School of Social and Political Sciences - Research Publications
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ItemExploring productivity and collaboration in Australian Indigenous health research, 1995-2008(BMC, 2013-11-08)BACKGROUND: Building research capacity in Indigenous health has been recognised as integral in efforts to reduce the significant health disparities between Indigenous and other Australian populations. The past few decades have seen substantial changes in funding policy for Australian Indigenous health research, including increases in overall expenditure and a greater focus on collaborative and priority-driven research. However, whether these policy shifts have resulted in any change to the structure of the research workforce in this field is unclear. We examine research publications in Australian Indigenous health from 1995-2008 to explore trends in publication output, key themes investigated, and research collaborations. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search was undertaken to identify research publications about Australian Indigenous health from 1995-2008. Abstracts of all publications identified were reviewed by two investigators for relevance. Eligible publications were classified according to key themes. Social network analyses of co-authorship patterns were used to examine collaboration in the periods 1995-1999, 2000-2004 and 2005-2008. RESULTS: Nine hundred and fifty three publications were identified. Over time, the number of publications per year increased, particularly after 2005, and there was a substantial increase in assessment of health service-related issues. Network analyses revealed a highly collaborative core group of authors responsible for the majority of outputs, in addition to a series of smaller separate groups. In the first two periods there was a small increase in the overall network size (from n = 583 to n = 642 authors) due to growth in collaborations around the core. In the last period, the network size increased considerably (n = 1,083), largely due to an increase in the number and size of separate groups. The general size of collaborations also increased in this period. CONCLUSIONS: In the past few decades there has been substantial development of the research workforce in Indigenous health, characterised by an increase in authors and outputs, a greater focus on some identified priority areas and sustained growth in collaborations. This has occurred in conjunction with significant changes to funding policy for Indigenous health research, suggesting that both productivity and collaboration may be sensitive to reform, including the provision of dedicated funding.
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ItemWhen design meets power: Design thinking, public sector innovation and the politics of policymaking(Policy Press, 2019)Responding to the need for innovation, governments have begun experimenting with ‘design thinking’ approaches to reframe policy issues and generate and test new policy solutions. This paper examines what is new about design thinking and compares this to rational and participatory approaches to policymaking, highlighting the difference between their logics, foundations and the basis on which they ‘speak truth to power’. It then examines the impact of design thinking on policymaking in practice, using the example of public sector innovation (PSI) labs. The paper concludes that design thinking, when it comes in contact with power and politics, faces significant challenges, but that there are opportunities for design thinking and policymaking to work better together.
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ItemEnlisting the support of trusted sources to tackle policy problems: The case of antimicrobial resistance(PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE, 2019-03-21)Antimicrobial resistance represents one of the world’s most pressing public health problems. Governments around the world have—and will continue to—develop policy proposals to deal with this problem. However, the capacity of government will be constrained by very low levels of trust in government. This stands in contrast to ‘medical scientists’ who are highly trusted by the public. This article tests to what extent trusted sources can alter attitudes towards a policy proposal to regulate the use of antibiotics. We find that respondents are much more likely to support a policy put forward by ‘medical scientists.’ This article provides some initial evidence that medical scientists could be used to gain support for policies to tackle pressing policy challenges such as AMR.
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ItemQuasi-Markets and Service Delivery Flexibility Following a Decade of Employment Assistance Reform in Australia(CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS, 2011-10-01)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.
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ItemNETWORKS AND INTERACTIVITY Ten years of street-level governance in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Australia(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2012-01-01)The systemic reform of employment services in OECD countries was driven by New Public Management (NPM) and then post-NPM reforms, when first-phase changes such as privatization were amended with ‘joined up’ processes to help manage fragmentation. This article examines the networking strategies of ‘street-level’ employment services staff for the impacts of this. Contrary to expectations, networking has generally declined over the last decade. There are signs of path dependence in networking patterns within each country, but also a convergence of patterns for the UK and Australia, but not The Netherlands. Networking appears to be mediated by policy and regulatory imperatives.
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ItemFront-line work in employment services after ten years of New Public Management reform: Governance and activation in Australia, the Netherlands and the UK(Sage Publications, 2010)This study examines the impact of administrative reforms upon the work of front-line staff in the employment services of three reform-oriented countries – Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. These changes have involved greater use of private agents, more detailed performance contracts, clearer expectations about outcomes for job-seekers, and increased competition between agencies seeking government work. The study compares the work characteristics and strategies of front-line staff in agencies in the three systems in 2008 and a decade earlier, using surveys. The results show that there are substantial differences in the level of tailoring and investment in these countries. There are three relatively stable modes of governance in these cases and the most stable of these types across countries and across time is what we term the corporate-market mode – more generally labelled New Public Management (NPM). Despite the expectations of theorists and of reformers, the role of network governance proves neither as stable nor as generalised as expected.
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ItemMapping public sector innovation units in Australia and New Zealand: 2018 Survey Report(The Policy Lab, 2018)
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ItemFrom Entitlement to Experiment: The New Governance of Welfare to Work. UK Report back to Industry Partners(University of Melbourne, 2017)The UK employment services sector is a dynamic landscape that has been the subject of several major waves of reform over the past decade. This has included the consolidation of centrally-contracted programmes focused on particular localities and discrete cohorts of job seekers into much larger programmes aimed at broader groups of unemployed people. For the past five years, the Work Programme has been the main contracted welfare-to-work programme in the UK, although the Department for Work and Pensions has also established a smaller Work Choice programme for those with more substantial barriers to employment related to disability and ill-health. In addition, Jobcentre Plus continues to provide a public employment service to many people during the earlier stages of benefit claims. It will take on an even greater role in doing so when the Work Programme and Work Choice programmes come to an end in mid-2017 and are replaced by a new Work and Health Programme.