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Which Contract State? Four Perspectives on Over‐Outsourcing for Public Services
Author(s) -
Hood Christopher
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
australian journal of public administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.524
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-8500
pISSN - 0313-6647
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8500.1997.tb01271.x
Subject(s) - outsourcing , bureaucracy , state (computer science) , business , scope (computer science) , transaction cost , law and economics , identification (biology) , database transaction , contract management , consumerism , economics , finance , law , marketing , market economy , political science , computer science , politics , botany , algorithm , biology , programming language
Since the term ‘contract state’ was coined over 20 years ago, there has been much discussion about the scope and limits of outsourcing and contractorisation. But attempts to fix the limits of outsourceability, using approaches such as transaction‐cost analysis, the identification of inherently state functions and business‐strategy ideas of ‘core competences’ seem fated to be indeterminate. What counts as over‐outsourcing or inappropriate contractorisation depends on what basic values animate ‘the’ contract state. The limits of outsourcing will be different according to whether a state aims at ‘steering’, ‘empowering’, ‘consumerism’ or ‘amoral’ goals. Accordingly, a simple distinction between ‘public bureaucracy state’ and ‘contract state’ may be less important than analysis of different variants of the contract state.