this article summarizes the debate between the managerialism and the professionalism in contemporary social work in western welfare states from the late 1970’s，accompanying with the rising of neo-liberalism and neo-conservativism. It was pointed out that the focus of the debate was not only on the value，knowledge and skills of human service profession，but also on the power，status and interests in human service profession. From the perspective of post-structuralism，this debate was about hegemony；we should adopt an open，diverse and situational attitude to construct new directions of development of social work.