Do Relationships Matter? Assessing the Association Between Relationship Design and Contractor Performance

Contracting relationships vary in the extent to which they are complete and involve formal contract specification as well as the extent to which they are based on strong relationships and rely on cooperation and trust. Where a contracting arrangement falls on these two continuums constitutes what this paper refers to as relationship design and is likely to impact contractor performance. We use data from a survey of child-care centers and Head Start agencies in Ohio to examine the association between the design of contracting relationships and contractor performance. Contractor performance is assessed in two ways: an objective measure of violations identified by government inspectors and a perceptual self-rated measure of performance reported by the contracted service providers. Measures of relationship design are constructed using multiple survey items and are included in multivariate regression analyses while controlling for a variety of organizational characteristics. Findings suggest that contracts involving stronger relationships are positively associated with child-care center performance, and more complete contracts are negatively associated with performance when performance is measured using contractor self-reports

Putting the Pieces Together: A Comprehensive Framework for Understanding the Decision to Contract Out and Contractor Performance

Contracting out is currently one of the most prevalent mechanisms of the privatization movement. Understanding its trends and rigorously analyzing its implications is an increasingly salient issue for public management research. This article builds a multi-stage theoretical framework addressing two broad research questions. The first is to identify the array of economic, political, organizational, and institutional factors that may impact a government agency\u27s decision to contract out. The second is to detail the various organizational and environmental factors influencing contractor performance. Particular attention is paid to effective contract monitoring and its relationship to contractor performance

The Performance Puzzle: Understanding the Factors Influencing Alternative Dimensions and Views of Performance

There is a large literature on the determinants of organizational performance, and its multidimensional nature is well recognized. However, little research has examined how different organizational and environmental factors influence different stakeholders’ performance assessments of the same service. We address this gap by comparing the factors influencing performance evaluations by different constituencies of child care centers in Ohio. We operationalize performance using (1) regulatory violations documented during state licensing inspections, (2) satisfaction with the center’s quality reported by center directors, (3) satisfaction with the center’s quality reported by teachers, and (4) satisfaction with care quality reported by parents. Our findings suggest that different organizational and environmental factors are associated with the performance assessments of different constituencies. In addition, some of these constituency assessments appear to influence each other

Barber Shops, Salons, and Spas: The Complexity – and Simplicity – Of Implementing Outreach and Enrollment Contracts Under The Affordable Care Act

This article examines the implementation of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a particular focus on the states’ contracted outreach and enrollment services. Having collected administrative and perceptual data from key informants, we examined outreach and enrollment contracts in six states that have reduced the uninsured rate by at least 20% of ACA-eligible population. Our findings suggest that the complexity of the law and its structure, as well as the characteristics of contracting were, in effect, “drowned out” by clear patterns of highly collaborative implementation that involved extensive chains of diverse outreach/enrollment actors. These networks – ranging from experienced health advocacy organizations to community members’ recruiting in local churches, schools and barbershops – were able to put into effect comparatively simple systems with clear, shared goals among on-the-ground actors who broke through the implementation complexity, thereby creating new capacity and achieving significant enrollment gains

Faith-Based Assumptions About Performance: Does Church Affiliation Matter for Service Quality and Access?

To date, the common rhetoric and assumptions on the performance of faith-based organizations (FBOs), ironically, appear to be faith based rather than empirically supported: There is a paucity of research evaluating the effectiveness of FBOs that uses sufficiently rigorous methods and multiple measures of organizational performance. This study seeks to inform the debate on the relative effectiveness of FBOs by comparing religiously affiliated and secular nonprofit nursing homes using two distinct but complementary measures of organizational performance: service quality and access for impoverished clients. Using nationally representative panel data on 11,877 church-affiliated and secular nonprofit nursing homes, this study examines the effect of ownership with several regression models. Overall, the findings fail to confirm the assumption that FBOs perform better than secular nonprofit organizations in the context of the nursing home industry. Isomorphic pressures and commercialization trends within the nursing home industry are discussed to help explain these findings

Managing in the regulatory thicket: regulation legitimacy and expertise

While the influence of government regulation on organizations is undeniable, empirical research in this field is scarce. This study investigates how the understanding of and attitudes towards government regulation among public, nonprofit, and for-profit managers affect organizational performance, using U.S. nursing homes as the empirical setting. Our findings suggest that managers’ perceptions of regulation legitimacy – views of regulation fairness, inspectors’ effectiveness, and internal utility of the mandates – positively affect service quality. Sub-group analysis suggests that the managers’ views of regulation matter in nonprofit and for-profit, but not public organizations. In nonprofit homes, performance declines when managers report higher regulatory expertise – better knowledge of the regulatory standards. In for-profit facilities, frequent communication with regulators lowers quality. These findings suggest that the regulated entities’ views of government regulation are central to their success, which necessitates improvements in the regulatory process

Closer Than “Arms Length”: Understanding the Factors Associated With Collaborative Contracting

This article focuses on collaborative relationships between contractors and government agencies and explores which contract characteristics, contractor traits, and environmental factors are associated with the development of such relationships. The study uses data from the Partnership Impact Research Project, a three-round longitudinal survey of over one hundred child care centers and Head Start agencies in Ohio. Our findings suggest that stronger collaborative contracting relationships are associated with greater contract specificity, better contractor service quality, and contractor affiliation with a larger organization. On the other hand, a contractor’s financial autonomy and nonprofit status are negatively related to collaborative relationship strength. We also find that a contractor’s internal management capacity is positively associated with the development of shared procedures governing contractual relationships

Management and performance in US nursing homes

Accountability pressures have generated complex performance measurement regimes to evaluate and improve public or publicly-funded services. Performance management, however, faces many challenges including the tradeoffs posed by numerous dimensions of performance and a lack of consensus on which organizational and environmental factors can improve these results. This study seeks to understand the effect of management and other factors on different dimensions and measures of performance in U.S. public, nonprofit, and for-profit nursing homes. Using a hybrid data set that combines archival government data on performance in nursing homes with a recent nursing home administrators’ survey, we find that innovative management significantly1 improves the quality of care. In addition, more innovation and less power sharing in management are associated with serving fewer Medicaid-funded clients. Significant differences in performance exist across public, nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. These differences are notable across both the archival and perceptual models of performance

Liberté, Égalité, Crédibilité: An experimental study of citizens' perceptions of government responses to COVID-19 in eight countries

: During a global pandemic, individual views of government can be linked to citizens' trust and cooperation with government and their propensity to resist state policies or to take action that influences the course of a pandemic. This article explores citizens' assessments of government responses to COVID-19 as a function of policy substance (restrictions on civil liberties), information about performance, and socioeconomic inequity in outcomes. We conducted a survey experiment and analyzed data on over 7000 respondents from eight democratic countries. We find that across countries, citizens are less favorable toward COVID-19 policies that are more restrictive of civil liberties. Additionally, citizens' views of government performance are significantly influenced by objective performance information from reputable sources and information on the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on low-income groups. This study reinforces the importance of policy design and outcomes and the consideration of multiple public values in the implementation of public policies