Three essays on government contracting for socially oriented goals and avoidance of blame
Creators: name: Hung, Wan-Ju
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2024

description: Government contracting and procurement have traditionally been studied as a means to achieve government efficiency and effectiveness. In recent years, however, it has gradually been promoted as a tool for other purposes. For example, because of its significant purchasing power, government contracting can be utilized to boost the economy of socially and economically disadvantaged communities and address the pressure of environmental challenges. On the other hand, studies also show that contracting out is used as a tool for avoiding blame in cases of service failure. My goal in this dissertation is to build on these nascent efforts to understand the broader managerial implications of contracting out. In doing so, I address three specific questions: (1) Does employee motivation shape support for government procurement programs that advance socially oriented goals?(2) How are work attitudes of public employees influenced by procurement programs that promote social equity?(3) Does government deflect blame for inequitable service provision by contracting out?This dissertation addresses these questions across three independent studies. Chapter 2 examines how public employees’ public service motivation and risk aversion influence their intention to engage in green public procurement. To address this question, I use a novel dataset that explores work-related attitudes of Taiwanese public employees. Ordered logit regression analysis revealed that public service motivation of public employees positively correlates with their inclination to purchase green products. Conversely, risk aversion is inversely related to public employees’ willingness to buy green products.Chapter 3 explores the influence of the U.S. government’s Small Disadvantaged Businesses Contracting Program on public employees’ work morale. The study, which utilized multilevel regressions to analyze data collected from multiple U.S. federal government websites, found that Small Disadvantaged Businesses contract is linked with increased satisfaction among federal public employees. Additionally, it is linked to lower turnover intention, particularly among public employees from historically underrepresented groups.Finally, Chapter 4 aims to investigate whether and how citizens shift their perceived responsibility for inequitable service provision from the government to the contractor when a public service operates under a contracting structure. For this purpose, an online survey experiment that collected data from the U.S. adults was employed. A series of ANOVA tests were employed in this study. Results indicate that, as the government still bears most responsibility for inequitable service provision, contracting out reduces the citizens’ blame for failure in equity outcome placed on the government. Additionally, it is found that the information cue about potential efficiency gains from inequitable service provision do not influence patterns of blame attribution.The findings of this dissertation contribute to the research on government contracting and procurement, public human resource management, and blame attribution for public service failure. It also brings managerial implications to government contracting practices.