Private Scope in Public-private Partnerships: Experience and Institutional Determinants
Abstract: Management scholars have expressed an increased interest in the strategic aspects involving the delivery of public services, including the study of the emergent public-private partnerships (PPPs) and the organizational choices made by public and private actors. In the present article, we analyze the determinants of the private scope in PPPs—i.e. the extent to which private actors are more involved in various, complex activities of the partnership—in a cross-country, cross-industry setting. We examine the effects of public and private cumulative experience in PPPs, and the potential impact of the national institutional quality and the level of industry development on the private scope in PPPs. Our model is tested through an empirical work using a database covering 807 cases, 11 industries and 66 countries. We find that host-country accumulated experience in dealing with PPPs and superior quality of institutions increases private scope. Our results also show that private experience leads to an increased involvement of private actors in countries with better institutions and when the industry addressed by the PPP is incipient. Hence, by highlighting the determinants of governance choices and extent of private involvement in PPPs, our study offers implications for both theory and practice in a topic that have still received little attention in the strategy scholarship.
