The effects of managerialism exist not only in commercial sector but also in the
bureaucratic governmental sector and in the charitable nonprofit sector. In the trend of
thinking of managerialism, it not only influences national politics and ideology of
welfare, but also significantly affects health and medicine. This study aimed to explore
the effect of managerialism on medical social workers and how medical social workers
respond to managerialism. By intensity sampling and stratified purpose sampling, this
study conducted in-depth interviews in 11 cases with rich information, including seven
supervisors of social workers and four social workers. According to research findings,
the effects of managerialism on medical social workers are shown below: (1) Customer
first and discrimination of vulnerable groups negatively influenced the work and
missions of services. (2) Due to cost control, the professional efficacy and the well-
being of clients were limited. (3) Under the performance management, the beliefs and
ideology were not acclimated, and the excessive use of performance management led
to an obsession over this topic, destroyed professional autonomy and twisted the
professional meaning of social workers. (4) The use of management techniques led to
learning stress and the excessive use of these techniques tended to negatively affect
traditional services. As a result, the responses of medical social workers to the previous
effects of managerialism are below: (1) They avoided the taboos in hospitals, followed
the logic of medical management, learned the culture and even fought for the
supervisors’ recognition; (2) for the concern of successful development, medical social
workers must fight for resources, flexibly explained the effects, highlighted social
works and proposed professional suggestions. After the recognition of hospitals, they
seized the time to demonstrate the specialties of social workers. Finally, this study had
related discussions and proposed suggestions.