A Study Based On Grounded Theory About The Public Service Outsourcing Of Chinese City's Basic Government

The New Public Manage Movement which arisen in western nations used the Business Management theories and methods into the government's reform, the public service marketization has become an important reform orientation of various countries. The total transformation of Chinese economy and society make the public service capability cannot fulfill the constant raised need of the public, many city's basic government begin to learn the successful experience of The New Public Manage Movement, bring the market mechanism in public sectors, provide better public service by outsourcing.The research achievements in the public service marketization, public service outsourcing and relevant fields is abundant, domestic and overseas scholars have researched the cause of public service outsourcing, the influential factors of the outsourcing decision making, the participants behavior in the outsourcing process, and other problems from macroscopical or microscopic perspectives and use normative or empirical research methodologies, they have obtained diversified achievements. But in existing achievements, the explanation of the cause of public service outsourcing is different, and there are lacks of the researches toward the public service outsourcing practice of Chinese City's Basic Government, and it's difficult for the achievements which based on the foreign practice to explain and guide the practice of Chinese government.Hence, to answer the cause of Chinese City's Basic Government's Public Service Outsourcing and other questions, this paper has guided by the Grounded Theory Methodology, made the F District of Guangzhou and the H District of Shenzhen as samples, used in-depth interview, questionnaire survey and other methods to collect data, utilized the Classic Grounded Theory, a normative qualitative research method to do data processing and theory structure, researched deeply into the context of the Chinese City's Basic Government's public service outsourcing practice.The research achievements of this paper has answered the original question, the cause of Chinese City's Basic Government's Public Service Outsourcing, obtained three aspects of discovery and conducted basic theoretical summarize and research, these new phenomena which worthful to be researched have never been discussed in relevant literatures, it provide interesting research questions for the deeper research in the future. Meanwhile, this paper has put forward, confirmed or redefined eleven concepts and categories and made three theoretical contributions.First of all, this paper consider that the cause of the Chinese City's Basic Government's Public Service Outsourcing include external causes and internal causes. The external causes come from economic and politic aspects, this paper summarized the economic causes as "Financial Support Reduction", it means that the financial support from the superior government to the basic government is phasing down. This paper also summarized the political causes as "Political Pressure Strengthen", it means that the superior government constantly put pressure on the basic government to improve public service level and promote public service quality. Meanwhile, the internal causes of the Chinese City's Basic Government's public service outsourcing originate from the basic government's internal intension to promote the public service efficiency, this paper summarized it as "Requirement of the Efficiency Promotion"Secondly, this paper discovered that, a phenomenon called "Incomplete Outsourcing of Public Service Function" exists in the process of Chinese City's Basic Government's public service outsourcing of certain function, it means that government would like to outsource only part of this certain public service function, and keep a part of public service function to provide by itself.Thirdly, this paper also discovered a "Functional Unit" which is special and different with enterprises and government's department, they are the unit which accepted the government's not outsourced public service function and partly enjoy public institution treatment. Such unit has a special relationship with government, government manage the head and main managers of the Functional Unit with administrative measure, make it obtain income with business contract, and don't limit its marketize operation. This paper defined such relation as "Administrative Contract".Fourthly, this paper discovered that current Chinese City's Basic Governments have obviously deviation in their role positioning during the public service outsourcing process, it lost the final objectives and ignored the responsibility which they should take to the social citizens after they have outsourced the public services. This paper summarized such phenomenon as "The Objective Disorientation of Government's Public Service Outsourcing". This paper believe that, the objective disorientation can be avoided only when governments can entirely recognize the relations with the other stakeholders of Government's Public Service Outsourcing from a new perspective. The existing of this phenomenon has more highlighted the value and significance of this paper which researched the Government's Public Service from the perspective of virtual government.By using of Grounded Theory methodology, this paper put forward some new concepts and categories, such as "Financial Support Reduction", "Political Pressure Strengthen", "Incomplete Outsourcing of public service", "Functional Unit", "Administrative Contract", "Target Missing of Government's Public Service Outsourcing", "Stakeholders of Government's Public Service Outsourcing", etc, the present of these new concepts and categories has laid foundations for the future deeper theoretical research. Meanwhile, this paper provided demonstrated support or confirmation to some existed concepts, and redefined them, such as "Virtualization of Enterprise's Functions", "Virtualization of Government's Functions", "Virtual Enterprises", "Virtual Government", etc, it contributed to clarify the divergence of relevance concepts, will promote the research of virtual enterprises and virtual government.This paper's theoretical contribution is embodied in three aspects. First, This paper researched the problem of government public service outsourcing with Grounded Theory Methodology, by the comparison with virtual enterprises theory and from the perspective of virtual government, not only embodied the thinking and spirit of the New Public Manage Movement that use the theories and methods of business management, but also provided new theoretical perspective for the research of public service outsourcing, it will not only contribute to deepen and improve the comprehension and knowledge of government public service outsourcing, but also lay the empirical groundwork to promote the research of virtual government and relevant fields and make out the basic theoretical contribution.Second, according to the empirical research of this paper and the compare with virtual enterprises literatures, based on the redefining of the concept of virtual government, this paper did theoretical research into several problems of virtual government, such as the hierarchy, operation division, relationship between the leader and the member of the alliance. Based on such research, this paper put forward the basic framework of the virtual government's operation mechanism, preliminary established a comparison integrated Organizational Structure Model of Virtual Government, described the virtual government theoretically from the organizational level. The establishment of the Organizational Structure Model of Virtual Government has done an important basic work to promote the research of virtual government and relevant fields, and provided new theoretical perspective and instrument to the research of Chinese City's Basic Government's Public Service Outsourcing.Third, The Classic Grounded Theory Methodology has been used more and more in many fields and the international management circle and obtained rich achievements, but it hasn't earned widespread respect in domestic academia, and there haven't appeared any achievements which used this methodology to research public service outsourcing in domestic and overseas academia. Thus, research of this paper is not only a beneficial exploring and attempt to use Classic Grounded Theory-the scientific qualitative empirical methodology into public service outsourcing research, but also a innovation of the methodology of public manage research. Meanwhile, this paper has done beneficial carding and innovating into this method during the research process, accumulated practical experience for better understanding and using of this methodology. Furthermore, the research of this paper is also a beneficial attempt to use normative qualitative methodology into the management research based on Chinese context, it will contribute to promote the research of indigenous management questions and phenomena in China.The practical significance of this paper is, according to the deep analysis of the problems in the current Mechanism of Chinese City's Basic Government's Public Service Outsourcing, based on the perspective of virtual government, it provided theoretical guidance to the design and perfection of Chinese City's Basic Government's Public Service Outsourcing Mechanism from three aspects. At first, redefined the relationship and the positioning between government and other stakeholders of public service outsourcing; and then, put forward the five basic principles of the design of public service outsourcing; at last, established the basic framework of the five mechanism of public service outsourcing and provide policy suggestions of improvement and perfection of this mechanism.Certainly, because of the limit of time, vigor and research resource, this paper has many shortage, we need to select more samples and use more theories to compare and research, to enrich the intension of the concepts and categories which presented by this paper, deepen the research of the new phenomena which discovered by this paper, make the concepts and categories which presented by this paper more saturated, obtain more research discovery, contribute more to the theoretical development. In addition, the concepts and categories which presented by this paper based on case studies have yet to be further quantitative empirical researched by large sample statistical test to make them have more universality and can be used to direct more extensive practice.