http://journals.cambridge.org Downloaded: 28 Mar 2012 IP address: 128.250.5.248 Jnl Soc. Pol. (2011), 40, 4, 811–833 C  Cambridge University Press 2011 doi:10.1017/S0047279411000213 Quasi-Markets and Service Delivery Flexibility Following a Decade of Employment Assistance Reform in Australia MARK CONSIDINE * , JENNY M. LEWIS ** and SIOBHAN O’SULLIVAN *** ∗ School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne email: m.considine@unimelb.edu.au ∗∗ School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne email: jmlewis@unimelb.edu.au ∗∗∗ School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne email: siobhano@unimelb.edu.au Abstract In 1998, we were witnessing major changes in frontline social service delivery across the OECD and this was theorised as the emergence of a post-Fordist welfare state. Changes in public management thinking, known as New Public Management (NPM), informed this shift, as did public choice theory. A 1998 study of Australia’s then partially privatised employment assistance sector provided an ideal place to test the impact of such changes upon actual service delivery. The study concluded that frontline staff behaviour did not meet all the expectations of a post-Fordist welfare state and NPM, although some signs of specialisation, flexibility and networking were certainly evident (Considine, 1999). Ten years on, in 2008, frontline staff working in Australia’s now fully privatised employment sector participated in a repeat study. These survey data showed convergent behaviour on the part of the different types of employment agencies and evidence that flexibility had decreased. In fact, in the ten years between the two studies there was a marked increase in the level of routinisation and standardisation on the frontline. This suggests that the sector did not achieve the enhanced levels of flexibility so often identified as a desirable outcome of reform. Rather, agencies adopted more conservative practices over time in response to more detailed external regulation and more exacting internal business methods. Introduction – early expectations of the post-Fordist welfare state A decade ago, there was a widely held view that the ‘world of large, hierarchically defined public organisations which provide their citizens with a set menu of standard, universal services, delivered by a career workforce, is nearing the end of its time of social and political dominance’ (Considine, 1999: 183–4). 1 In the late 1990s, a consensus had not yet developed concerning what would replace this traditional bureaucratic public service model (Williamson, 1975; Rogers and Larsen, 1984), but a number of likely features of the new system were beginning to emerge. Specifically, it was anticipated that ‘[o]rganisations will continue to be the primary locus of social and political decision making and play a central role in the