ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors present the findings of an extensive research project analyzing the municipal procurement of each of the 393 Dutch municipalities' adult social care services. They introduce the notion of supplier opportunism, and briefly discuss supply management literature with respect to supplier opportunism. Based on inductive reasoning the authors analyze the opportunities for opportunistic behavior of contracted care providers in each of the commissioning models. Municipalities are most at risk of care provider opportunism in the AWBZ model, population-based commissioning, the catalogue model with fee-for-service reimbursement, and to a minor extent the client auction model when client case descriptions allow discussion after allocating a client to a care provider. The care provider provides a higher volume of services than the clients actually need, at the expense of the municipality. Finally, opportunism at the cost of other care providers occurs in main contractor–subcontractor relationships between care providers.
