The moral economy of practical reasoning: developing a research agenda

Social work is under sustained scrutiny regarding the quality of decision-making. Our understanding of the processes through which practitioners make judgments will be enhanced by the incorporation of the role that ethics... [ view full abstract ]

Social work is under sustained scrutiny regarding the quality of decision-making. Our understanding of the processes through which practitioners make judgments will be enhanced by the incorporation of the role that ethics plays in decision-making. However, there is also a risk that the ethical dimension of decision-making can be confused with moralizing. Although there has been significant work is social work regarding the role of values and ethics in practice, this work has tended to idealise morality setting-up external standards by which practice is judged. We will argue that while external standards have a role to play these standards need to be consideration alongside the ethical principles and concerns that permeate the culture of practice. Furthermore, ethical principles in practice need to be understood as more than simply seeking to operationalise ideal standards. They also reflect critical engagement with ethical issues in practice and can challenge formal statements of values.

We argue that understanding practitioner decision-making is enhanced by an explicit research focus on the moral economy of practical reasoning. In this paper we will explain why this is the case - what we mean by 'moral economy', its potential utility in social work and its relation to professional discretion, judgments and decision-making. Although decision making is a practical task, it is also an analytic one, and we will specify how our understanding of the intersections between thoughts, feelings and actions can be enhanced by the research agenda we are developing. This is a resolutely empirical agenda but draws upon theory and literature that is rarely utilized in social work. Via direct engagement with the work of Hume, Wittgenstein, Oakeshott and Williams this agenda will enable us to bridge the worlds of morality, judgement and action, in ways that - we hope - will have practical significance for social work.