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Healthy Competition? Exploring the implications of competitive tendering for homelessness service providers

Healthy Competition? Exploring the implications of competitive tendering for homelessness service providers
Healthy Competition? Exploring the implications of competitive tendering for homelessness service providers
This paper presents some preliminary findings from a project investigating the impacts of local government contracting and competitive tendering on voluntary organisations (VOs) providing services for single homeless people. It uses interview data to explore how market principles are increasingly influencing VOs and their services, revealing a variety of organisational responses. The competitive environment created by the Supporting People programme may have improved measurable standards but it seems to undermine some of the comparative advantages attributed to VOs such as providing for service users with complex needs. As such, the paper questions whether existing procurement procedures are appropriate if the government is genuinely intent on using public service contracts to harness the distinctive capacities that its rhetoric associates with the voluntary sector, rather than simply to minimise costs.
Buckingham, H.
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Buckingham, H.
d4122e7c-5bf3-415f-9846-5b0fed645f3e

Buckingham, H. (2008) Healthy Competition? Exploring the implications of competitive tendering for homelessness service providers. 2008 NCVO/VSSN Researching the Voluntary Sector Conference, Coventry, UK. 08 - 09 Sep 2008.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

This paper presents some preliminary findings from a project investigating the impacts of local government contracting and competitive tendering on voluntary organisations (VOs) providing services for single homeless people. It uses interview data to explore how market principles are increasingly influencing VOs and their services, revealing a variety of organisational responses. The competitive environment created by the Supporting People programme may have improved measurable standards but it seems to undermine some of the comparative advantages attributed to VOs such as providing for service users with complex needs. As such, the paper questions whether existing procurement procedures are appropriate if the government is genuinely intent on using public service contracts to harness the distinctive capacities that its rhetoric associates with the voluntary sector, rather than simply to minimise costs.

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More information

Published date: September 2008
Venue - Dates: 2008 NCVO/VSSN Researching the Voluntary Sector Conference, Coventry, UK, 2008-09-08 - 2008-09-09

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 63427
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/63427
PURE UUID: faaacecb-0368-41e9-b17b-2ab7788472c1

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Date deposited: 23 Oct 2008
Last modified: 11 Dec 2021 18:14

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