Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:44:52.512Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Category Game and its Impact on Street-Level Bureaucrats and Jobseekers: An Australian Case Study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2019

Siobhan O’Sullivan ,
Michael McGann  and
Mark Considine
Siobhan O’Sullivan
Affiliation:
School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales E-mail: [email protected]
Michael McGann
Affiliation:
School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne E-mail: [email protected]
Mark Considine
Affiliation:
University of Melbourne E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A key question concerning the marketisation of employment services is the interaction between performance management systems and frontline client-selection practices. While the internal sorting of clients for employability by agencies has received much attention, less is known about how performance management shapes official categorisation practices at the point of programme referral. Drawing on case studies of four Australian agencies, this study examines the ways in which frontline staff contest how jobseekers are officially classified by the benefit administration agency. With this assessment pivotal in determining payment levels and activity requirements, we find that reassessing jobseekers so they are moved to a more disadvantaged category, suspended, or removed from the system entirely have become major elements of casework. These category manoeuvres help to protect providers from adverse performance rankings. Yet, an additional consequence is that jobseekers are rendered fully or partially inactive, within the context of a system designed to activate.

Keywords

Welfare-to-workstreet level organisationsfrontline workersperformance managementmarketisation
Type
Themed Section: Rethinking Welfare-to-Work for the Long-Term Unemployed
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 2019 , pp. 631 - 645
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) (2017) Jobactive: Design and Monitoring, Canberra: Australian National Audit Office, https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/jobactive-design-and-monitoring [accessed 19.10.2018].Google Scholar
Brady, M. (2018) ‘Targeting single mothers? Dynamics of contracting Australian employment services and activation policies at the street level’, Journal of Social Policy, 27, 4, 827–845.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bredgaard, T. and Larsen, F. (2007) ‘Implementing public employment policy: what happens when non-public agencies take over?’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 27, 7/8, 287–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodkin, E. Z. (2011) ‘Policy work: street-level organisations under new managerialism’, JPART, 21, i253–77.Google Scholar
Brodkin, E. Z. (2015) ‘Street-level organisations and the “real world” of workfare: lessons from the US’, Social Work and Society, 13, 1, 1–16.Google Scholar
Brodkin, E. Z. (2017) ‘The ethnographic turn in political science: reflections on the state of the art’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 50, 131–4.Google Scholar
Carter, E. and Whitworth, A. (2015) ‘Creaming and parking in quasi-marketised welfare-to-work schemes: designed out of or designed into the UK Work Programme?’, Journal of Social Policy, 44, 2, 277–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caswell, D. and Høybye-Mortensen, M. (2015) ‘Responses from the frontline: how organisations and street-level bureaucrats deal with economic sanctions’, European Journal of Social Security, 1, 1, 31–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caswell, D. and Larsen, F. (2017) ‘Frontline work in Danish activation policies’, in van Berkel, R., Caswell, D., Kupka, P. and Larsen, F. (eds.), Frontline Delivery of Welfare-to-Work Policies in Europe, New York: Routledge, 163–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Considine, M. (2001) Enterprising States: The Public Management of Welfare-to-Work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Considine, M., Lewis, J. M., O’Sullivan, S. and Sol, E. (2015) Getting Welfare to Work: Street-Level Governance in Australia, the UK, and the Netherlands, New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2018) ‘The policymaker’s dilemma: the risks and benefits of a ‘black box’ approach to commissioning active labour market programmes’, Social Policy and Administration, 52, 1, 229–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Danneris, S. (2018) ‘Ready to work (yet)? Unemployment trajectories among vulnerable welfare recipients’, Qualitative Social Work, 17, 3, 355–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Department of Employment (2017) Guideline: period of Service, Suspensions and Exits, Canberra: Department of Employment https://docs.jobs.gov.au/documents/period-service-suspensions-and-exits-guideline [accessed 14.08.2018].Google Scholar
