Conditionality and the Financing of Employment Services – Implications for the Social Divisions of Work and Welfare

Marketization and Varieties of Accountability Relationships in Employment Services: Comparing Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain

“…There is growing evidence that economically inactive clients and the least job ready are parked by providers due to a contracting process that encourages providers to underbid and a payment model that provides opportunities to invest mainly in the job ready Auditor General, 2012, 2014;Shutes & Taylor, 2014) So far, no public re-regulation has occurred as policymakers are content to allow market accountability instruments to operate and this has taken a variety of forms. First, following consistent poor performance, in 2014, the ministry required the lowest performing quarter of providers to develop a 6-month improvement plan (DWP, 2014a).…”

Activation and Active Ageing? Mature-Age Jobseekers' Experience of Employment Services

“…While there can be no doubt that contracting-out has resulted ‘in a fundamentally different employment services system’ (Bredgaard and Larsen, 2007: 345), the responsiveness of a quasi-market approach to the needs of long-term and more disadvantaged jobseekers is much disputed. A particular source of controversy is the role played by the use of outcome-based payment models in the provision of support to those who experience the most disadvantage in the labour market (Finn, 2010; Shutes and Taylor, 2014; van Berkel and Borghi, 2008).…”

“…The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has called for more extensive job-search requirements for older jobseekers ‘as part of a mutual obligations strategy’ in response to the increasing rate of mature-age unemployment in OECD countries, citing Australia's Active Participation Model as an innovative approach (2006: 124, 28). This reflects a broader turn ‘towards activation’ (Finn, 2010; Larsen and Wright, 2014: 455) over recent decades, as rights to welfare have increasingly become conditional ‘on the basis of individual responsibility to sell one's labour through the market’ (Shutes and Taylor, 2014: 204). Australia has often been at the forefront of this turn towards active rather than so-called passive welfare measures, introducing compulsory registration with employment services and mandatory reporting of job-seeking efforts for social security claimants in the late 1980s (Deeming, 2016).…”

Third Sector Experiences of Work Programme Delivery

“…More generally questions have been raised about the potential homogenisation of public services whereby market systems, which pay providers on achieving outcomes, may limit the mix of provision in terms of sector, size, locality and approach (Shutes and Taylor, 2014). Research, comparing experiences from the Netherlands, Australia and Denmark, finds that there is a tendency for concentration among fewer larger providers in quasi-market models over time (Bredgaard and Larsen, 2008).…”

“…High transaction costs in market creation, tendering and monitoring (Bredgaard and Larsen, 2008) could also arguably favour organisations with greater resources. Providers may be reluctant to take risks, thus avoiding delivering services with a probability of low outcomes, and services not specified in contracts may be withdrawn (Struyven and Steurs, 2005; Bredgaard and Larsen, 2008; Shutes and Taylor, 2014).…”