This study presents a summary of a action research that, exploiting synergies between the reform of employment services and the creation of a labor market Observatory in a sicilian district, test a new model of interaction between institutional innovations and local government of labor market. The results show the complexity and ambivalence of the relationship between regulation and social change, especially where the reform process goes slowly and patchy, clashing with a complex system of institutional constraints linked to the social context, to the organizational models and to the action and interaction styles among individual and collective actors. Also, the results show the potential of concerted regulation, as an incentive to change and to local implementation of good practices, but its weakness too: the changing balance in the partnership may compromise the final goal leading to disastrous results.
Keywords: Employment services, matching, active labour policies, partnership, innovation, resistance to change