Locked-in or Locked-out: Can a Public Services Market Really Change?

Abstract

Australia's welfare-to-work system has been subject to ongoing political contestation and policy reform since the s. In this paper we take a big picture look at the Australian system over time, re-visiting our earlier analysis of the impact of marketisation on flexibility at the frontline over the first ten years of the Australian market in employment services. That analysis demonstrated that marketisation had failed to deliver the service flexibility intended through contracting-out, and had instead produced market herding around a common set of standardised frontline practices. In the interim, there have been two further major redesigns of the Australian system at considerable expense to taxpayers. Re-introducing greater flexibility and service tailoring into the market has been a key aim of these reforms. Calling on evidence from an original, longitudinal survey of frontline employment service staff run in ,  and , this paper considers how the Australian market has evolved over its second decade. We find remarkable consistency over time and, indeed, evidence of deepening organisational convergence. We conclude that, once in motion, isomorphic pressures towards standardisation quickly get locked into quasi-market regimes; at least when these pressures occur in low-trust contracting environments.

Market stewardship of quasi‐markets by street level bureaucrats: The role of local area coordinators in the Australian personalisation system

“…Work on institutional change theory in public administration shows that the institutional norms and informal rules within roles can become intractable (Mahoney & Thelan, 2010). Considine, O'Sullivan, Mcgann, et al (2019) observed that subsequent reforms to employment services unsuccessfully attempted to address inflexibility by street level bureaucrats, caving to isomorphic pressures to return to previous inflexible working practices. The NDIS has been functioning nationally for just 2 years but soon the practices of local area coordinators may become fixed; shifting to a working culture of further support for participant's implementation and market shaping activities may prove challenging if action to return local area coordinators to their original role is not taken soon.…”

Contracting personalization by results: Comparing marketization reforms in the UK and Australia

“…Brodkin 2011; Jordan 2018). Relying on frontline workers' self‐reported experiences may be subject to some recall bias and the risk that respondents will over‐estimate their own agency as workers (see Considine et al 2019). Nevertheless, we do not consider this to be a major issue.…”

Management Reforms in Activation Programmes and Public Employment Services The Turkish Case

“…As stated, the main benefits would be an effective way of management, efficiency, consumer choice and cost effectiveness particularly through competition (Van Berke et al, 2012: 263;Bonvin, 2008: 372). Welfare markets in general and activation markets in particular are not conventional markets, they are mainly quasi markets (Considine et al, 2019;Van Berkel et al, 2012a;Considine et al 2011;Van Berkel and Borghi, 2008;Bredgaard and Larsen, 2007;Considine and Lewis, 2003). Bredgaard and Larsen (2007: 289) underline that "the principal idea is to create free market for employment services in which (primarily private) service providers bid in an open competition by public tendering.…”