Outcomes-based contracts in the UK public sector

2020 ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Chris Fox ◽  
Kevin Albertson
Keyword(s):  
Public Sector ◽  
Service Provider ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Working Capital ◽  
Incentive Structures ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
The Uk

A major innovation in public sector commissioning in recent years is the recourse of the state to so called ‘Outcomes-based Contracts’ particularly Payment by Results (PbR) in the UK. A PbR contract contains three elements, a commissioner, a service provider and an outcomes metric. The outcomes metrics is designed, in theory, to align the incentive structures of the commissioner and the service delivery agency so as to achieve efficient results. Thus, PbR is theorised to allow public commissioners to pay a provider of services on the basis of specified outcomes achieved rather than the inputs or outputs delivered. A related innovation is that of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs). SIBs are distinguished from PbR contracts in that they supposedly allow financiers to contribute to the social innovation process by providing working capital. The return on the SIB is calculated using PbR methodology. Compared to a PbR contract, the SIB contract seeks to align the incentive structures, not only of commissioners and providers, but also financiers through an appropriate metrics-based payments scheme. PbR and SIBs have been referred to as key tools for delivering change. In this chapter we set out the theoretical and practical challenges arising from the development and application of PbR and SIBs and consider the evidence of their efficacy or otherwise.

Payment by Results and Social Impact Bonds in the UK

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Albertson ◽  
Chris Fox ◽  
Chris O’leary ◽  
Gary Painter ◽  
Kimberly Bailey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Management ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
New Public Management ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
Work Programme ◽  
The Uk

This chapter discusses the development of outcomes-based commissioning in the UK, focusing on Payment by Results (PbR) and Social Impact Bonds (SIBs). It first considers key policies that have underpinned outcomes-based commissioning in the UK since 2010 before analysing PbR programmes and SIBs in more detail, highlighting results and some of the important issues related to these areas of policy. It shows that the themes of New Public Management (NPM) and risk management are evident in the development of PbR and SIBs, whereas the theme of social innovation is present but less prominent. The chapter also provides an overview of the social investment market and two PbR programmes, namely, the Work Programme and the Troubled Families programme. Finally, it describes two SIBs: HMP Peterborough SIB and Nottingham Futures SIB.

scholarly journals On the transformation of children at-risk into an investment proposition: A study of Social Impact Bonds as an anti-market device

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 492-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Neyland
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
Children At Risk ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
Intractable Problems ◽  
Uk Government ◽  
The Uk

Following the financial crisis of 2008, the UK government accelerated a number of market-based interventions into public problems. Experimenting with new forms of intervention provided a moment to effectively problematize the public sector as a whole and its budgets, opening up for discussion the basis for making an intervention, and the methods and costs involved. Questions were posed of the apparently irreducible costs associated with supposedly intractable problems of government (such as homelessness, vulnerable children or crime). In particular, crisis and austerity became a means to give new momentum to a series of experimental ways to shape the social investment market that had been under discussion in various forms since at least 2000. Social Impact Bonds form one particular type of intervention. They involve drawing together investors with delivery agencies, the third sector and national and local government, coordinated by a commissioner. In the recent move by the UK government to set up and use Social Impact Bonds, much has been made of the opportunity they represent to introduce competition, efficiency, efficacy, private sector thinking and investment to a range of different social problems. As the first results of these experiments are now emerging, this article reports on a study conducted into a market-based intervention that experiments with the transformation of ‘children at-risk’ into an investment proposition through a Social Impact Bond. The article suggests that the Social Impact Bond can be usefully explored by drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) treatments of markets as collective, heterogeneous assemblages. However, in contrast to scholars who focus on market devices, the article argues that the Social Impact Bond in practice operates as something akin to an anti-market device. The article begins with an introduction to Social Impact Bonds. It then explores the means through which market-based competition and an investment proposition were anticipated, but did not emerge through the composition and enactment of the Bond. It concludes with an assessment of the anti-market device and the future of Social Impact Bonds.

Public Policy as Social Innovation

2019 ◽  
pp. 300-338
Author(s):  
Alex Nicholls ◽  
Daniel Edmiston
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Welfare Reform ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Policy Actors ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Improved Outcomes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Impact Bonds

This chapter explores in detail the evolution of social impact bonds (SIBs) in the United Kingdom as an example of social policy as social innovation. Specifically, it presents new analysis of three empirical cases in the United Kingdom. The chapter examines some key claims made by policy actors concerning SIBs as social innovation and welfare reform, specifically that they offer improved outcomes by means of innovating hybrid collaboration. The relevance of such claims in the context of addressing sites of marginalization is also discussed with reference to theoretical approaches from the Social Grid model.

Social impact bonds and their implications for third sector organisations: experiences from the Netherlands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Patetta ◽  
Marta Enciso Santocildes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Third Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private Investments ◽  
Social Impact Bonds ◽  
Third Sector Organisations

The social impact bond (SIB) is defined as a form of payment-by-results scheme combining governmental payments with private investments. This paper explores the motivations and implications of three third sector organisations (TSOs) participating in SIBs in Continental Europe. It offers an understanding of the involvement of TSOs in this type of scheme; and it shares insights about a context that is different from the United Kingdom and the United States – the Netherlands – which presents the opportunity to expand our knowledge about SIBs.

