It is a privilege to have the opportunity to read and reflect on the thoughtful and sometimes challenging responses to the opening essay in this book. In these short concluding comments I will pick up on just a few of the valuable criticisms, comments and questions raised.

International perspectives

One of the interesting features of the responses is that the authors bring perspectives from a range of countries – elaborating on the impact of tendencies towards the new public management (NPM) across different continents. Their accounts suggest that the broad trends are global, although the implications play out differently depending on national and cultural contexts. Ito, for example, offers an analysis of the position of social work in Japan using the introduction of care management as an illustration of the imperative towards cost-cutting and the framing of service users as ‘good (budget-conscious) consumers’. Bozalek challenges the suggestion that long codes of ethics and practice are confined to countries in the global North, citing the example of the 67-page code of practice for South African social services professions. Based on her research with Canadian social workers, Weinberg stresses the importance of bringing in the voices of marginalised people, including status Aboriginal social workers, whose perspectives are often unrepresented in the prevailing discourse of social work ethics. Reisch usefully elaborates the ascendency of the neoliberal paradigm in the US, arguing that market values have become institutionalised in all aspects of life and that there is a role for social work in developing a counter-discourse; while Reamer offers an important account of the historical development of thinking and practice around ethics in social work which, while not specifically located, clearly reflects the dominant Anglo-American experience.

Turning to the UK context, Cowden elaborates further the profound implications of NPM for social work ethics, the role of the New Labour government in developing more punitive and controlling conceptions of welfare and the dangers posed by the colonisation of the progressive language of social work by neoliberal discourse. Beckett, by contrast, draws upon his experience of working as a social worker in the UK to assert some of the benefits of managerialism for ethical practice in social work.