Understand Government-Nonprofit Social Service Contracting Relationship

Abstract: With the idea of the governance, the model of social service delivery changed from government produces to purchases of services from Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs). Thus, cooperation was established between public sector and NPOs. The cooperation can be achieved by defrayed directly or using competitive contract outsourcing. The former one was commonly used while the latter one asked more for management capability of the government. The research question is how intergovernmental relationships influnced the result of public service outsourcing? To what extent were the social organizations matured during the process of outsourcing? While using outsourcing, the municipal government tries to introduce competence into the purchase of service. The aim is to change the relationship between grassroots government and social organizations from Stewardship to Principal-agent, to avoid the social organizations produce services like one part of government. By competitive outsourcing, the capability of social organizations can be enhanced to ensure the quality of social services delivery. According to the research on Shanghai Public Service Bidding, the study focus on the perspective of intergovernmental relationships to explore the difficulties which the municipal government meet while managing the outsourcing process, and the author tried to find to what extent the contracting out influencing the relationship between grassroots government and social organizations.