Contracting out welfare services: how are private contractors held accountable?

Paula Blomqvist and Ulrika Winblad

Public Management Review, 2022, vol. 24, issue 2, 233-254

Abstract: A challenge for governments contracting out public services is holding accountable contractors who fail to meet agreed-upon standards. In social services, contract monitoring is complicated by the fact that contracts tend to be incomplete and performance hard to assess. In this study, we examine how local governments in Sweden hold private contractors accountable in nursing home care. The main finding is that a mixture of accountability mechanisms was used, but that social accountability was seen as most effective. Marketaccountability measures like contract termination and financial sanctions could not be applied as local governments lacked the capacity to enforce them

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14719037.2020.1817530 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rpxmxx:v:24:y:2022:i:2:p:233-254

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rpxm20

DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2020.1817530

Access Statistics for this article

Public Management Review is currently edited by Stephen P. Osborne

More articles in Public Management Review from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().