CONTROL PATTERNS IN CONTRACTING-OUT RELATIONSHIPS: IT MATTERS WHAT YOU DO, NOT WHO YOU ARE

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ditillo, Angelo; Liguori, Mariannunziata; Sicilia, Mariafrancesca; Steccolini, Ileana
• 署名单位: Bocconi University; Bocconi University; Queens University Belfast; University of Bergamo; Bocconi University; Bocconi University
• 刊物名称: PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0033-3298
• DOI: 10.1111/padm.12126
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 212-229
• 关键词: management control; transaction costs; GOVERNMENT; service; privatization; ECONOMICS; MARKET

摘要

The contracting-out of public services has often been accompanied by a strong academic focus on the emergence of new governance forms, and a general neglect of the processes and practices through which contracted-out services are controlled and monitored. To fill this gap, we draw on contracting-out and inter-organizational control literatures to explore the adoption of control mechanisms for public service provision at the municipal level and the variables that can explain their choice. Our results, based on a survey of Italian municipalities, show that in the presence of contracting-out, market-, hierarchy-, and trust-based controls display different intensities, can coexist, and are explained by different variables. Service characteristics are more effective in explaining market-and hierarchy-based controls than relationship characteristics. Trust-based controls are the most widespread, but cannot be explained by the variables traditionally identified in contracting-out and inter-organizational control studies.