This study investigates the process of modernising the management of elderly care services by using competitive contract tendering, referred to as CCT, for the first time in Finland. The conceptual approach is based on the framework of circuits of power. Data, based on document analysis, interviews, meetings observation and continuous interactions with key informants in their organisational settings, are from intensive field research conducted in a Finnish city from 2008 to 2013. Findings show that the process of introducing CCT to modernise management of public elderly care exposed that political decision makers and public managers lack professional skills to limit procurement risks in designing and implementing the CCT process. As a result, the total costs of using CCT to outsource aged care services became much higher than expected. A contribution is to show the ways in which modernisation of public services by using free market mechanisms, such as CCT, is a field of inter-organisational circuits of power whose outcome cannot be assumed to save costs to the community when political decision makers and public managers are incompetent and unable to think and act as business minded actors.
