In recent years welfare services in Western Europe have been criticized for poor coordination. In response, 'seamlessness' has emerged as a vision for public administration with 'one-stop shops' viewed as means to reach this. This article conceptualizes the one-stop shop and presents a three country case study to examine its drivers and its adaptation. In all countries the reforms meant mergers driven by hopes for a single entrance to services as well as proximity to citizens. However, the analysis of task portfolios, participant structure, instruments and autonomy reveal important variations in the adaptations. The specific configurations of one-stop shops that emerged were partially a product of compromises and negotiations influenced by the political and performance priorities of central government. The classical trade-off between specialization and coordination persists, but by offering users ICT-based services one can to some extent maintain specialization behind the frontline and still provide services that are coordinated from a user perspective.

This article addresses one of the most comprehensive structural reforms in recent Norwegian administrative history: a merger of the employment and national insurance administrations, combined with more formal collaboration with the local government social services administration. The reform can be seen as a ' whole-of-government' initiative intended to increase the cocoordinative capacity of government to address `wicked problems' cutting across existing policy areas and government levels in a multi-level governance system. This article examines the following questions: First, what characterizes the organizational thinking related to this reform? Second, how can we understand the reform process in terms of a transformative perspective combining instrumental, cultural and environmental features? Third, what are the potential effects and implications of the new structure for political control and institutional autonomy, for relations between central and local administrations, and for the main goals stated? The theory base for the analyses is a transformative approach.

No abstract

This article addresses how to assess public‐sector reforms using a reform in the Norwegian welfare administration as a case study. This reform represents a complex hybrid organizational form and a challenging combination of political control and local autonomy. We examine first how the reform has addressed its three main goals. These were to get people off welfare and back into work, to bring about more service‐orientation, and to increase efficiency. We also address the side‐effects of the reform by describing operational effects, process effects and system effects. Second, we examine how effects can be understood from an instrumental, cultural, and environmental perspective. A main finding is that context is significant for effects, and that it has so far proven difficult to discern clear overall effects concerning the main goals of the reforms and their side‐effects.

No abstract