Are policy tools and governance modes coupled? Analysing welfare-to-work reform at the frontline

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the link between policy tools and governance modes – the characteristic ways frontline staff are meta-governed. It asks: Are substantive policy tools coupled to procedural tools (governance modes) that can guide local service delivery agencies and the work of individuals delivering welfare services? The substantive policy tools in this case are those typically utilised to reform welfare-to-work services: contracting-out of services and competitive tendering, and the regulation of quasi-markets. These are hypothesised to flow through to procedural policy tools in the form of corporate and market incentives and regulatory (bureaucratic) methods that shape how work is done (governance modes), privileging certain practice orientations at the frontline. Policy makers seek to shape these meta-level governance modes because they should result in systemic change, based on a reconfiguration of policy actors and their interrelationships, for both service delivery agencies and the individuals working in them. We identified four ideal-type governance modes (bureaucratic, corporate, market and network) and tracked which of these were dominant in-practice at the frontline in Australia and the UK at two levels: office and personal, at four points in time (1998, 2008, 2012 and 2016). We found that the dominant mode of organisation at the office level was corporate, followed by bureaucratic in both nations. But the bureaucratic mode had grown in strength over time, particularly in Australia, and as a personal priority for staff, as re-regulation occurred. The results indicate a coupling between substantive policy tools and governance modes at the frontline of welfare-to-work.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy tools
• governance modes
• welfare-to-work
• frontline staff

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant (LP150100277).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jenny M Lewis

Jenny M Lewisis Professor of Public Policy at the University of Melbourne and is the President of the International Research Society for Public Management. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia, and an expert on policy making, policy design and public sector innovation. She is the author of six books, and more than 80 journal articles and book chapters.

Phuc Nguyen

Phuc Nguyen is a lecturer at La Trobe University, Australia. Phuc’s research interests include welfare state, especially the delivery of employment services; and supply chain sustainability. She has published three book chapters and several journal articles in Public Management Review, Journal of Social Policy and Administration, Australian Journal of Political Science, Third Sector Review, Australian Political Asia Pacific Management Review and Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.

Mark Considine

Mark Considine is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. His research areas include governance, comparative social policy, employment services, public sector reform, local development, and organizational sociology. He has produced six books and numerous journal articles and book chapters.