researchers highlight the consequences of the implementation of NPM and challenges the establishment by highlighting values they consider being elementary for the welfare system and social work. In this way a welfare discourse is portrayed as the counter-discourse against NPM.