A Study On The Deviation Of Third-Party Evaluation Of Government Purchase Of Elderly Services Under New Institutionalism

According to the 7th National Census,China’s aging is intensifying and the level of aging is still higher than the world average,which makes the issue of old-age cares a topic of widespread concern for all sectors of society.As a result,our government has launched a series of initiatives to develop elderly services to promote the solution to the elderly problem.In order to facilitate the implementation of policies and funding,third-party evaluation agencies are involved as agents of government departments to conduct independent evaluations of senior care services based on their professionalism and ultimately obtain authoritative evaluation results.However,some deviations often occur in the actual operation of the third party,specifically the singularity of the assessment objectives,the rigidity of the assessment methods,the irregularity of the assessment process and the single use of the assessment results,resulting in the limited value of the third party assessment,but not the maximum value.Therefore,based on the new institutionalism theory,the author explored the deviations from the evaluation of senior care services by using participant observation method and semi-structured interview method.Ultimately,it was found that in the actual operation of third-party evaluation,a complex and unequal network of power relations among multiple subjects in the organizational field affects the interactions between subjects,creating objective conditions for the current evaluation model of third parties.Importantly,in the organizational field of third-party evaluation,the public is not aware of and concerned about the third-party evaluation of senior care services and thus does not play a supervisory role over the thirdparty evaluation system.The cognition of the third-party subjects,on the other hand,manifests itself in the organizational managers’ desire to gain recognition of governmental departments through the efficiency of the assessment,to gain peer recognition through apparent professionalism,and thus to enhance their legitimacy;and in the cognitive reconstruction of the assessment guidelines by the organizational members-misinterpreting and stealing concepts.Therefore,unlike most previous studies that unilaterally attribute the problem to third-party assessment itself or the external environment,this study argues that the external environment of third-party assessment and the subjects’ own cognition have jointly created the phenomenon of bias in the current assessment actions,and that the current selective presentation of third-party expectations of the system is the result of their comprehensive consideration of the external environment and their own development,which is an important survival strategy.Finally,the author also offers some personal suggestions based on the above research findings.