Exploring the social innovation process in a large market based social enterprise

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 1399-1414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martine Vézina ◽  
Majdi Ben Selma ◽  
Marie Claire Malo
Keyword(s):  
Social Transformation ◽  
Dynamic Capabilities ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Single Case ◽  
Innovation Process ◽  
Social Enterprises ◽  
Investment Fund ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Large Market ◽  
The Social

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the organising of social innovation in a large market-based social enterprises from the perspective of dynamic capabilities and social transformation.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyses the process by which Desjardins Group launched the Desjardins Environment Fund as the first investment fund in North America to integrate environmental screening. It uses longitudinal single case analysis and a theoretical framework based on Teece’s three dynamic capabilities.FindingsResults show that dynamic capabilities can be conceived as stages in the process of social innovation. Sensing refers to the capability to identify a societal demand for social transformation. Seizing capability is about shaping societal demand into a commercial offer. Reconfiguring concerns organisational innovation to integrate actual and new knowledge through innovative routines. Microprocesses of both path dependency and path building are in action at each of the three stages.Practical implicationsThis paper shows that managing dynamic capabilities is central to social innovation in the context of a large social business and provides genuine managerial input via an analysis of the microprocesses at work in the social innovation process.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the operationalization of Teece’s dynamic capabilities model. In mobilising a framework in the field of management of innovation, it contributes to the understanding of the process of social innovation and develops the organisational mechanism for multiscalarity of social innovation as a condition for social transformation.

The Impact of Social Innovation

2019 ◽  
pp. 389-416
Author(s):  
Alex Nicholls ◽  
Nadia von Jacobi ◽  
Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti ◽  
Georg Mildenberger
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Impact Measurement ◽  
Human Capabilities ◽  
Data Collection And Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Evaluative Space ◽  
Normative Models ◽  
The Impact

This chapter addresses key questions in terms of the evaluation of the impact of social innovation processes. After reviewing the existing approaches to capturing impact, the chapter presents a new Critical Issues Framework for social impact measurement to inform the development of the most appropriate and accurate evaluative space for data collection and analysis. As such it advocates standardization in the process of developing social impact indicators and methodologies, rather than in the metrics and units of analysis themselves. This framework is related to the three elements of the Social Grid in so far as they shape normative models of social impact measurement that entrench marginalization and limit stakeholder voice. Moreover, particular attention is paid to issues around capturing changes in human capabilities and how this relates to beneficiary empowerment and voice. The chapter, thus, offers a framework for optimizing impact measurement processes and systems.

The Social Shaping of Transformational Government

2009 ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Homburg
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Public Sector ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Path Dependencies ◽  
Professional Norms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Transformational Government ◽  
Social Shaping ◽  
The Uk

Public Sector Transformation initiatives do not exist within a vacuum. This chapter analyzes how Public Service Transformation initiatives are intrinsically linked with the values, norms, informal rules, and taken for granted beliefs (in short: institutions) that characterize the context in which the initiatives are introduced. Using two case studies (describing the Criminal Justice System in the UK and social security in Belgium and The Netherlands) it is exemplified how Public Service Transformation initiatives sometimes transform institutions, whereas at the same time, institutions, through judicial and professional norms, and through power structures and path dependencies, shape ways in which technologies are designed and used in specific practices. The chapter argues for a better understanding of the working of institutions in specific Public Sector Transformation initiatives, in order to be better able to deal with the difficulties, contradictions, and sometimes mindboggling features of Public Sector Transformation.

Festival connections

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 172-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niki Black
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Sustainability ◽  
Rural Landscape ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Grounded Theory Method ◽  
The Social ◽  
Culture Heritage ◽  
The Uk

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the contribution of small-scale, rural festivals to the social sustainability of their host communities. Small-scale, community originated festivals proliferate the rural landscape throughout the UK and yet despite this, festival research has focussed predominantly on large, urban events and on their economic impact (Wood, 2009; Gibson and Connell, 2011). This paper seeks to address the perceived research gap by examining these events through a lens of social sustainability. Design/methodology/approach The research uses a case study approach focussed on four festivals in Northumberland, UK. Individual interviews and focus groups were conducted with festival organisers, key figures and visitors. Following a constructivist grounded theory method four principle indicators were identified to determine festival contribution to community social sustainability. These indicators are: contribution to community pride and localness, enhancement of knowledge and understanding, contribution to the continuity of local culture and enablement of networks of connectivity. Findings The findings demonstrate the networks of connections which festivals enable between the culture, heritage and people (individuals and groups) of a place. By focussing on four indicators the paper shows the social impact of connections through the festival processes and content. The paper argues that small-scale festivals in rural locations can contribute to social sustainability if they demonstrate a balance of both consistency and innovation and accessibility and openness within the locale. Originality/value This paper addresses the gap in social impact research into rural festivals and presents an original approach to identify festival impact on community social sustainability.

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