Hester Paanakker

3.3 Shifting the Focus to a Different Type of Expertise Other than professional values, craftsmanship values express a different type of expertise – one that serves particularly well to reflect the experiential knowledge of street level professionals and the malleable nature of their service delivery. To call something a craft rather than a profession is to accept the importance of a different type of knowledge and way of acquiring expertise. Classic professionalism focuses on (the control of) good work by means of formal education, theoretical specialization, and top-down norm enforcement. By contrast, much of the specialized knowledge public administrators need is tacit, non-systematized, and versatile (Barnard, 1938; Polanyi, 2009; Rhodes, 2015). According to Rhodes, in many occupational settings, the work of the public administrator is better understood as a malleable art: a profession that is learned on the job, for a large part informally and through experiential knowledge (2015, p. 642). A good craftsman, Sennett argues, is always “judging while doing” (2008, p. 296): they “equally make and repair” and “in turning outward, they hold themselves to account and can also see what the work means to others” (2008, pp. 248-249). As such, craftsmanship offers a language through which to appreciate the complexities and uniqueness of the public profession: it “has no one best way” and, next to on the basis of formal knowledge, skills are often developed on the ground by “passing on practical beliefs and practices” (Rhodes, 2015, p. 642). It constitutes an emphasis on practical beliefs and practices rather than theoretical guidelines, and, through trial and error, on a continual quest to find contextualized and tailor-made “best ways” rather than on protocolled work (“muddling through” in the words of Lindblom (1959), or “artistic, intuitive processes” in the words of Schön (1983, p. 49)). This means we understand public craftsmanship to represent professional work that is versatile rather than fixed, building not just on theoretical (transfer of) knowledge in the formal sense, but – importantly – also on practical and experiential (transfer of) knowledge in the informal sense. In addition, this differing emphasis is particularly representative of the often-tangible nature of the work of professionals at the street level and brings us to the next point. 3.4 Shifting the Focus to Street Level and Hands On Work Distinct from public values, craftsmanship values have a different focal point and shift the focus to administrative practice. This serves particularly well to reflect street-level professionals and 70 Chapter 3