Outsourcing,bureaucratic personnel quality and citizen satisfaction with public services

This article investigates the relationships between outsourcing, bureaucratic personnel quality (BPQ) and citizen satisfaction with public services. Our baseline expectation is of a negative association between outsourcing and service quality; however, we argue that this tendency can be counteracted when the government buyer has a more competent and motivated personnel, not only in managerial positions, but across the board. Better‐educated and paid public employees are likely to have an important moderating effect on service quality through their input into quality specifications, their ability to recognize the provider's consummate or perfunctory behaviour, and their willingness to act on the observed performance. Using data from a cross‐section of Sweden's municipalities, our analysis reveals a robust association between higher levels of outsourcing and lower levels of citizen satisfaction, but the data do not provide unambiguous support for the hypothesis that the strength of this association diminishes when BPQ is higher.     

Customization in Civil Service Training: Implications for Outsourcing Human Resources Management

In the public sector, central training institutes once played an irreplaceable role in formulating training policies and providing training programs to government employees. The introduction of new public management (NPM) has stimulated a reform agenda in human resources (HR) management, resulting in a shift from centralized training to decentralized or outsourced training; to be precise, making civil service training more demand-driven and lessening the role of central training institutes. Local-level governments and agencies have acquired more autonomy in deciding whether to provide training in-house, or to purchase relevant services from private providers. In addition, dramatic institutional, economic, and operational changes in the public sector in the twenty-first century have brought about competition among governments worldwide in terms of innovative and creative ideas, prompting them to equip their employees with the relevant skills for the governments to remain competitive. This study explores how civil service training in Hong Kong has been decentralized and customized from the viewpoint of civil servants being trainees, and assesses the role of the Civil Service Training and Development Institute as a centralized training institute for Hong Kong civil servants within the modern, decentralized, and consumerized HR management regime.     

国外对服务外包研究的现状、启示及评价

外包即外部资源利用,是指企业在内部资源有限的情况下,将其非核心业务通过合同方式分包给其他承接企业,而自己则专注于核心业务的发展,利用外部最优秀的专业化资源,达到降低成本、提高效率、发挥自身核心竞争力和增强企业对环境的应变能力的目的。以现代服务业以及高端制造和研发环节转移为主要特征的新一轮世界产业结构调整正席卷全球,为中国发展面向国际市场的服务外包提供了新的机遇。     

Parameters in a Successful Process Outsourcing Project: A Case From the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,Finland

The purpose of this article is to analyze the success factors of a critical business process outsourcing project (visa issuing) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in Finland. This has been done by mapping the success factors on the organizational “Star Model” of Galbraith (2002 Galbraith, J. 2002. Organizing to deliver solutions. Organizational Dynamics, 32(2): 194–207. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). The reasons for success include strong employee participation, good communication, and, in particular, the commitment of the organization in St. Petersburg.