A SBM-DEA based performance evaluation and optimization for social organizations participating in community and home-based elderly care services.

The community and home-based elderly care service system has been proved an effective pattern to mitigate the elderly care dilemma under the background of accelerating aging in China. In particular, the participation of social organizations in community and home-based elderly care service has powerfully fueled the multi-supply of elderly care. As the industry of the elderly care service is in the ascendant, the management lags behind, resulting in the waste of significant social resources. Therefore, performance evaluation is proposed to resolve this problem. However, a systematic framework for evaluating performance of community and home-based elderly care service centers (CECSCs) is absent. To overcome this limitation, the SBM-DEA model is introduced in this paper to evaluate the performance of CECSCs. 186 social organizations in Nanjing were employed as an empirical study to develop the systematic framework for performance evaluation. Through holistic analysis of previous studies and interviews with experts, a systematic framework with 33 indicators of six dimensions (i.e., financial management, hardware facilities, team building, service management, service object and organization construction) was developed. Then, Sensitivity Analysis is used to screen the direction of performance optimization and specific suggestions were put forward for government, industrial associations and CECSCs to implement. The empirical study shows the proposed framework using SBM-DEA and sensitivity analysis is viable for conducting performance evaluation and improvement of CECSCs, which is conducive to the sustainable development of CECSCs.

Exploring the determinants of synergetic development of social organizations participating in home-based elderly care service: An SEM method.

The current aging service industry has problems in meeting the ever-increasing demand for the home-based elderly care service (HECS). Social organizations participating in HECS seems to be a promising way to address these problems but also raises new challenges, like uncoordinated cooperation among stakeholders, which could lead to low management efficiency and low service quality. However, Synergetic development can be promising to enhance the participation of social organizations and to improve social welfare. This study introduces a conceptual model to explore relationships between five determinants and synergetic development of social organizations participating in HECS. A structural equation model (SEM) based on questionnaire survey is used as a test methodology. The results indicated that stakeholder engagement plays a critical role in synergetic development in HECS, resource allocation can only be improved by institutional climate, and supervision capacity cannot facilitate information sharing. This study provides effective strategies and directions for the improvement of home-based elderly care services.