Privatization of social services: Correlates of contract performance

The use of privatization of community-based social services has been steadily increasing over the past twenty-five years. The transition to public-private partnership has led to an increased focus on the contracting process as a whole as well as accountability issues. This study was designed to explore empirically the relationships between a variety of contract characteristics and contractor characteristics and the level of contract performance. Of eleven independent variables examined, it was determined that one contract and two contractor characteristics could be used to predict the level of contract performance. Differences between proposed and contracted services categories, geographic proximity of the contractor to the funding agency, and the proposal rating, were found to be correlated to level of contract performance, with geographic proximity and proposal rating found as the best predictors of performance.