016 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb in bringing together the capacity for theoretical and practical action makes possible a hermeneutic or interpretive praxis best appraised in dialogue with fellow-practitioners and clients. With a social work remit increasingly routinized by accountability, quality control and risk management there is an emphasis on regulation and duties. This has roduced a culture of following approved or typical processes resulting in defensive forms of social work wholly uncongenial to the development of human qualities likely to promote social workers'engagement in critique and revision of what counts as best practice. In sum, our core proposition is that social work practice and education, to fit an unpredictable, non-linear world, should develop means by which professionals nur- ture the virtues. This would reflexively enhance social work itself In this article we will explore the potential of virtue ethics for social work. Rather than fit elements of a virtue ethics literature to aspects of social work practice, we propose to look at the place of social work within a framework of virtue ethics. B this we wish to remind the professional that they play a role in the production and reproduction of the public sphere and have powers to affect the structure of social relations contained therein. However, the notion of being professional carries ideas of closure, competency and control within the relatively determinate universe of a legal-rational administrative or economic systems. The literature on complexity which recognizes the fuid nature of social and institutional relations seems not yet to have been absorbed by social work. If we start from a sceptical thesis that social work interactions and their results are often patterned but not highly predictable--what the complexity literature calls deterministic chaos'(Hayek, 1967; Eve et al., 1997)-then we may have to consider moral action under conditions of uncertainty. However, if we could predict the results of our actions then, under Kantian imperatives or utilitarian calculative reason, we would know what to do morally. These two ethical paradigms prevailing in the social work literature in part hold sway because they fit snugly into--indeed mirror--social work's need to be efficient in terms of procedures and outcomes Such elective affinities entail a moral narrative within the descriptive terms of social work rather than opening up an opportunity for a prescriptive moral ground outside of social work to which social work may have to adapt We wish to argue that social work should recognize that moral agents are constituted by a play of forces which shape the capacity for good (or bad) dement and action. The identity of the moral individual is therefore disposi tional rather than functional, and a result of patterns of experience and under- standing broader than those which may be derived from the ethical dogmas already established in social work. Under these terms any homeostatic view of the social work professional and his environment may be questioned. We try to how that the kind of moral agent best fitted to social work under fluid conditions of a complex social system is that offered by virtue ethics which places emphasis upon judgement, experience, understanding, reflection and disposition. All of this adds up to what we might call the hermeneutic worker--the worker acting within a reflexive-interpretive process of self and other(Gadamer, 1981, pp. 69-139 312-24)1016 Graham McBeath and Stephen A. Webb in bringing together the capacity for theoretical and practical action makes possible a hermeneutic or interpretive praxis best appraised in dialogue with fellow-practitioners and clients. With a social work remit increasingly routinized by accountability, quality control and risk management there is an emphasis on regulation and duties. This has produced a culture of following approved or typical processes resulting in defensive forms of social work wholly uncongenial to the development of human qualities likely to promote social workers’ engagement in critique and revision of what counts as best practice. In sum, our core proposition is that social work practice and education, to fit an unpredictable, non-linear world, should develop means by which professionals nur￾ture the virtues. This would reflexively enhance social work itself. In this article we will explore the potential of virtue ethics for social work. Rather than fit elements of a virtue ethics literature to aspects of social work practice, we propose to look at the place of social work within a framework of virtue ethics. By this we wish to remind the professional that they play a role in the production and reproduction of the public sphere and have powers to affect the structure of social relations contained therein. However, the notion of being professional carries ideas of closure, competency and control within the relatively determinate universe of a legal-rational administrative or economic systems. The literature on complexity which recognizes the fluid nature of social and institutional relations seems not yet to have been absorbed by social work. If we start froma sceptical thesis that social work interactions and their results are often patterned but not highly predictable—what the complexity literature calls ‘deterministic chaos’ (Hayek, 1967; Eve et al., 1997)—then we may have to consider moral action under conditions of uncertainty. However, if we could predict the results of our actions then, under Kantian imperatives or utilitarian calculative reason, we would know what to do morally. These two ethical paradigms prevailing in the social work literature in part hold sway because they fit snugly into—indeed mirror—social work’s need to be efficient in terms of procedures and outcomes. Such elective affinities entail a moral narrative within the descriptive terms of social work rather than opening up an opportunity for a prescriptive moral ground outside of social work to which social work may have to adapt. We wish to argue that social work should recognize that moral agents are constituted by a play of forces which shape the capacity for good (or bad) judgement and action. The identity of the moral individual is therefore disposi￾tional rather than functional, and a result of patterns of experience and under￾standing broader than those which may be derived from the ethical dogmas already established in social work. Under these terms any homeostatic view of the social work professional and his environment may be questioned. We try to show that the kind of moral agent best fitted to social work under fluid conditions of a complex social system is that offered by virtue ethics which places emphasis upon judgement, experience, understanding, reflection and disposition. All of this adds up to what we might call the hermeneutic worker—the worker acting within a reflexive-interpretive process of self and other (Gadamer, 1981, pp. 69–139; 1989, pp. 312–24)