A replication of “Contracting out: For What? With Whom?”

Abstract

In the 1980s, governments around the world adopted New Public Management ideas about inserting competition into government as a way to improve the performance of public organizations. In many nations, contracting out was one method of making governments more businesslike. Yet, there have been few studies of how government contracting behaviors have changed since the early 1980s. We replicate Ferris and Graddy's classic 1986 study of local government production and sector choice to assess how public procurement has changed over the past 35 years. Our findings show that today, contracting out is more commonly used across 25 local government service areas. In contrast to the original study, much of the growth has been in government‐to‐government contracts. For profit firms are also winning more contracts for high transaction cost work, while nonprofits are receiving fewer government contracts in nearly every service area. Our analysis suggests that contracting out remains of the highest importance in 21st‐century governance and that additional research is needed on how to manage contracts to achieve the best value.

Who has turned the project management lights on? A comparative analysis of transportation and information technology in US state governments

“…Our comparative analysis indicates that adopters of EVM may have different motives for improving information quality in relation to legacy techniques, such objectivity for IT or timeliness for transportation. Finally, because EVM is a technique for monitoring contractor performance, our results are informative for understanding performance measurement in the “hollow state” and ongoing efforts to improve contracting for public services (Anguelov & Brunjes, forthcoming; Frederickson & Frederickson, 2006).…”

Interpreting performance information: Motivated reasoning or unbiased comprehension? A replication and extension

“…For public administration theory, our study raises two insights of broader relevance. First, the study follows recent research by emphasizing the crucial differences between private providers with for-profit and nonprofit ownership (Anguelov & Brunjes, 2023). As the use of private providers expands to more services, it becomes increasingly relevant to understand how citizens and users perceive provider legitimacy, accountability, and performance (Esteve et al, 2023).…”

“…In response to the wider reproducibility crisis in scientific research, public administration research has seen an increasing focus on replications to bolster confidence in existing knowledge (Anguelov & Brunjes, 2023; Pedersen & Stritch, 2018; Qian et al, 2022; Sievert, 2021; Walker et al, 2019). Among the many advantages of replication studies, two related aims are particularly relevant for existing knowledge regarding the degree of public sector preference and how citizens interpret performance information.…”

“…Further advancing knowledge on whether and when sector preferences distort the ability of citizens to choose between different providers is highly relevant to public service markets in which public, non‐profit, and for‐profit providers frequently compete to deliver a broad range of technical and social services (Anguelov & Brunjes, 2023; Park & Brunjes, 2022; Petersen et al, 2015). As first shown by Baekgaard and Serritzlew (2016), prior preferences for the public sector make Danish citizens systematically evaluate identical performance information about public and private service providers in the healthcare and education contexts to favor the former.…”

Public Sector Unionization and Government Contracting: A Meta-analysis of Four Decades of Empirical Evidence

“…When a government outsources its service delivery, it can choose to contract out with private sector providers like for-profit and nonprofit organizations (“government–private contracting”) or other governments (“government–government contracting”) (Anguelov & Brunjes, 2023; Ferris & Graddy, 1986). Contracting with private vendors typically aims to reduce government size and increase efficiency (Savas, 2000), while contracting with other governments may aim for other benefits such as ensuring service uniformity and reducing service redundancy (Miranda & Lerner, 1995; Warner et al, 2021).…”