Managing trust and relationships in PPPs: some Australian experiences

Abstract

Governments in Australia increasingly rely on private sector service providers to improve efficiency in public service delivery and have entered into a range of business partnerships with those providers. This article considers the effectiveness of public-private partnership models used in delivering public services and suggests that some partnership initiatives have increased efficiency at the micro management level but have not been able to establish trust. The concept of public value, too, has not been used as a useful way of setting out public service goals. Other models have focused more on community participation in policy formulation and in building trust among the clients and the providers and these may point the way to the future of such initiatives. These tentative conclusions rest on an examination of two cases where partnerships have affected operating and management practices, Job Network and Best Value in Victorian Local Government.

The contribution of international accounting standards to implementing NPM in developing and developed countries

“…NPM emphasises inter-organisational relationships, focusing on the outcomes of public services, and does not require the use of the assets owned or the use of the same assets over time (Bovaird, 2006;Teicher et al, 2006).…”

“…Therefore, we wish to analyse FVA as regards its capacity: (a) to improve assessment of solvency, understood under the NPM framework as the capability of public sector bodies to finance their future investment programmes. Bovaird (2006) and Teicher et al (2006) point out that NPM places more emphasis on inter-organisational relationships and the outcomes of public services than on the use of the assets owned and/or the use of the same assets over time; (b) to choose the best model to manage public sector services. The output orientation examines outcomes but not the process (Hughes, 1994;Richards, 1994;Kettl, 1996); (c) to increase information transparency in the use and allocation of public financial resources, thus facilitating citizens' access to information (Haque, 2006); (d) to enable benchmarking analysis to address issues such as sample entities, or the comparability of information (Ammons et al, 2001;Morely et al, 2001;Folz, 2004); (e) to adapt public sector entities to the current socio-economic framework.…”

Rhetoric and Reality of Public–Private Partnerships: Learning Points from the Australian Experience

“…Although it is not to suggest that all trust based PPPs are successful, there is growing evidence to indicate that they are more likely to be so. It is this factor which contributed to relative success of the best value model of PPP applied in the City of Melbourne (see Teicher et al, 2006).…”

Risk identification and assessment - guidelines for public sector in Poland

“…Its focus is very much upon inter-organizational relationships and the governance of processes, and it stresses service effectiveness and outcomes. Further, it lays emphasis on the design and evaluation of enduring interorganizational relationships, where trust, relational capital and relational contracts act as the core governance mechanisms [Bovaird 2006;Teicher, Alam, van Gramberg 2006]. Only proper risk management can provide reasonable assurance regarding services effectiveness and outcomes with respect to governance mechanisms.…”