The delivery of public services by nonprofit and for-profit providers alters the nature of services and jobs, often in unintended and undesired ways. We argue that these effects depend on the degree to which the service is ‘marketized’, that is, subjected by the funder to price-based competition. Using case studies of British and German employment services, this article scrutinizes the link between funding practices and service quality. Of particular concern in marketized employment services is the problem of ‘creaming and parking’, in which providers select job-ready clients for services and neglect clients more distant from the labour market. We explore three questions. What are the mechanisms through which marketization produces creaming and parking? What are the differences between these mechanisms in commercial and non-commercial service providers? Which national institutions might serve as a buffer for the landscape of service provision facing price-based competition?
AndersonKBurkhauserRRaymondJ (1993) The effect of creaming on placement rates under the Job Training Partnership Act. Industrial & Labour Relations Review46(4): 613–624.
2.
BachSBordognaL (2011) Varieties of new public management or alternative models? The reform of public service employment relations in industrialized democracies. The International Journal of Human Resource Management22(11): 2281–2294.
3.
BainesD (2004) Pro-market, non-market: The dual nature of organisational change in social services delivery. Critical Social Policy24(1): 5–29.
4.
BernhardSKruppeT (2010) Vermittlungsgutscheine für Arbeitslose: Oft ausgegeben und selten eingelöst. Nuremburg: IAB.
5.
BodeI (2003) Flexible response in changing environments: The German third sector model in transition. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly32(2): 190–210.
6.
BredgaardTLarsenF (2008) Quasi-markets in employment policy: Do they deliver on promises?Social Policy and Society7(3): 341–352.
7.
BrodkinE (2007) Bureaucracy redux: Management reformism and the welfare state. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory17(1): 1–17.
8.
CarterEWhitworthA (2015) Creaming and parking in quasi-marketised welfare-to-work schemes: Designed out of or designed in to the UK work programme?Journal of Social Policy44(2): 277–296.
9.
CarterBDanfordAHowcroftDet al. (2011) ‘All they lack is a chain’: Lean and the new performance management in the British civil service. New Technology, Work and Employment26(2): 83–97.
10.
CrawfordEParryF (2010) Professionalising the Welfare to Work Industry: Developing a Framework for Action. London: Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion.
11.
ConsidineMLewisJM (2003) Bureaucracy, network, or enterprise? Comparing models of governance in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, and New Zealand. Public Administration Review63(2): 131–140.
12.
CunninghamI (2008) A race to the bottom? Exploring variations in employment conditions in the voluntary sector. Public Administration86(4): 1033–1053.
13.
CunninghamIHearneGJamesP (2013) Voluntary organisations and marketisation: A dynamic of employment degradation. Industrial Relations Journal44(2): 171–188.
14.
DaviesS (2008) Contracting out employment services to the third and private sectors: A critique. Critical Social Policy28(2): 136–164.
15.
De KoningJ (1993) Measuring the placement effects of two wage-subsidy schemes for the long-term unemployed. Empirical Economics18(3): 447–468.
DivayS (2008) Professionals of policies for fighting unemployment in France: The construction and de-construction of professionalism. European Societies10(4): 673–686.
18.
DoellgastV (2012) Disintegrating Democracy at Work. Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.
19.
EisenhardtM (1989) Building theories from case study research. Academy of Management Review14(4): 532–550.
20.
EsbenshadeJVidalMFascillaGOnoM (2016) Customer-driven management models for choiceless clientele? Business process reengineering in a Californian welfare agency. Work Employment and Society30(1): 77–96.
21.
FinnDJ (2015) Welfare to Work Devolution in England. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
22.
FosterDHoggettP (1999) Change in the benefits agency: Empowering the exhausted worker?Work, Employment and Society13(1): 19–39.
23.
FreudD (2007) Reducing Dependency, Increasing Opportunity: Options for the Future of Welfare to Work. London: DWP.
