Quasi‐markets and the Delivery of Activation – A Frontline Perspective

Abstract

This article analyzes the delivery of activation or welfare‐to‐work programmes and services in the context of quasi‐market service provision. It adopts a frontline perspective, looking in particular into two issues often discussed in the literature on quasi‐markets: risk selection in provider agencies and the administrative costs and burden related to monitoring provider agencies and agents. Data from a Dutch study of frontline workers in purchaser and provider agencies is presented to analyze frontline practices of risk selection and monitoring. The article concludes that interpreting provider behaviour in terms of risk selection may not be as straightforward as it seems, and that the widespread occurrence of risk selection processes throughout service provision chains makes it rather difficult to attribute risk selection unequivocally to rational provider behaviour. The monitoring process is experienced as an administrative burden, especially by workers in provider agencies, but it also has elements which workers consider as making a positive contribution to service provision processes in circumstances where actions of purchasers and providers need to be coordinated. This is partly related to the double function of monitoring in the context of activation policies in quasi‐market contexts: monitoring provider behaviour as well as monitoring client behaviour.

Employer engagement in active labour market programmes: The role of boundary spanners

“…Across the different SLOs, employer engagement staff attempted to engage employers across different geographical boundaries (local, regional and national) (Ernst and Chrobot-Mason 2011) but the spectrum of services offered was consistent across the sample. A distinction could be made between services that encouraged employers to engage as 'clients' and those that fostered their engagement as 'co-producers' (van der Aa and van Berkel 2014).…”

“…For example, street-level studies of ALMPs have focused on the interactions between frontline advisers and their unemployed clients (stergaard Møller and Stone 2013;Ulmestig and Marston 2015). In terms of quasi-marketization, van Berkel (2014) has highlighted the 'double' impact of governmental monitoring of performance on both provider and client behaviour. Fuertes and Lindsay (2016) have examined the contradiction between 'personalization' (assumed to be a by-product of quasi-marketization) and the paradoxical standardization of frontline practice.…”

“…Based on a study in the Netherlands, van der Aa and van Berkel (2014) have argued that SLOs can appeal to employers as 'clients' or as 'co-producers'. In the former case, SLOs operate as 'full service companies', akin to high-street recruitment agencies, and employers' satisfaction with ALMPs depends on the degree to which their demands are met (van der Aa and van Berkel 2014, pp.…”

Activation Reform and Inter‐Agency Co‐operation – Local Consequences of Mixed Modes of Governance in Sweden

“…; Johansson and Hvinden ). Increasingly, however, research attention is turned to the importance of local actors both in the formation and implementation of activation policies (Künzel ; Van Berkel ; Lindsay et al . ; Bredgaard and Larsen ; Finn ).…”

Effects of individualised follow‐up on activation programme participants' self‐sufficiency: A cluster‐randomised study

“…Autonomy, choice and agency are important attributes for this discourse (Betzelt et al, 2011;Ferguson, 2012). The other discourse is related to NPM developments, which see individualised activation as a response to neo-liberal policy tendencies and 'third-way' politics, with their focus on consumerism, efficiency, accountability and risk assessments (van Berkel, 2014;van Berkel & Valkenburg, 2007;Howard, 2012;Valkenburg, 2007). The market logic of the NPM discourse also includes processes of decentralisation and deregulation, where activation policies are organised by local service providers and service users are interpreted as consumers of these services (van Berkel & van Der Aa, 2012).…”