Department of Jobs and Small Business (DJSB) (2018a) Managing and Monitoring Mutual Obligation Requirements and Job Plan Guideline, Canberra: Department of Jobs and Small Business, https://docs.jobs.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/managing_and_monitoring_mutual_obligation_requirements_guideline_0.pdf [accessed 14.08.2018].Google Scholar
Department of Jobs and Small Business (DJSB) (2018b) The Next Generation of Employment Services: Discussion Paper, Canberra: Department of Jobs and Small Business.Google Scholar
Dias, J. J. and Maynard-Moody, S. (2006) ‘For-profit welfare: contracts, conflicts, and the performance paradox’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 17, 2, 189–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finn, D. (2010) ‘Outsourcing employment programmes: contract design and differential prices’, European Journal of Social Security, 12, 4, 289–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greer, I., Schulte, L. and Symon, G. (2018) ‘Creaming and parking in marketized employment services: an Anglo-German comparison’, Human Relations, 71, 11, 1427–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holden, C. (2003) ‘Decommodification and the workfare state’, Political Studies Review, 1, 303–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jantz, B., Klenk, T., Larsen, F. and Wiggan, J. (2018) ‘Marketization and varieties of accountability relationships in employment service’, Administration and Society, 50, 3, 321–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, J. D. (2018) ‘Evidence from the ‘Frontline’? An ethnographic problematisation of welfare-to-work administrator opinions’, Work, Employment and Society, 32, 1, 57–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marston, G. (2006) ‘Employment services in an age of e-government’, Information, Communication and Society, 9, 1, 83–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard-Moody, S. and Musheno, M. (2000) ‘State agent or citizen agent: two narratives of discretion’, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 10, 2, 329–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, C. and Marston, G. (2008) ‘Re-visiting the quasi-market in employment services: Australia’s Job Network’, Asia Pacific Journal of Public Administration, 30, 2, 101–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OECD (2012) Activating Jobseekers: How Australia Does it, Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.Google Scholar
Ramia, G. and Carney, T. (2010) ‘The Rudd government’s employment services agenda: is it post-NPM and why is that important?’, Australian Journal of Public Administration, 69, 3, 263–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rees, J., Whitworth, A. and Carter, E. (2015) ‘Support for all in the UK Work Programme? differential payments, same old problem’, in Considine, M. and O’Sullivan, S. (eds.), Contracting-out Welfare Services: Comparing National Policy Designs for Unemployment Assistance, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 109–28.Google Scholar
Rice, D. (2012) ‘Street-level bureaucrats and the welfare state: toward a micro-institutionalist theory of policy implementation’, Administration and Society, 45, 9, 1038–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, P. and Peccei, R. (2006) ‘The social construction of clients by service agents in reformed welfare administration’, Human Relations, 59, 12, 1633–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soss, J., Fording, R. C. and Schram, S. F. (2011) ‘The organization of discipline: from performance management to perversity and punishment’, J-Part, 21, Supplement 2, i203–32.Google Scholar
Struyven, L. (2014) ‘Varieties of market competition in public employment services-A comparison of the emergence and evolution of the new system in Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium’, Social Policy and Administration, 48, 2, 149–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Berkel, R. (2013) ‘Triple activation: introducing welfare-to-work into Dutch social assistance’, in Brodkin, E. Z. and Marston, G. (eds.), Work and the Welfare State: Street-Level Organisations and Workfare Policies, Copenhagen: DJOF Publishing, 87–102.Google Scholar
van Berkel, R. (2014) ‘Quasi-markets and the delivery of activation: a frontline perspective’, Social Policy and Administration, 48, 2, 188–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Berkel, R. (2017) ‘The street-level activation of the unemployed remote and very remote from the labour market’, in van Berkel, R., Caswell, D., Kupka, P. and Larsen, F. (eds.), Frontline Delivery of Welfare-to-Work Policies in Europe: Activating the Unemployed, New York: Routledge, 144–162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Berkel, R. and Knies, E. (2016) ‘Performance management, caseloads and the frontline provision of social services’, Social Policy and Administration, 50, 1, 59–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weeden, L. (2010) ‘Reflections on ethnographic work in political science’, Annual Review of Political Science, 13, 255–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar