Contracting for Performance on Democratic-Constitutional and Procedural Values

• In Event: Making Use of the Market: Government Contracts and Outsourcing

Abstract

Contracting out has been considered one of the main performance management strategies to reduce costs and give more expertise to a government agency. The Trump Administration has committed to implementing privatization strategies in the federal workforce to increase efficiency and cost effectiveness in the US government (Congressional Research Service, 2018). Most contracting studies focus on its impact on measurable program outcomes, while there is a lack of research on the influence of contracting out on non-traditional performance outcomes. Democratic-constitutional and procedural (DCP) values are the important public values that agencies must pursue because public administration and political and social contexts cannot be viewed in isolation and public administration is not neutral (Moynihan, 2008; Radin, 2006; Waldo, 1948). Consequently, it is important to understand how contracting out strategies affect DCP endeavors in the public sector.

The aim of this study is to examine whether and how contracting out affects performance in DCP endeavors. This paper specifically analyzes how contracting is associated with performance in the context of the equal employment opportunity (EEO) discrimination complaint procedure, using two measures of performance in DCP tasks: the timeliness of completing cases and the average costs of investigation.

The research questions of the paper are: 1) Do agencies using more EEO contractors than agency EEO staff achieve better performance in DCP endeavors? 2) If there is any difference between the performance of EEO contractors and that of (in-house) agency EEO employees in DCP endeavor, why is there a difference between them? By addressing these points, this study helps to deepen our understanding of using contracting strategies in public agencies. I use a panel data set combining the 2013-2016 Federal EEO Statistical Report of Discrimination Complaints data and Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data.

In this study, the unit of analysis is the agency and there are 93 federal agencies per year (total observation is 372). The preliminary analysis indicates that agencies make extensive use of contractors in the EEO process. The findings show a mixed relationship between contracting out and performance in DCP tasks. An increase in the use of contractors is associated with a decrease in the average cost and a decrease in the rate of timely completed tasks. The results also suggest staff expertise is positively associated with performance, but task complexity has no significant relationship with performance.

Author

• Iseul Choi, University at Albany- State University of New York (SUNY)