A review of the outcomes from contracting out urban green space maintenance: What we know, don’t know and should know

Abstract

Private delivery, i.e. contracting out, of maintenance services in urban parks and green spaces has since the 1980s been spurred by neoliberal reform promises of improved performance. This article contributes to discussions of whether contracting out park and green space maintenance services is a well-performing alternative by evaluating what is knownand not knownabout the outcomes in a narrative review of thirteen studies bridging experiences from four decades and three country contexts. It is found that the balance of reported economic and managerial outcomes mostly are on the positive side while the balance of reported outcomes related to service quality and staff are found to be on the negative side. Findings indicate that reforms have partly delivered on their promises. However, the reviewed studies are found to be dominated by evaluations based on governing values inherent in neoliberal management reforms rather than alternative management paradigms, rely on older data from a limited number of country contexts, and lack an accumulated understanding of explanation of outcomes. Finally, the reviewed studies pay little or no attention to the details of the development of different contracting and organizational models within contemporary urban green space management. Future research can expand further on what is known by addressing these key caveats.

Contracting out local road and park services: economic effects and their strategic, contractual and competitive conditions

“…Our findings concerning the changed costs from contracting out are consistent with previous research in road and park services that found lower costs with private service provision (Blom-Hansen 2003;Lindholst 2017;Petersen and Houlberg 2016). In our study, municipal road and park managers report that the latest tender reduced costs by 4.7% on average -a result statistically significant different from a situation with no cost changes.…”

“…This is similar to what Bel and Costas (2006) described as 'public reforms getting rusty' and is also in line with a recent review of international empirical contracting studies (Petersen, Hjelmar, and Vrangbaek 2017). Possible mechanisms driving the diminishing returns may be that the market price (close to true production costs) is already achieved in the first tenders or that in-house provision has become increasingly efficient due to exposure to competitive pressures (Lindholst 2017). The finding highlights an important theoretical and empirical mechanism, which we believe contributes to explaining why current empirical research tends to find smaller and more mixed outcomes than early contracting literature.…”

“…More specifically, the article aims to add to the previous literature in four ways. First, by shedding further light on the empirical experience with contracting in two local services for which many municipalities worldwide are responsible but which only few previous studies scrutinised, the study adds to the limited empirical literature in the area (Blom-Hansen 2003;Lindholst 2017). Second, while the empirical findings indicate that contracting is associated with cost savings, the study tries to take the discussion a step further by examining whether cost savings sustain a control for service quality.…”

“…The few previous empirical evaluations of contracting outcomes in road services find that private delivery is associated with significantly lower costs (Blom-Hansen 2003; Petersen and Houlberg 2016). Previous research in park services also suggests that, in most cases, competitive tendering and contracting out have reduced service provision costs(Lindholst 2017). The theoretical characterisation of roads and parks as suitable for contracting in combination with the findings of previous empirical research leads to the formulating of our first hypothesis:…”

The many outcomes from contracting out: The voice of public managers

“…Alonso et al, 2017;Hodge, 2000). However, from a managerial perspective, as highlighted by Lindholst andBogetoft (2011) andO'Flynn andAlford (2008), it also becomes clear that activities associated with the transaction costs of contracting out (preparing, procuring and monitoring contracts) and the required organisational changes represent a fundamentally different way of managing public service delivery -imbued with a different set of challenges, advantages and disadvantages -compared to bureaucratic modes of service delivery based on internal organisational routines and professional expertise. The implementation of contracting out is intrinsically associated with substantial changes in the organisations wherein public managers operate, entailing change in organisational structures, governing values and cultural outlook through shifts from bureaucratic modes of service provision to market-based modes 6 Version accepted for publication in Planning and Environment C: Politics and Space (Hood, 1991;.…”