| Summary: |
Professional work in Third Sector (welfare mixes) organizations gains particular significance and opportunity in face of the complexity of the social problems they are called to respond to and of the emergence of new forms of work organization within a society of knowledge, which make way to an accrued social reflexivity regarding the accomplishment of public interest goals. \nIn Portugal, the significant development of organizations devoted to social intervention has been manifest in the creation of local and regional associations open to personalization, participation, co-decision, and to the support of ill-favoured social groups, despite their sustainability being not consensual. These organizations are closer to citizens and therefore better positioned to find less standardised and more flexible processes and solutions to social problems, as well as non-bureaucratic forms to serve the users, being more sensitive to the latter's social and cultural heterogeneity. This situation has been leading to increased State funding addressing this sector, on the assumption that this will accrue quality and effectiveness in accomplishing public policies.\nHowever, such dependency of Third Sector organizations towards the State is sometimes viewed as an attempt to liberate the latter from its responsibility regarding the quality and universality of social services, which is not alien to current funding problems due to structural unemployment, demographic trends, and the competitiveness of global economy. The response to such problems has been found in new-liberal policies with the consequent outsourcing of public services involving the Third Sector and the erosion of the symbolic capital of professional work linked to a growing precariousness of work contracts.\nTherefore, professional work in Third Sector organizations tends to develop through project activities, with the imposition of partnerships with the public sector and in the framework of social and symbolic d  |
Summary
Professional work in Third Sector (welfare mixes) organizations gains particular significance and opportunity in face of the complexity of the social problems they are called to respond to and of the emergence of new forms of work organization within a society of knowledge, which make way to an accrued social reflexivity regarding the accomplishment of public interest goals. \nIn Portugal, the significant development of organizations devoted to social intervention has been manifest in the creation of local and regional associations open to personalization, participation, co-decision, and to the support of ill-favoured social groups, despite their sustainability being not consensual. These organizations are closer to citizens and therefore better positioned to find less standardised and more flexible processes and solutions to social problems, as well as non-bureaucratic forms to serve the users, being more sensitive to the latter's social and cultural heterogeneity. This situation has been leading to increased State funding addressing this sector, on the assumption that this will accrue quality and effectiveness in accomplishing public policies.\nHowever, such dependency of Third Sector organizations towards the State is sometimes viewed as an attempt to liberate the latter from its responsibility regarding the quality and universality of social services, which is not alien to current funding problems due to structural unemployment, demographic trends, and the competitiveness of global economy. The response to such problems has been found in new-liberal policies with the consequent outsourcing of public services involving the Third Sector and the erosion of the symbolic capital of professional work linked to a growing precariousness of work contracts.\nTherefore, professional work in Third Sector organizations tends to develop through project activities, with the imposition of partnerships with the public sector and in the framework of social and symbolic de-regulation processes of social institutions. These conditions imply that professionals know how to deal with high levels of uncertainty regarding the diagnosis of the problems and the effects of social interventions. Such professionals, with college and university degrees and with a polyvalent profile - based on Social Sciences and Humanities - and linked to new professional areas, mobilize knowledge and value systems subject to a distant public control regarding the effectiveness of the services provided. In most cases, what is at stake is hired professional work, often assuming the form of paid-for service, which refers (to different extents, according to specific professions) to activities and competencies with a reflexive character: a reflexive-discursive activity of implementation of public policy apparatuses and a reflexive-practical activity of "problem-solving" embedded in specific situations involving the users. \nThe development of these two reflexive dimensions of professional work requires work forms - and consequently, data-gathering forms -, which stimulate the explanation and formalization of practical-experiential conscientiousness and the critical ability to re-contextualize the general principles and values of public policies in social interaction. \nWithin this context, we propose to develop an ethnographic strategy of data-gathering and analysis regarding the professional knowledge and reflexivity that highlight the subjective appropriation and intelligibility of work in social interaction by and to the professional him/herself. This will be accomplished on the basis of a detailed self-description of the latter's activity and on a self-reflexion regarding aspects of his/her activity observed by the researcher. It will be also important to gather data in order to understand Third Sector's social-organizational conditions that may facilitate or inhibit (dis)continuities between reflexive-discursive competencies and reflexive-practical ones, since it is known that both obey to different epistemologies - therefore, involving diverse forms of mobilizing knowledge. For this reason, one kind of reflexivity does not necessarily entail the other one's development. For this purpose, we will conduct inquiries on the power and autonomy the professionals have in the symbolic, technical, and political plans, within their work contexts, which allow them to develop their knowledge, and consequently their reflexive competencies.\nFiner knowledge on how competencies, knowledge, and autonomies can be equated in professional work will bring precious contributions to high education institutions, allowing these to design better curricular plans and strategies in support of the degrees professional work relies on. |