Peter Frimpong · MPA Project Proposal · Advisor: Dr. Cessay This section of the study is committed to reviewing literature related to the major subject areas such as contracting out, organizational commitment and psychology. First, the nature of today’s workforce in a public health care facility will be described, followed by a brief definition of the individual entities that form the workforce. Expert opinion on the current workforce will be explored, and the historical context of the move from the traditional workforce to the current workforce, which includes core, contract and temp employees. The second section of this review will focus on workplace environment, organizations, culture and employees. Finally, organizational commitment will be examined, including the various dimensions of commitment including information on employee psychological attachment to the organization. The Nature of Today’s Workforce Public sector jobs, especially public hospitals, are gradually moving from the traditional full-time state civil servants to contract employees, where the organization is “based around a core of essential executives and workers supported by outside contractors and part-time help”(DeLoria, 2001). The workforce in most public hospitals has now shifted from one comprised mainly of full-time civil servants to a mix of civil servants and contract (part-time/temp) employees. Most part-time employees are hired by the facility or have a direct contract with the organization, but are not civil servants. Employees with the temp status are an “outsourced” workforce, usually hired through temp agencies. Young (2002) attributes this shift to the introduction of the Federal Government’s National Competition Policy, which seeks to promote efficiency in the public sector by bring in private organizations to compete for public sector jobs. H 1 : Civil servants have a higher continuance commitment of civil servants than that of contract employees. H 2 : Civil servants have a higher normative commitment to the organization’s mission compared to that of contract employees. The notion that bureaucracy creates redundancy and inefficiency brought about the idea of lean government, leading to outsourcing and contracting out government work to for-profit and non-profit organizations. This practice is believed to have emerged in the United Kingdom, where it was introduced to foster competition and cut costs. Today, policymakers at the federal, state, and local governmental levels advocate partnerships with nonprofit and for-profit organizations as a means to provide public services more efficiently and with less cost to government. The practice of contracting out has sparked debate among experts and contributed to the reason why most research conducted on contracting out/outsourcing is focused on cost-effectiveness and efficiency. With regards to this study, the researcher is interested in examining employee commitment to work, and to also determine whether organizational commitment has any effect on employee commitment and performance. The Environmental Service Department of Roswell Park Cancer Institute will be the group to be considered for the study. The department has a workforce that is comprised of contract management, NYS civil servants, and contracted temporary employees. Survey data will be collected and analyzed. Literature Review Introduction & Purpose Statement Hypotheses References Sample Selection The sample for this study will be drawn from Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s (RCPI) population, which is comprised of civil servants, contract workers, temp workers, and volunteers. There are over 3,300 employees at the Institute, including over 200 physicians and scientists and 400 nurses providing services and research for the organization. The study will be focused on the Environmental Service Department, which appears to have the employment model of a mixed workforce. The department has a total of 83 personnel that perfectly fit the sample needed for this study. The sample that will be directly involved in the study will be administrative staff, frontline managers, lead workers and frontline workers. Volunteers and student interns will be involved if they so wish. The EVS department of RPCI is managed by an outside contractor, specialized in managing housekeeping, linen and food services. The contractor has a management staff of 8, of which 5 are frontline managers and 3 administrative managers. Out of the 83 employees, 55 have full-time/permanent status, 15 are part-time employees and 13 contract employees with temp status. The part-time and full-time employees work directly for RPCI which makes them state employees, but the temps are the contract employees recruited and trained by temp agencies. Research Design/ Data Collection & Instrument A cross-sectional survey will be conducted to study a respondent’s perception. This method was chosen because the researcher intends to study employees’ characteristics at a single point in time through a questionnaire. The questionnaire will consist of three parts: demographic information, an adapted version of the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (UWES) to assess employee engagement; and, questions from the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ) will be used to measure respondents' commitment level of the organization. Young (2002) explained in his case study that the 1995 National Competition Policy which states that the presence of “competition or the threat of it, can create powerful incentives for management to improve internal efficiency and to become more responsive to customers” (Motta, 2004), influenced attitudes about outsourcing, benchmarking and downsizing (Young, 2002). He further explained that the implementation of the “competitive neutrality principles” established in Europe, compelled hospital administrators to develop a system whereby considerable portion of the clinical and non-clinical services in public hospitals would be outsourced or contracted out to private organizations (Young, 2002). The term outsourcing or contracting-out is considered essential in this study and thus, this part of the review focuses on defining and providing all the necessary information on outsourcing. First, outsourcing is defined by Marks (2007) as the “practice of subcontracting certain services to an organization or company outside of the parent organization.” In the explanation, he stated that outsourcing is different from the act of contracting, in the sense that with outsourcing the parent organization “transfers ownership of a business process to the supplier”(Marks, 2007). The supplier is believed to have some expertise that attracted the parent organization to hire them, and so in this transaction the parent organization does not dictate to the supplier how they want the job done. All they do is to ensure that the services paid for are completed. With contracting out, the parent organization dictates the specifics, how the task is performed and also help develop tools and processes necessary to achieve the end product. According to Marks, health care managers today, both in hospitals and physicians' offices, are “outsourcing as a means of accomplishing many tasks” (Marks, 2007). In addition to tapping the expertise of private organization, cost-cutting has also been an impetus for outsourcing. Young (2002) stated in her study that one of the main reasons why organizations are attracted to outsourcing has been the relative productive cost advantage of hiring the services of an outside provide which use specialist human resources, technologies and physical infrastructure to create “economies of scale” and the opportunity to improve services (Young, 2002). While there are many studies confirming how outsourcing has increased the expertise of core staff and promoted professionalism and skilled personnel, there are also many studies disputing the contention that outsourcing has the aforementioned benefits. Youngs’ case study was designed to explore the efficiency and improvement to be observed after outsourcing, following the NCP guidelines. And according to her report “the effect of the outsourcing process had been to initially, decrease staff numbers, change work practices, and introduce new systems and technology, resulting in decreased morale and trust” (Young, 2002). Comparing Employee Commitment: Core and Contract Employees at Roswell Park Cancer Institute The case for contracting in of public services in Ontario SOURCE: