Understanding Gaps Between Objective and Subjective Performance Measures: Accreditation of Public Service Organizations and Citizen Satisfaction

• Published date: 01 April 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/02750740231193431
• Author: Jae Bok Lee,Soojin Kim
• Date: 01 April 2024

Understanding Gaps Between Objective

and Subjective Performance Measures:

Accreditation of Public Service

Organizations and Citizen Satisfaction

Jae Bok Lee

1

and Soojin Kim

2

Abstract

Governments use various performance measures to ensure that public services delivered by private-sector providers are safe

and meet citizens’particular needs. These measures can include awarding accreditation and assessing citizen satisfaction.

However, few studies have investigated how objective performance measures relate to citizens’subjective evaluations of pro-

viders from the perspective of service users. To f‌ill this gap in the literature, this study closely explores a particular case of the

Korean childcare market in which governments administer a large number of private-sector providers that play a dominant

role in delivering public services. Our f‌indings indicate the positive accreditation–satisfaction link is weakened when parents

may not be aware of a provider’s accreditation status or when their selected service provider is nonprof‌it, as opposed to for-

prof‌it. Overall, this study suggests that it is important to understand why there is some degree of incongruence between

objective and subjective measures and how these two different performance indicators converge in the data. Special attention

should be given to bridging the gap by closely reviewing institutional pressure on service providers and a symbolic impression

of accreditation.

Keywords

accreditation, citizen satisfaction, performance measures, public service organizations, agency theory, childcare service

Introduction

Over the past few decades, spurred by business-like govern-

ment reforms (e.g., voucher schemes, privatization, and out-

sourcing), governments, desiring operational eff‌iciency and

high-quality services, have increasingly relied on private-

sector organizations to provide public services in areas

ranging from mundane city services (e.g., garbage collection

and utilities) to social services such as healthcare and child-

care (Kim, 2017). However, it has been argued that without

suff‌icient safeguards in place, some service providers will

not be cost-effective or trustworthy due to issues such as

asymmetric information, insuff‌icient performance monitor-

ing, opportunism, or corruption (e.g., Hansmann, 1980;

Stigler, 1971).

Considering this challenge in light of agency theory, many

governments have attempted to reduce such risks—espe-

cially when it comes to service quality—by regularly measur-

ing organizations’performance or instituting policies or

regulatory systems that include strong penalties or induce-

ments. Among these strategies, accreditation is a method

widely used to tackle agent problems in public service deliv-

ery settings. That is, professional titles and/or certif‌ications

are awarded to responsible, qualif‌ied service-delivery

organizations, which are then subject to regularly scheduled

assessments for renewal. As an objective performance

measurement tool, accreditation plays a role in motivating

organizations that provide public services, especially private-

sector ones, to adopt a set of standards or best practices.

Publicly accredited organizations and those pursuing accred-

itation may engage in better quality control or put effort into

enhancing their qualif‌ications (Beaulieu & Epstein, 2002;

Heuer, 2004). An organization’s accreditation may also

provide citizens a positive information cue about its perfor-

mance, (re)assuring the public that their families will be safe

or well cared for (Scrivens, 1997).

1

Department of Public Administration, Gyeongsang National University,

Jinju, Republic of Korea

2

Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme, School of Social

Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Corresponding Author:

Soojin Kim, Assistant Professor,Public Policy and Global Affairs Programme,

School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 48 Nanyang

Avenue, SHHK-05-02, Singapore 639818.

Email: sjkim@ntu.edu.sg

Article

American Review of Public Administration

2024, Vol. 54(3) 271–286

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/02750740231193431

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Another strategy governments use to measure the perfor-

mance of external private agents is collecting citizen evaluations,

such as satisfaction surveys (Charbonneau & Van Ryzin, 2012;

James, 2011; Lee & Shin, 2023) or monitoring service recipi-

ents’behavioral changes or intentions to act (Jilke et al., 2016;

Lee, 2023). Assessments of citizen satisfaction are probably

the most widely used method for collecting feedback in the

public sphere. They serve as important indicators in the monitor-

ing and diagnosis of processes and outcomes pertaining to polit-

ical institutions, policies, public service-delivery organizations,

and other aspects of government performance (Gofen, 2012;

James, 2009; Kim & Kim, 2022). While satisfaction surveys

can be controversial, they may help assess the extent to which

citizens receive good value for the money from private-sector

organizations engaged in public service delivery.

