What's representation got to do with it? Comparing public reactions to diversity among government employees and government contractors

Abstract

The literature on representative bureaucracy is largely focused on government agencies and little attention has been paid to representation within private sector contractors providing services on behalf of government. A survey experiment, administered on a nationally representative panel collected by YouGov, is used to assess whether the public evaluates the distributive justice of government programs differently if the programs are implemented by either contractors or government officials, and whether this changes when the public is provided information on the diversity of those actors. We find that perceptions of distributive justice are no different with government or contractor delivery, nor do they change in response to diversity information. The findings imply that perceptions of distributive justice may only vary between contractors and government, and in response to diversity information, when the public are presented with information about program failure or obvious inequities.

Points for practitioners

Nationally representative survey data indicates that the general public may be more concerned with program failure rather than the demographic composition of the organization that delivers the service.

When performance is the same between government and private contractors, the public views the program outcomes as equally fair.

Diversity, on its own, is not enough to enhance the public's assessment of government decisions.

When engaging with different communities, managers should remember that perceptions of government may be informed by assumptions about who may benefit from government programs and racial stereotypes.