Abstract
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 co-exist 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.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 212-229 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Public Administration |
Volume | 93 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 22 Sept 2014 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2015 |
Keywords
- contracting-out, municipalities, control, public services