Short Term Placements: An Exercise in Organisational Culture Exchange

This article explores the process of setting up some short (one week) and longer (six month) exchanges between two government departments on the Central Coast of NSW, with the express purpose of assisting organisational change through this form of professional development. The article outlines the program's objectives and achievements, as well as the evaluation results and benefits to the two departments taking part. The exchanges all occurred within a context of services for children and families, but the concept of the exchanges and their educational and organisational benefit have much broader application to any instance where a number of government departments are being asked to collaborate or work more closely on issues. On the Central Coast of New South Wales, the Area Health Service and the Department of Community Services have undertaken an organisational cultural exchange experiment through short placements between various sections of the two government departments and also some longer term secondments. The purpose was to increase the understanding and skills of professionals within the two agencies to understand each other's roles better, and to also achieve better client outcomes for the often shared client group of the two departments. The exchanges have all taken place in services that work with children and families and were organised with a child protection focus in mind, although the program is transferable to other contexts.     

Cream‐Skimming,Parking and Other Intended and Unintended Effects of High‐Powered,Performance‐Based Contracts

As performance‐based contracting in social welfare services continues to expand, concerns about potential unintended effects are also growing. We analyze the incentive effects of high‐powered, performance‐based contracts and their implications for program outcomes using panel data on Dutch cohorts of unemployed and disabled workers that were assigned to private social welfare providers in 2002 to 2005. We employ a difference‐in‐differences design that takes advantage of the fact that contracts gradually moved from partial performance‐contingent pay to full (100 percent) performance‐contingent contracting schemes. We develop explicit measures of selection into the programs and find evidence of cream skimming and other gaming activities on the part of providers, but little impact of these activities on program outcomes. Moving to a system with contract payments fully contingent on performance appears to increase job placements, but not job duration, for more readily employable workers.     

Control,Communication, and Power: A Study of the Use of Alternative Dispute Resolution of Enforcement Actions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Two decades after pioneering the use of alternative dispute resolution techniques, practices, and processes, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has emerged as the leader among federal agencies. As such, the EPA provides a useful setting for testing conventional wisdom and theories about alternative dispute resolution. This essay takes data collected as a part of an assessment of the agency's enforcement ADR program and examines how well it reflects or illuminates current theory and conventional wisdom about conflict resolution. In particular, we examine why parties to a dispute choose ADR, and the key elements needed for the successful resolution of environmental conflicts, including the dynamics between the parties at the table and mediator characteristics.