Belgian and Swiss service providers faced with the challenge of jobseekers guidance: predominance of stakeholder games or of the collaborative framework?

Abstract

The public employment services have contracted out their jobseeker guidance role to service providers. The article focuses on how the collaboration between the public services and private employment operators is organised in Belgium and Switzerland. These partnerships have to contend with two challenges, which are the recruitment of candidates for training projects and the measurement of the results of the service. Our initial hypothesis supports the idea that stakeholder games are more effective in solving critical situations than the collaborative framework. The international comparison allows us to vary the partnership creation methods and to show a particular articulation between the stakeholder games and collaborative framework.

Points for practitioners

The model of cooperation between public and private operators influences the quality of the relationship. Some partnership models are more likely to inspire trust between partners because they leave more room for expression and negotiation than others. Faced with the difficulties that arise in the course of a collaboration, the private operators will adopt opportunistic attitudes when the initial frame of the collaboration is narrower and accompanied by a relational asymmetry in order to somehow counteract the lack of a margin of manoeuvre for negotiation.