Scaling-Up in Social Service Sector and Changing Organizational Characteristics

Abstract

This study examines how the scale-up of social service providers has affected their employment, organizational form, and business composition. The small size of social service providers in Korea has been pointed out as a major reason for the poor working conditions of social service workers, low service quality, and inefficient distribution of resources. However, previous studies on scale-up in the social service sector have mainly looked at efficiency in terms of cost. Therefore, this study aims to address various aspects of scale-up. We applied a panel analysis method to data from the Census on Establishments from 2008 to 2021 to examine the impact of changes in the size of facilities in the social service sector. The results showed that the growth of facility size in the social service sector was a factor that significantly reduced the proportion of full-time employees. However, in the case of nursing homes for the elderly and child care centers, their growth into small and medium-sized facilities increased the proportion of full-time employees. Scale in the social services sector had a significant effect on the conversion of individual businesses to corporate entities and was significantly associated with an increase in the proportion of side businesses in general welfare centers and visiting welfare services.