Do Service Providers Play a Market Stewardship Role in Social Care Quasi-Markets, and Should They?

• Published date: 01 July 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997241240070
• Author: Celia Green,Gemma Carey,Eleanor Malbon
• Date: 01 July 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997241240070

Administration & Society

2024, Vol. 56(6) 707 –737

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997241240070

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Article

Do Service Providers Play

a Market Stewardship

Role in Social Care

Quasi-Markets, and

Should They?

Celia Green1, Gemma Carey1,

and Eleanor Malbon1

Abstract

Market stewardship of social care quasi-markets has been an important area

of inquiry. While most focus has been on central government stewardship,

local level actors can also play a role. Using a case study of the Australian

National Disability Insurance scheme, this article focuses on both how service

providers can be market stewards and whether they should be. Findings

suggest that while some aspects of market stewardship are appropriate for

service providers to perform, others may be better done by different actors.

We propose a preliminary framework for distributed stewardship to help

join up the work of local level actors with central agencies.

Keywords

market stewardship, quasi-market, service providers, personalization,

Australia National Disability Insurance Scheme

Introduction

Since the advent of the New Public Management paradigm in the 1980s,

governments across western welfare states have implemented market-based

approaches to provision of social care services and supports (Dickinson et al.,

1University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Celia Green, School of Management, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052,

Australia.

Email: celia.green@unsw.edu.au

Data Availability Statement included at the end of the article

1240070AAS0010.1177/00953997241240070Administration & SocietyGreen et al.

research-article2024

708Administration & Society 56(6)

2021; Le Grand & Bartlett, 1993; Rhodes, 2007). Often this involves the use

of quasi-markets, especially in areas such as aged and disability care. Interest

has grown both in scholarship and in practice in quasi-market governance,

implementation and stewardship (Carey et al., 2018; Carey, Malbon, et al.

(2020); Gash et al., 2014). Due to the distinctive governing rules of quasi-

markets and the fact they serve important social needs (e.g., provision of

health or disability care), some have argued that they require more careful

management and stewarding than conventional markets (Gash et al., 2014;

Meagher & Goodwin, 2015). To date much of the scholarship on quasi-mar-

ket stewardship has focused on the role of government as the main market

steward (Carey et al., 2018; Dickinson et al., 2021; Gash et al., 2014; Malbon,

Carey, et al., 2019). Yet theories of complex governance, such as that required

in personalisation markets, as well as related literatures like work on joined-

up government (Carey & Crammond, 2015; Emerson et al., 2012) and poly-

centric governance (Ostrom, 2010) have found that central control of these

types of systems can be ineffective.

In response some scholars have started to examine the stewardship role of

non-governmental and local actors within quasi-markets, especially in the

context of the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), one

of the largest and more complex quasi-markets in the world (see e.g., Carey

& Malbon, 2020; Green et al., 2022a, 2022b; Kelk, 2020; Malbon & Carey,

2021). As Malbon and Carey (2021) point out, national markets are complex

and may be better thought of as comprised of many interconnected local mar-

kets. Thus actors who hold knowledge of local market dynamics should be

considered an essential component of quasi-market stewardship alongside

any central government oversight.

This study expands on previous work in quasi-market stewardship (Green

et al., 2022b, 2022a) by examining how disability service providers in a large

social care quasi market, the Australian NDIS, are playing a stewardship role

as local actors within the system. We find that due to some systemic chal-

lenges that have arisen during the implementation of the NDIS, there is a lack

of accountability over whose role it is to steward the market, a finding sup-

ported by a recent comprehensive review of the grey literature on NDIS

implementation (Gilchrist & Perks, 2023). This has resulted in providers con-

ducting a number of stewardship activities, some of which may be better

carried out by other local actors.

Based on our findings, we suggest that stewardship in the NDIS currently

takes place as a distributed activity rather than being solely the role of cen-

tral agencies as it was designed, and government does not appropriately

acknowledge or seek to integrate much of this distributed work. This has

implications for what the stewardship role of government and central