Books, book chapters and journal articles
Books
O'Sullivan, S., McGann, M. and Considine, M. (2021) Buying and Selling the Poor, Sydney: Sydney University Press.
Buying and Selling the Poor ventures behind the scenes of the multibillion-dollar welfare-to-work system, offering new insights into how Australia responds to unemployment and disadvantage. As the authors tell the story of four local employment offices, they paint a vivid picture of a critically important social service which many people are aware of but which few properly understand. They also reveal the wider impacts that processes of marketisation and welfare reform have had on these frontline services over decades, and how the work of frontline staff and service providers has been transformed.
Buying and Selling the Poor looks closely at how these services operate, why some succeed where others fail, and what can be learned from the stories of staff and clients who have navigated the system. Three decades into this market experiment, how well are we doing in supporting our most vulnerable citizens to get back to work?
Considine, M., Lewis, J., O'Sullivan, S. and Sol, E. (2015), Getting Welfare to Work: Street-Level Governance in Australia, the UK and the Netherlands, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Getting Welfare to Work traces the radical reform of the Australian, UK, and Dutch public employment services systems. Starting with major changes from 1998, this book examines how each national system has moved from traditional public services towards more privately provided and market-based methods.
Considine, M. and O'Sullivan, S., (eds.) (2015), Contracting-out Welfare Services: Comparing National Policy Designs for Unemployment Assistance, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell
Contracting-out Welfare Services focuses on the design and overhaul of welfare-to-work systems around the world in the light of the radical re-design of the welfare system; internationally based authors utilise a national/program case study, considering employment services policy and activation practices.
Book chapters
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2015), “Governance, Boards of Directors and the Impact of Contracting on Not-for-profit (NFP) Organisations: an Australian study,” in Considine, M. and O’Sullivan, S. (eds.,) Contracting-out Welfare Services: Comparing National Policy Designs for Unemployment Assistance, Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, pp. 55-74
Journal articles
- Considine, M., McGann, M., Ball, S. and Nguyen, P. (2022), Can Robots Understand Welfare? Exploring Machine Bureaucracies in Welfare-to-Work, in Journal of Social Policy 51(3) pp 519-534.
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., McGann, M. and Nguyen, P. (2020), “Contracting personalization by results: comparing marketization reforms in Australia and the UK”, in Public Administration: An International Quarterly. Wiley, March 2020
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S., McGann, M. and Nguyen, P. (2019), “Locked-in or locked-out: Can a public services market really change?” (280kb pdf) in Journal of Social Policy, pp. 1-22. Please see infographic on ‘Can a public services market change: flexibility at the frontline?’
- McGann, M., Danneris, S., and O’Sullivan, S. (2019), “Introduction: Rethinking welfare-to-work for the long-term unemployed," accepted for publication in Social Policy & Society
- McGann, M., Nguyen, P. and Considine, M. (2019), “Welfare Conditionality and Blaming the Unemployed,” (460kb pdf) in Administration and Society
- O’Sullivan, S., McGann, M. and Considine, M. (2019), “The Category Game and its Impact on Street Level Bureaucrats and Jobseekers: An Australian Case Study," (360kb pdf) in Social Policy & Society. Please see infographic on ‘Streaming and Assessment’
- Considine, M., Nguyen, P., and O’Sullivan, S. (2018), “New Public Management and the Rule of Economic Incentives: Australian Welfare-to-Work from Job Market Signalling Perspective,” in Public Management Review, 20(8), pp. 1186-1204
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2018), “The Policy-maker’s Dilemma: The Risks and Benefits of a ‘Black Box’ Approach to Commissioning Active Labour Market Programs,” in Social Policy and Administration, 52(1), pp. 229-52
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2014), “New public management and welfare-to-work in Australia: Comparing the reform agendas of the ALP and the Coalition,” in Australian Journal of Political Science, 49(3), pp. 469-485
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2014), “Mission-drift? The Third Sector and the pressure to be business-like: Evidence from Job Services Australia,” in Third Sector Review, 20(1), pp. 87-107
- Considine, M., O’Sullivan, S. and Nguyen, P. (2014), “Governance, Boards of Directors and the Impact of Contracting on Not-for-profit (NFP) Organisations: an Australian study,” in Social Policy and Administration, 48 (2), pp. 169-187
- Considine, M. and O’Sullivan, S. (2014), “Introduction: Markets and the New Welfare - Buying and Selling the Poor,” in Social Policy and Administration, 48 (2), pp. 119-126
Other engagement
- Considine, M., McGann, M., O’Sullivan, S., Nguyen, P. and Lewis, J.M. (2018) Improving Outcomes for Disadvantaged Jobseekers: The Next Generation of Employment Services (1.9Mb pdf) The Policy Lab, The University of Melbourne