The Coproduction Of Elderly Care Service: Occurrence Process And Operation Mechanism

At present,the elderly population in China is large and its growth rate is too rapid.The venerable age developing in high speed is parallel with the empty nest old people.Meanwhile,the phenomenon of living with disease and aging with disability is obvious;the aging before having gotten affluent exists without preparation.These problems make it difficult to deal with the problem of aging population in China.The traditional elderly care service driven by state and family is difficult to meet the growing demand for old people.The responsibility for providing services for the elderly needs to be changed that the state,society,market and family should recognize the shared elderly care service responsibility.Since China put forward the goal of social elderly care service system construction,local governments are making efforts to introduce social forces into the provision of pension services through public construction privately operated or private construction under the help of public assistance in order to increase the provision of pension services to meet the increasing demand for social support for the elderly.Although the cooperation of government,enterprises and social organizations to provide elderly care services has expanded the benefits of social services for the aged,there are some typical problems obsessing the society and some coproduction practice of pension services has not achieved the desired results.For example,some community service centers mainly providing the elderly dining service operated at a loss.Accordingly,how does the government cooperate with social organizations and enterprises to provide effective services for the elderly? In view of this practical problem,the article uses co production to conceptualize the cooperative provision of multi-subject in elderly care service.On the basis of literature review and conceptual speculation,this paper puts forward the central issues that need to be studied:under the background of multi-subject cooperation,how to produce the coproduction of pension services in complex environment? What is the internal logic of elderly care service coproduction among different organizations? To answer the questions,starting from the organizational management theory,this paper regards welfare pluralism theory,policy tool theory and network governance theory as the fulcrum,constructing the analysis framework including three processes of coproduction design,coproduction operation and coproduction evaluation as well as nine data analysis dimensions with the purpose of exploring the inherent logic of the coproduction of elderly care services to produce and sustain development.In terms of research methods,this paper applies SPS case study method to analyze four typical cases from Shanghai,Beijing and Zhejiang,thus obtaining first hand data through semi-structured interviews and focus group approach,which is verified by secondary data.Through the case analysis,this paper draws the following conclusions.On the connotation of coproduction.From the organizational point of view,the case analysis shows that the nature of coproduction is division of labor and collaboration among the state,market,society and family in public service.Coproduction is a cooperative activity among different organizations staring from technology rationality,developing in open space and moving towards stable rationality,in which the external performance is the local equilibrium state of the relationship of interests.Its fundamental goal is to eliminate the uncertainty of the future development of the organization and enhance the possibility of collective survival.Four distinct characteristics of coproduction are diverse subjects,common goals,interactive processes,reciprocal interests.This definition about coproduction provides a new direction for the analysis of multi-subject coproduction of elderly care services.In the mean time,compared with other public services,the coproduction of pension services has the characteristics of strong asset specificity and long duration.If the elderly care service is designed as a short-term project at the coproduction design stage,when the project is over,the government may face higher sunk costs due to the change of the service provider.Because community pension facilities are usually customized according to the needs of service providers,different service providers have different requirements for service facilities.On the internal logic of the coproduction of the elderly care service.The operation mechanism of coproduction of elderly care service is composed of the emergence mechanism of coproduction,the adjustment mechanism of coproduction and the survival mechanism of coproduction.From the view of the emergence mechanism of coproduction,at the stage of coproduction design,different organizations identify the potential partners based on the logic of technical rational division of labor and the strategy of aggregation.The result is that the compatibility of the multi-subject is enhanced,the cooperation matching is improved,the collective participation is realized,and the public and private organizations in different fields are closely aggregated in the pension service field,and the coproduction of the old-age service appears.From the view of the adjustment mechanism of coproduction,at the stage of coproduction operation,different organizations are based on the logic of partnership construction and adopt coordination strategy to build and maintain partnership.As a result,the equilibrium degree of cooperation interests has been improved,the cooperative synergy has been improved,the cost of cooperation has been reduced,and the coordinated development has been realized.From the view of the survival mechanism of coproduction,at the stage of coproduction evaluation,different organizations are based on the logic of the result control,and adopt the encapsulation strategy to constrain the behavior of the cooperative members.As a result,the stability of cooperative action has been improved,the sustainability of cooperation has been enhanced,and the collective survival has been guaranteed.Therefore,based on the technical rational division of labor,the compatibility degree of the cooperation subject is developed,the equilibrium degree of the cooperative interest is developed based on the partnership construction,and the stability of the cooperative action is developed based on the behavior result control.The virtuous cycle is established between