Nominal Contracts: Study On The Relationship Between Government And Organizations In Government's Purchasing Social Work Services

With the reform of our administrative and social systems,government departments and social work organizations are gradually changing the way of cooperation.The attitudes of government departments to social work organizations are constantly changing from "zero tolerance" to "controlled development" to the present "cooperative development" and the purchase of public services by government has gradually become a vital innovative measure for the transformation of government functions.Government departments have transformed from producers and providers of public services into purchasers and supervisors.Social work organizations have continuously upgraded their status in this reform and become providers of public services with their professionalism and efficiency.The relationship between government and social work organizations has direct impacts on the quality of public services in the process of government's purchasing services from social work organizations.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the relationship between government and social work organizations in this whole process.By thoroughly analyzing the existing research,it is easy to find that there are few studies on the relationship between government and social work organizations from the perspective of government's purchasing public services.Meanwhile,researches on the relationship between government and social work organizations from this aspect are generally discussed from a single perspective rather than from the perspective of mutual interaction..The relationship between government and social work organizations is defined as either-or relationship.Besides,there only exist a small number of studies about the dynamic interaction at different stages in the process of government's purchasing services.Most studies regard government and social work organizations as a whole,ignoring the hierarchy of government departments and the different behavior strategies and value preferences of governments at all levels.Based on the observation of H public service project purchased by H District Civil Affairs Committee of H City,proceeding from the reality,the author divides the practice of government's purchasing service into different stages according to the process and uses participatory observation,literature research and interview to collect data so as to explore the dynamic relationship between government and social work organizations.At the same time,the government departments are divided into different levels to discuss the cooperation mechanism between different levels of governments and social work agencies in the process of government's purchasing public services so that the operation mechanism of government's purchasing public services can be clarified.Through the analysis of the multiple relationships between government and social work organizations in this case,it is clear that at the beginning of the contract signing,according to the contract text,the government and social work organizations are equal and independent.With the development of the project process,the original equal contractual partnership has been alienated.The District Civil Affairs Committee and social work organizations form a new relationship of control and rebellion while the subdistrict offices and social work organizations form a relationship of absorption and alliance.Reasons for the alienation of relations are mainly due to the lack of sound institutional mechanisms related to the services purchasing;the mandatory "control" of the initial consignor(District Civil Affairs Committee);the subdistrict offices' pursuit of administrative performance;the tendency towards evaluation formalization;the slow development of social work industry,the weak strength of social work organizations.Therefore,some suggestions are put forward from the angles of system and purchasers: raising awareness and perfecting system construction;improving purchasing process to create a fair competitive environment;changing management ideas and defining character orientation of government departments;establishing a pluralistic evaluation system and improving incentive and sanction mechanism;and urgency for social work organizations to enhance professional abilities and strive for development space.