Given governments’growing reliance on both objective

and subjective indicators to better manage the performance

of public service organizations,

1

scholars in the area of

public administration have begun to examine the relationship

between the two different types of performance measures

(e.g., see Charbonneau & Van Ryzin, 2012; Kelly, 2005;

Kelly & Swindell, 2002; Parks, 1984; Van Ryzin et al.,

2008). Despite the mixed evidence regarding the value of

citizen surveys and the somewhat critical views toward gov-

ernments’reliance on them, there is a growing understanding

that what citizens thinkabout the quality of the public services

they receive can mirror objective assessments of organiza-

tional performance (Charbonneau & Van Ryzin, 2012; Kim

& Kim, 2022; Van Ryzin et al., 2008). Since citizens actually

consume a given service, their opinions can effectively com-

plement objective or quantitative measures of public service

performance (Kim & Kim, 2022; Song et al., 2020).

Nevertheless, more importantly, there is still much to learn

about the conditions under which the link between objective

and subjective measures can be corroborated. In other words,

what is lacking in recent scholarship is a more developed dis-

cussion as to how data from these two different performance

measures converge, not to mention why there is some degree

of variation across the two performance measures.

This study attempts to f‌ill this gap by exploring Korean

public childcare service provision as an empirical vehicle.

In recent decades, the Korean government has sought to

increase the competitiveness of its childcare system and to

meet citizens’diverse needs and expectations by allowing

private-sector organizations to participate in the public child-

care market. Interestingly, over time, the proportion of

private-sector providers in this market has increased, and

they now make up the vast majority of childcare providers.

In 2018, privately run childcare facilities accounted for

approximately 91% of all childcare providers (Ministry of

Health and Welfare of South Korea (MHW) and Korea

Institute of Child Care and Education (KICCE), 2018a). In

response to this rise in private-sector providers, the govern-

ment has instituted quality assurance measures including an

accreditation system for Korean childcare centers. Since the

mid-2000s, accredited private-sector organizations providing

childcare in local jurisdictions—including both nonprof‌it and

for-prof‌it childcare centers—have come to be labeled

“public-type childcare centers”

2

and such providers receive

f‌inancial support from the government. Through these oper-

ations, the government has enticed more potential service

providers to enter the market, promoted qualif‌ied businesses,

and provided parents the opportunity to enroll their children

in privately run childcare facilities. These changes may reas-

sure citizens who are skeptical of private childcare centers,

which in practice have received less supervision from the

government than public childcare centers. However, ensuring

the satisfactory performance of organizations that engage in

the delivery of caretaking and related support services

across sectors is still a challenge. To date, governments

have faced managerial and ethical challenges related to the

private provision of public childcare, including foodborne

illness outbreaks, misuse of public funds, and allegations of

child abuse. Accreditation of private-sector organizations

has the potential to reduce such challenges, but its value

may not be obvious to citizens.

Such challenges have motivated us to investigate the rela-

tionship between the two types of performance indicators—

government-led objective measures (here, “publicly accred-

ited”status) and citizen-generated subjective measures

(here, parent satisfaction surveys). In this study, we use

agency theory to frame our analyses. Our central research

question is: “How does the accreditation of public service

organizations relate to citizens’satisfaction with the services

they provide?”The analyses use secondary data from the

2018 Nationwide Survey of Childcare and Early Childhood

Education, including data on parent satisfaction. We

attempt to explore not only whether citizens who are aware

of their providers’accredited status tend to be more satisf‌ied,

but also whether the relationship between citizens’satisfac-

tion with accredited service providers varies across sector

(nonprof‌it versus for-prof‌it organizations).

The evidence from our analyses shows that citizens’

awareness that a service provider is publicly accredited has

a limited yet positive relationship with their evaluations of

the provider’s performance. Surprisingly, it turns out that cit-

izens’satisfaction with their childcare service providers

varies signif‌icantly depending on their degree of awareness

of the provider’s accreditation status and whether the pro-

vider is nonprof‌it or for-prof‌it. Overall, our f‌indings

suggest that the link between objective and subjective perfor-

mance indicators is weak, which is puzzling. We observe an

incongruence between the government’s assessments of

service providers and citizens’(service users’) evaluations

of their services. These f‌indings have signif‌icant implications

for public administration scholars and practitioners because it

is important to understand the mechanisms behind various

types of performance measures and why they may not consis-

tent with each other, and to uncover the missing factors that

can explain this incongruence.

272 American Review of Public Administration 54(3)