the multi-subject and the interest,the multi-subject and the action,the interest and the action in coproduction,and the coproduction of the service for the aged creates the deserved value.On the coproduction model of the elderly care service.Case study shows that the degree of governance authority and the concentration of governance resources affect the coproduction of pension services.Therefore,this article divides the coproduction mode of the old age service into four types.The first mode is the administrative absorption type coproduction,which is characterized by high governance authority and high concentration of governance resources.Its application condition is that the development of the pension service is not mature.The whole area needs to be deployed in a macro way,and the partners are weak in strength and few in choice.The second mode is the authoritative and charismatic coproduction,which is characterized by high governance authority and low concentration of governance resources.Its application condition is that government leaders are well-developed in social network relationship,and partners have strong professional service operation strength.The third mode is the complementary advantage coproduction,which is characterized by low governance authority and low concentration of governance resources.Its application condition is that the service has a measurable market standard or a comparable market object,which can accurately assess the service results,and the partner has a strong professional service strength.The last one is the sharing assisted coproduction,which is characterized by low governance authority and high concentration of governance resources.This model is suitable for the development of the old-age service to a certain stage,and the service needs to be transformed or upgraded or the partner has a certain professional service strength but lack of key resources.On the role of state power in the coproduction of elderly care service.On the basis of the existing literatures,this paper develops the connotation of the enabling government,which refers to that the government grants the power of state governance through local decentralization,market decentralization and social empowerment to the non government subject governance ability,so that the ability of multiple subjects can be matched,and then collective participation is realized.Considering that the enabling government is similar with the empowering government,this paper makes a comparative analysis of the two concepts.From the assumption of the hypothesis,the empowerment government assumes that the government,the market and the society enjoy equal right to govern,the power is the result,and the government transfers some of the government's rights to the non-governmental governance bodies through the way of transferring functions.The premise of the enabling government is the lack of market and social development.Government,market,society does not have the natural equal right to control,and the power is the intermediary.Taking the government's governance as a catalyst or intermediary,the government effectively uses the governance to create the institutional environment for the orderly participation of the market and the social forces to participate in the public service,so as to make a good match between the characteristics of the task and the organizational ability of the task,and to cultivate the cooperative governance ability of the multiple subjects.From the expected effect,the objective of the empowerment government is to increase the autonomy of the non-governmental bodies,to give full play to the advantages of the spontaneous production of the market and the voluntary service of the society,and to make up for the inefficiency of the bureaucracy and inefficiency of the government's bureaucracy.But as an actor organization tends to expand its own autonomy by controlling uncertainty,the actor can control uncertainty and produce uncertainty through its own control,which means that empowerment does not necessarily produce good results.Opportunistic behavior of non-governmental organization also amplifies uncertainty in coproduction practice.On the contrary,the enabling government is to solve the problem of the mismatch of the ability of the governing body,and improve the supply of public service in quantity and quality,and the prudent use of power will reduce the opportunity for the uncertainty of the production of different governance subjects.In current China,the development of the market economy is not mature and the social organization is insufficient.The introduction of the concept of empowerment government to guide the coproduction of public service does not necessarily achieve the goal of improving the public service,and the idea of the enabling government is more suitable to guide the practice of Chinese public service coproduction.Under the concept of enabling government,the function of state power in the coproduction of pension services is reflected in three aspects.The first is to lead the direction and reach a consensus of responsibility.The second is to realize collective participation and carry out coproduction.The third is to improve the ability of cooperative governance and enhance development of innovation model.These three functions are realized under the interaction of local decentralization,market decentralization and social empowerment.At first,local decentralization enables local governments to gain discretion,stimulate their initiative and improve the flexibility of bureaucracy.Market decentralization breaks down barriers to access to pension service field and guides the orderly flow of resources.Secondly,local decentralization enables grassroots governments to mobilize resources to enhance their ability to build cooperative platforms and expand governance capacity.Social empowerment enables social forces to participate in providing services for the aged,which has the legitimacy of the subject and is easy to get social approval.At the same time,some public service functions of local governments are transferred to them,forming a division of labor,laying a solid foundation for collective participation.Thirdly,the market decentralization is to cultivate the less mature old-age service market,make the basic role of market resource allocation fully play,and use the market competition to catalyze the innovation of service model.Social empowerment can also foster the governance capability of social organizations,and enhance the matching ability between political and social bodies.