Client Participation and Conditionality: Navigating Conflicting Normative Demands in Employment Services

• Published date: 01 May 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231157750
• Author: Mathias Herup Nielsen,Merete Monrad
• Date: 01 May 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231157750

Administration & Society

2023, Vol. 55(5) 802 –823

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997231157750

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Article

Client Participation

and Conditionality:

Navigating Conflicting

Normative Demands in

Employment Services

Mathias Herup Nielsen1

and Merete Monrad1

Abstract

The further involvement of citizens in the processing of their own cases

is attracting attention as a possible strategy for improving the quality of

employment services across national borders. However, employment

services are characterized by detailed regulation and strong elements

of conditionality. This article utilizes Bernardo Zacka’s framework on

morality at the street level, drawing on focus group interviews to analyze

how caseworkers in Denmark experience and deal with such demands for

increased client participation. (1) We map four normative considerations

that are emphasized by our informants: legality, authenticity, realism, and

resonance. (2) In doing so, we outline two central cross-pressures that arise

as they strive to balance client participation with conditionality in practice,

namely between legality and authenticity, on the one hand, and between

realism and resonance, on the other hand. (3) Finally, we unfold three coping

strategies pursued by caseworkers to dampen such tensions: dividing the

self, dissolving contradictions, and disassembling clients’ wishes. We add to

the literature by studying coping strategies from a perspective that carefully

highlights the normative elements of employment service work—the values

1Aalborg University, Copenhagen, Denmark

Corresponding Author:

Mathias Herup Nielsen, Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University,

Frederikskaj 10B, Copenhagen 2450, Denmark.

Email: mhn@id.aau.dk

1157750AAS0010.1177/00953997231157750Administration & SocietyNielsen and Monrad

research-article2023

Nielsen and Monrad 803

frontline workers attribute particular importance to and strive to actualize

in their work.

Keywords

employment services, client participation, coping strategies, normative

considerations, cross-pressures, conditionality

Introduction

Frontline worker in the job center during an interview:

“[I tell the client that] it is your plan, and we’re going to succeed with it

together. So it is not a plan I am making for you. It is your plan, and I believe

that we will succeed with the direction you have chosen. Of course,

sometimes, you meet someone where their biggest dream is to do telepathy

with horses—I’ve experienced that—and where we have to explain that

maybe that’s more like a hobby. Because we know that it might not be

realistic to be employed as such.”

Ideas such as coproduction and cocreation, client participation, and empow-

erment are widely discussed as possible strategies for heightening the quality

of public service delivery (McMullin, 2021). This is also the case for employ-

ment services, where such ideas have become buzzwords that have gained

increased attention (M. P. Hansen et al., 2022; Larsen & Caswell, 2022;

Lindsay et al., 2022; Torfing et al., 2019). Leaving their differences aside,

such ideas all strive to position clients as active citizens who participate as

partners in the processing of their cases. They emphasize tailored rather than

standardized solutions and ideally see clients as acting partners in the shaping

of services (Lindsay et al., 2022) and who are capable of making decisions

and taking action (Wright, 2016).

However, employment services are characterized by heavy regulation of

the frontline worker by complex rules that have evolved through countless

political reforms over the past few decades (Klindt et al., 2020) and by strong

elements of conditionality when encountering the client: they continuously

need to fulfill detailed requirements to sustain eligibility for benefits (M.

Hansen, 2019). Thus, novel ideas and techniques for client participation are

promoted in a field characterized by detailed regulation and strong elements

of conditionality. The current article offers an analysis of how this comes

across from the perspective of the caseworkers who are expected to integrate

client participation into the practical delivery of welfare services. Our theo-

retical point of departure is Zacka’s (2017) framework, which is attuned to