New Challenges for Public Services
Social Dialogue: Integrating
Service User and Workforce
Involvement: Overview
Brussels January 30th 2015
Stephen Bach
King’s College, London
Stephen.bach@kcl.ac.uk
Presentation structure
• Aims of EC funded research project:
- perspectives social partners/NGOs
• EU dimension – a turn to civil society?
• Research approach and framework
• Findings/themes
User involvement
Research Agenda
• What are the drivers and pressures associated with
service user involvement?
• What are the main forms of service user involvement?
• In what ways does service user involvement affect
social dialogue?
• What are the consequences for the social partners and
workplace practice?
Research Approach 2014/15
• Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia, UK (England)
• Phase 1: Interviews with EU stakeholders:
- social partners & civil society representatives
• Phase 2: analysis of national experience:
- drivers, opportunities and the challenges
• Phase 3: case studies:
- secondary school and hospital level
- variations between countries and sectors
EU level
• Context /character debate distinctive:
- EU governance (White paper on governance, 2001)
• Reaching out to civil society:
Art. 11.2 (Lisbon Treaty) The institutions shall maintain
an open, transparent and regular dialogue with
representative associations and civil society.
• Responses of social partners
• Sectoral social dialogue committees
Denmark
What?
Italy
Netherlands
Slovakia
UK(England)
Service user involvement (in a context of public management reform)
EU
national
sectoral
organisational
“New” Actors: Service user involvement
Who?
(pupils, parents, patients, civil society organisations)
Hospital
Forms?
Scope?
School
Indirect
Indirect
Direct
-hospital/school boards
-patient/public councils
-collective bargaining
-works councils
-interaction with frontline workers
-service standards
-surveys
on what issues?
Service design &
resourcing
(service quality &
standards)
Work relations Employment relations
(work organisation,
working time)
(performance pay &
recruitment & selection)
Consequences
Industrial
relations
(management – union
relations)
Terminology
•
•
•
•
•
•
Customer
Consumer
Citizen
Client
Co-producer
Service user
EU level: citizen involvement
and civil dialogue
- patient, pupil, parent,
- civil society organisations
representing users
Service user involvement and IR
• Reforms of public services:
- new public management – customer orientation
- network governance – collaboration, co-production
• The service user as an industrial relations actor:
- role of the customer/consumer sovereignty
Service user involvement
Drivers and Pressures
• Democratisation/new social movements:
- ‘bottom-up’ pressure
• Government sponsored ‘good practice’
- effectiveness: service quality and responsiveness
- efficiency: cost effectiveness and accountability
- effective governance
• Trend evident in all five countries
Forms
• Customer or citizen involvement?
- surveys: patients, pupils; complaints
- elected/appointed boards (governance)
• Variations between sectors
• Variations in extent of institutionalisation:
- historical legacies
- defined rights v. imprecise requirements
• Influences:
- who are the service users - ‘passers-by’
- shocks e.g. scandals
Arnstein’s Eight Rungs on a Ladder of Citizen Participation
8 Citizen control
- institutions under full citizen control
7 Delegated power
- citizens have dominant decision
- veto powers
• Citizen/
community
control
Citizen power
6 Partnership
- power is shared and redistributed
- citizens actively seek influence
(voice)
5 Placation
- involvement without influence
- ill-defined responsibilities/roles
4 Consultation
- ‘window dressing’ participation
• ‘going through
the motions’
Tokenism
3 Informing
- one way flow information
2 Therapy
- punitive/coercive participation
- educative, problem definition by authorities
1 Manipulation
- rubber stamping
- public relations
• Delegated
authority
• Views expressed
but not taken
into account
(pseudo-voice)
nonparticipation
Agenda/terms of
debate set by
authorities
(no voice)
User involvement and implications for social
dialogue
• Limits to user involvement:
- acceptance v. legitimacy
- resources, capacity and fragmentation
• Implications for social dialogue:
- institutional separation
- defined spheres of interest and influence
- indirect influence at single employer (workplace) level
Consequences for social partners
• Employers
- stronger engagement to advance their agendas
- extent of autonomy influences scope to involve users
- sectoral specific agendas
• Trade unions:
- cautious engagement v. indifference/wariness
- alignment of interests
- alliances and co-operation
Workforce practices:
Case study evidence
• Employment relations:
- performance management via user feedback
- complaints/inspection regimes
• Rewards
• Recruitment/selection and training
• Work organisation and working practices:
- staff availability/accessibility
- length of working day
- workforce roles
Questions
• Are service users a legitimate employment relations
actor?
• What does the policy interest in user involvement imply
for the management of the workforce?
• What are the implications of service user involvement
for the social partners?
• In what ways does user involvement alter the traditional
model of social dialogue?