by Lachezar (Lucky) Anguelov May 7, 2020

Lucky Anguelov, MPA Faculty Member, recently published two peer reviewed journal articles. The first is a solo manuscript in the International Public Management Journal (IPMJ) that explores factors that guide monitoring arrangements for outsourced public services. The IPMJ is Journal of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) Section on International and Comparative Administration. This research contributes to the vast and expanding literature on local governments’ service delivery by outlining how compounding of services’ production transaction costs can lead to a complex myriad of oversight strategies. A key finding indicates that for services where multiple transaction costs characteristics are observed simultaneously (high transaction costs services), oversight arrangements are different. When these services are outsourced, vendors and third-party monitors are more likely to perform certain monitoring tasks when compared to government officials.

The second article is published in the Journal of Strategic Contracting and Negotiation (JSCAN). JSCAN is the official journal of the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM). In the article Lucky Anguelov and his co-author Dr. Aleksey Kolpakov compare and contrast two classical decision-making approaches used in public services outsourcing. Results from content analysis of semi-structured interviews with public managers indicate that incremental decision-making is more frequently observed when human services are contracted out, whereas rational decision-making appears more frequently in what the literature refers to as “hard services”. The findings also indicate that both decision-making approaches can be used in certain outsourcing cases. The study’s comparative analyses results yield three factors that appear common with the use of incremental decision-making when it comes to contracting out of public services. In these cases, having a for-profit business partner, experienced public managers, and a desire for cooperation and coordination appeared across all cases where incremental decision-making was used.