Managing Contracted Services in the Nonprofit Agen cy

Through interviews conducted with nonprofit agency managers in the New York City metropolitan area, Susan Bernstein vividly describes their experiences with "contracting out," the principal way that the "reluctant" American welfare state has of providing public services through the private sector. The agency administrators look upon this as a nightmarish game and their stories illuminate how welfare state mechanisms work in practice as well as the tangled nature of bureaucracies. Bernstein illustrates and analyzes these administrators' strategies for managing the administrative, ethical, and political issues of contracted services. "Managing Contracted Services" is one of the first books to examine how administrators manage contracted services in a bureaucratic and political environment. Author note: Susan R. Bernstein is Assistant Director for Administrative Operations in the Department of Social Work Services of The Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City.