In 1998, we were witnessing major changes in frontline social service delivery across the OECD and this was theorised as the emergence of a post-Fordist welfare state. Changes in public management thinking, known as New Public Management (NPM), informed this shift, as did public choice theory. A 1998 study of Australia's then partially privatised employment assistance sector provided an ideal place to test the impact of such changes upon actual service delivery. The study concluded that frontline staff behaviour did not meet all the expectations of a post-Fordist welfare state and NPM, although some signs of specialisation, flexibility and networking were certainly evident (Considine, 1999). Ten years on, in 2008, frontline staff working in Australia's now fully privatised employment sector participated in a repeat study. These survey data showed convergent behaviour on the part of the different types of employment agencies and evidence that flexibility had decreased. In fact, in the ten years between the two studies there was a marked increase in the level of routinisation and standardisation on the frontline. This suggests that the sector did not achieve the enhanced levels of flexibility so often identified as a desirable outcome of reform. Rather, agencies adopted more conservative practices over time in response to more detailed external regulation and more exacting internal business methods.

In September 2009, the British Government launched a new employment assistance model called Flexible New Deal. It was soon replaced by Work Programme in 2011. Both prioritized what is often called a 'black box' approach to public employment assistance, whereby the government purchaser focuses predominantly on outcomes and does not seek to direct agency operations. Using a study of the orientations and strategies of frontline employment services staff in 2008 and 2012, we seek to enhance understanding of the impact of so-called 'black box' commissioning on key aspects of service delivery. Black box advocates propose that it is a hands-off approach that allows agencies to be innovative and to improve efficiency. These effects are thought to be due to improved local service quality and greater flexibility to tailor services to individual clients. Critics argue that this increased discretion facilitates under-servicing of some jobseekers and agency profiteering. These practices are commonly referred to as 'parking' and 'creaming'. In this UK study, we provide evidence of both positive and negative activities associated with black box commissioning. We find some small improvements in flexibility at the frontline, but little to no evidence of increased efficiency as measured by the reported rates of jobseekers moving into work. We also observe an increase in practices associated with creaming and parking. We conclude that improving efficiency and maximizing innovation are not guaranteed by black box commissioning, and that the aim of facilitating increased frontline flexibility, while also minimizing risk, persists as a major policy design tension.

In this article we consider what form a future supranational animal protection regime might take. We conclude that no such regime exists at present, although one is likely to develop over the next couple of decades, with two viable options already on the horizon. One model would see the role of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) extended, whereas the other would occur within the context of the United Nations (UN). The former would suit agricultural interests, whereas the latter would probably appeal to so-called new welfarists. However, neither is likely to satisfy animal rights advocates because both regimes assume animals can be legitimately traded and utilized as means to human ends.

Since the 1990s, the adoption of new public management (NPM) as a management philosophy has translated into multiple waves of reform in the employment services sector in Each wave has sought to improve the preceding policy. In this article, we examine changes implemented during the Rudd/Gillard Labor governments. Using government policy documents and survey data from frontline employment services staff, we compare JSA to JN against five benchmarks. Our data indicate that JSA has generated modest improvement. JSA is also a system with less emphasis on strong forms of sanctioning. Our combined data suggest that policy actors operating under NPM conditions are indeed able to influence specific aspects of frontline practice, but they must spend great effort to do so and must accept new imperfections as a consequence.

This article investigates strategic changes in the governance of not‐for‐profit (NFP) boards in response to Australia's fully contracted employment services system. Of interest are changes in board demography, behaviour, procedures and dynamics, with special attention to the impact of those changes on boards' identity as a representation of community interests. As Australia is in the vanguard of social service contracting, the Australian experience affords insight into the impact of contracting upon the identity of the NFP sector. We find that NFP directors operating in this quasi‐market have come to define board ‘professionalism’ as the main strategic move to accommodate the increasingly commercial and competitive nature of contracting. Boards have adopted a more business‐like view of how their agency should operate, changed their board's skill set and utilized strategic recruitment processes, including selecting new board members based on perceived skill deficiencies of the current board and paying board members for their service. NFP boards have also introduced more comprehensive induction, training and evaluation systems. These findings provide Australian policymakers with evidence of the cultural impact of service delivery reforms on NFP agencies. They also afford leaders of NFPs an opportunity to reflect on important changes in the governance of their organizations, including the potential for ‘mission drift’ and loss of local forms of legitimacy.

Buying and Selling the Poor ventures behind the scenes of the multibillion-dollar welfare-to-work system, offering new insights into how Australia responds to unemployment and disadvantage. As the authors tell the story of four local employment offices, they paint a vivid picture of a critically important social service which many people are aware of but which few properly understand. They also reveal the wider impacts that processes of marketisation and welfare reform have had on these frontline services over decades, and how the work of frontline staff and service providers has been transformed. Buying and Selling the Poor looks closely at how these services operate, why some succeed where others fail, and what can be learned from the stories of staff and clients who have navigated the system. Three decades into this market experiment, how well are we doing in supporting our most vulnerable citizens to get back to work?

At a time of fiscal restraint and reductions in the size of the public sector, governments in Australia are exploring new approaches to delivering public services. One model receiving attention is the prime provider approach. This is an approach where government contracts a lead or prime provider who in turn organizes and manages a group of sub‐contractors. In prime provider approaches, non‐government organizations take on a quasi‐government role and this brings a new complexity into the relationships between the various actors involved in developing and delivering public services. This article provides an overview of prime provider approaches and, drawing on the limited research to date, poses questions that we view as being critical to the current debate. The aim is to provoke further discussion on the potential impact of prime provider approaches.

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