Placement Advisors as Innovators

  • AbstractEmployees of the public employment services (PES) are street-level bureaucrats who shape activation policy on the ground. This paper examines how PES staff use enhanced discretion in an innovation project carried out by the German Federal Employment Agency. Applying a bottom-up perspective, we reconstruct PES employees’ logic of action and the dilemmas they face in improving counselling and placement services. According to our findings, placement staff use enhanced discretion to promote more individualised support and an adequate matching of jobseekers and employers. The use of discretion is framed by organisational norms and reward mechanisms and by the current labour market situation. Our analyses are based on qualitative interviews and group discussions with placement staff.

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Metadaten
Author:Carolin FreierORCiD, Monika SenghaasORCiD
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047279420000744
ISSN:0047-2794
Parent Title (English):Journal of Social Policy
Subtitle (English):How Professionals Use Enhanced Discretion in Germany’s Public Employment Services
Publisher:Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Date of first Publication:2021/01/25
Reviewed:Begutachtet/Reviewed
Release Date:2024/06/20
Tag:activation policy discretion street-level bureaucrats New Public Management individualisation
Volume:51
Issue:1
Pagenumber:18
First Page:155
Last Page:172
institutes:Fakultät Sozialwissenschaften
Research Themes:Soziale & ökonomische Transformation
Licence (German):Creative Commons - CC BY - Namensnennung 4.0 International
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