Placement Advisors as Innovators. How Professionals Use Enhanced Discretion in Germany’s Public Employment Services

Carolin Freier,Monika Senghaas

doi:10.1017/s0047279420000744

Abstract

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.

Highlights

We conclude that public employment services (PES) staff with greater discretionary powers, enabling organisational norms and a favourable labour market situation are conducive to delivering tailor-made services and placement in stable and durable jobs
The findings presented above prove that it is rewarding in both theoretical and empirical terms to investigate the discretion of PES staff when delivering public employment services
While other studies look at the discretion exercised by street-level bureaucrats, in terms of consistent rule settings, this study focuses on a setting which permits enhanced discretion in the course of an innovation project

Summary

Introduction

4. How placement staff use discretion In Lipsky’s analysis of the Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services, discretion is used as an encompassing term referring to street-level bureaucrats’ decisions and actions “determining the nature, amount, and quality of benefits and Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Advisors developed changes in the job placement services by using their value discretion during the innovation project – such as abolishing the above-mentioned rules for scheduling counselling interviews.

Results

Conclusion