GreerI (2016) Welfare reform, precarity and the re-commodification of labour. Work, Employment and Society30(1): 162–173.
26.
GreerIDoellgastV (2017) Marketization, inequality, and institutional change: Toward a new framework for comparative employment relations. Journal of Industrial Relations59(2): 192–208.
27.
GreerIBreidahlKLarsenFKnuthM (2017) The Marketization of Employment Services: The Dilemmas of Europe’s Work-First Welfare State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
28.
GreerISchultenTBöhlkeN (2013) How does market making affect industrial relations? Evidence from eight German hospitals. British Journal of Industrial Relations51(2): 215–239.
29.
GrimshawDMiozzoM (2009) New human resource management practices in knowledge-intensive business services firms: The case of outsourcing with staff transfer. Human Relations62(10): 1521–1550.
30.
HallPSoskiceD (eds) (2001) Varieties of Capitalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
31.
HebsonGGrimshawDMarchingtonM (2003) PPPs and the changing public sector ethos: case-study evidence from the health and local authority sectors. Work, employment and society17(3): 481–501.
32.
HedströmPSwedbergR (1998) Social Mechanisms: An Analytical Approach to Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
33.
HermannCFleckerJ (2011) The liberalisation of public services: Company reactions and consequences for employment and working conditions. Economic and Industrial Democracy32(3): 523–544.
34.
HippLWarnerM (2008) Market forces for the unemployed? Training vouchers in Germany and the USA. Social Policy and Administration42(1): 77–101.
35.
JaehrlingK (2015) The state as a ‘socially responsible customer’? Public procurement between market-making and market-embedding. European Journal of Industrial Relations21(2): 149–164.
36.
JantzBKlenkTLarsenFWigganJ (2015) Marketization and varieties of accountability relationships in employment services: Comparing Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain. Administration & Society. Epub ahead of print 22April2015. DOI: 10.1177/0095399715581622.
37.
KrugGStephanG (2016) Private and public placement services for hard-to-place unemployed results from a randomized field experiment. ILR Review69(2): 471–500.
38.
Le GrandJ (2003) Motivation, Agency, and Public Policy: Of Knights and Knaves, Pawns and Queens. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
39.
LipskyM (2010) Street-level bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the individual in public service. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
40.
MarchingtonMGrimshawDRuberyJWillmottH (eds) (2005) Fragmenting Work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
41.
National Audit Office (NAO) (2014) The Work Programme. Report, 2July.
42.
PaugamS (1993) La société française et ses pauvres. Paris: Quadrige.
43.
RaginC (2000) Fuzzy-Set Social Science. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
44.
RanaldP (1999) Impacts on employees of the competitive tendering of employment services. In: TiecherJ (ed.) Public Sector Industrial Relations: Australian and International Perspectives. Melbourne: Monash University, 232–256.
45.
ReesJWhitworthACarterE (2014) Support for all in the UK Work Programme? Differential payments, same old problem. Social Policy and Administration48(2): 221–239.
46.
RosenthalPPecceiR (2006) The social construction of clients by service agents in reformed welfare administration. Human Relations59(12): 1633–1658.
47.
SchulteLUmneyCGreerIet al. (2017) Insertion as an alternative to workfare: active labour market schemes in the Parisian suburbs. Journal of European Social Policy. ePub ahead of print. DOI: 10.1177/0958928717739237.
48.
SolEWesterveldM (eds) (2005) Contractualism in employment services: a new form of welfare state governance. Dordrecht: Kluwer Law International.
49.
WagnerI (2015) Rule enactment in a pan-European labour market: Transnational posted work in the German construction sector. British Journal of Industrial Relations53(4): 692–710.
50.
WigganJ (2015) Varieties of marketisation in the UK: Examining divergence in activation markets between Great Britain and Northern Ireland 2008–2014. Policy Studies36(2): 1–18.
51.
YinR (1994) Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Beverly Hills, CA: SAGE.
