‘The Work You Want, The Help You Need’: Constructing the Customer in Jobcentre Plus

Abstract

In this article we explore the concept of the customer and its application within the contemporary public sector. While the centrality of the customer ideal to ‘the new public management’ is clear, the nature, appropriateness and implications of its use are less so. Debates on these issues turn on meanings ascribed to the customer role. In the first part of the article we consider shifting conceptions of the customer appearing in literatures on consumption, organization and the new public management. The second part of the article explores the representation of the customer in an organization emblematic of the new public management in Britain. Jobcentre Plus is an emerging organization charged with delivery of the government’s work-focused welfare agenda. The agency is involved in constructing customers from what once were benefit claimants and/or the unemployed. Through analysis of internal and public documents and observation of six sites, we explore the explicit and implicit meanings of the customer as conveyed through language and labelling, operational practices and features of the physical environment. We find a complex interaction of narratives of customer sovereignty and control. In the final part of the article we consider how this case may be read according to the academic narratives previously outlined.