This paper began by referring to assumptions of conflict. It seems inevitable and beneficial that two sets of values should run through organization. Conflict between control and dynamism, anxiety and uncertainty, constraint and freedom, relates to the sort of work that any organization has to perform – someone has to make the running while others have to count the cost. Such conflicts are similar to general human ambivalence and form part of the dynamics of change as well as of control. But the balance to be struck between development and control is a matter of choice, which can be reinforced by structural and training patterns. This does not dispose of the issue as to whether the civil service in fact does obstruct change. This essay has argued that there are concepts relating to those values that are particularly important to public organizations. But it is virtually impossible to argue, as some have done, as to whether our present breed of administrators, are friendly or inimical to change. Nor does it answer the question of where and how social policy values are formed.

In summary, my argument has been as follows:

(a) social policy values can be classified in several different ways. A classification used here is a distinction between basic values or ‘oughts’ and concepts concerned with the ‘hows’ or with the instruments and institutions with which values are pursued. There are reciprocal relationships between these concepts but they are usefully analysed as separate relata;

(b) the values of central government civil servants and ministers will tend to be instrumental in form, though not necessarily in conflict with social policy-values, because they control complex organizations in which non-operational abstractions have to be made over the whole range of public policies;

(c) policy formulation is becoming more sophisticated, but the functions of government concerned with development and value analysis are not adequately structured or legitimated. As a result disciplined enquiry, much of which is financed by government, has inadequate impact because there is no overriding change model in which training has a part.

In an earlier article, the writer discussed the general background of social security and social welfare in Hong Kong; and went on to consider in particular what might usefully be learnt from the public assistance scheme as it has developed in Hong Kong. This article considers the other areas of social security in Hong Kong. It also touches on management control in social security.

During the last six years Britain has had a boom in priority area policies: educational priority areas, community development and community action projects, the urban programme, the Department of the Environment's six cities projects, the planners’ comprehensive development areas and general improvement areas, neighbourhood councils and (most recently) the Home Office Deprivation Unit. These and other initiatives (repeatedly concerned with ‘areas’, ‘communities’, ‘neighbourhoods’ and ‘urban’ problems) have been the talk of all concerned with social policies.

One in six of the population is an old-age pensioner and everyone has the prospect of becoming one in their time. It is therefore unsurprising that pensions have been a subject of much political debate. There has, however, been little investigation of what people think about pensions. Politicians have tended to declare that pensions are too low but have in practice been constrained in raising them by their conception of the willingness, or unwillingness, of the working population to pay for higher pensions.