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The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of the Brightwalk community in Charlotte, North Carolina, to explore some of the tradeoffs municipalities make when engaging in public–private partnerships designed to support the production of mixed-income housing in urban neighborhoods.

The results of a gray literature review and a series of in-depth interviews conducted with real estate practitioners familiar with the transaction are presented to evaluate the impact of market forces on key investment decisions and project outcomes.

Public–private partnerships formed to support mixed-income housing development can serve as an effective means of revitalizing economically stagnant urban areas and improving the quality of the affordable housing stock, but they do not always provide members of the development team with an equally strong incentive to satisfy the unique demands of low-income populations or ensure they have a seat at the table when development decisions are made.

The originality of the research lies in its focus on a public–private partnership led by a non-profit organization to facilitate the redevelopment of a dilapidated market-rate apartment complex into a revitalized mixed-income community, which may help municipalities evaluate the pros and cons of participating in similar development transactions.

Documents how the Dental Service of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) successfully implemented private sector approaches to reimbursement and staffing in a special project designed to improve prosthodontic care for career military personnel. The innovative public‐private synthesis enabled the IDF to relieve bottlenecks and increase productivity while securing high levels of employee and patient satisfaction. The success of the innovation can be attributed, in part, to specific measures taken to adapt private sector practices to the culture and norms of the public sector and to integrate the new program into the broader organizational framework of the IDF Medical Corps. The recruitment of managers appropriate to the various stages of the organizational change cycle also played an important role in the project′s success. The study is based on in‐depth interviews of senior managers within the IDF medical corps, interviews of the managers directly involved in implementing the change, IDF budget reports and productivity analyses, and a survey of front‐line dentists. The analysis will be of interest to managers of public health care systems from around the world, who are looking to the private sector for innovative ideas on how to improve the efficiency of public programmes.

The paper examines the different trajectories of externalisation and the development of different kinds of welfare mix in three different sub-sectors of socio-educational services: long-term care for the elderly, early childhood services and kindergartens. By integrating the industrial relations and comparative public administration literatures, it analyses the different rationales underpinning contracting-out decisions of Italian local governments.

The paper adopts a multi-method, multi-level approach: quantitative data on the provision of socio-educational services and the nature of the providers are combined with the analysis of 12 case studies of municipalities through 80 semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis.

The paper argues that differentials in labour regulation across the public/private divide and the consequent possibility to access labour markets characterised by cheaper labour and higher organisational flexibility are a key explanation in local governments' decisions to outsource. Despite labour market factors playing a prominent role, their relevance is significantly tempered by political and social factors and particularly by the strong opposition of citizens, personnel and trade unions to pure market solutions in the provision of such services. However, the centrality of these factors depends on the nature of the services: political sensibility against privatisation proved to be stronger in kindergartens, while services for the elderly were more frequently and less contentiously privatised.

The main contribution is the integration of the two research traditions to analyse patterns of outsourcing in the socio-educational services in Italy, showing that neither of them is able, alone, to explain the different private/public mix characterising different social and educational services.

The research analyzes good practices in health care “management experimentation models,” which fall within the broader range of the integrative public–private partnerships (PPPs). Introduced by the Italian National Healthcare System in 1991, the “management experimentation models” are based on a public governance system mixed with a private management approach, a patient-centric orientation, a shared financial risk, and payment mechanisms correlated with clinical outcomes, quality, and cost-savings. This model makes public hospitals more competitive and efficient without affecting the principles of universal coverage, solidarity, and equity of access, but requires higher financial responsibility for managers and more flexibility in operations.

In Italy the experience of such experimental models is limited but successful. The study adopts the case study methodology and refers to the international collaboration started in 1997 between two Italian hospitals and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC – Pennsylvania, USA) in the field of organ transplants and biomedical advanced therapies.

The research allows identifying what constitutes good management practices and factors associated with higher clinical performance. Thus, it allows to understand whether and how the management experimentation model can be implemented on a broader basis, both nationwide and internationally. However, the implementation of integrative PPPs requires strategic, cultural, and managerial changes in the way in which a hospital operates; these transformations are not always sustainable.

The recognition of ISMETT’s good management practices is useful for competitive benchmarking among hospitals specialized in organ transplants and for its insights on the strategies concerning the governance reorganization in the hospital setting. Findings can be used in the future for analyzing the cross-country differences in productivity among well-managed public hospitals.

This is a benchmarking study and the purpose of this paper is to investigate if there is any association between operational efficiency in the integrated water management industry in Italy and the typology of service providers, and as a consequence, the nature of concession contract.

The study is focussed on 38 optimal territorial areas (ATOs), e.g. a circumscribed geographical area where the provision of integrated water services is considered efficient. It uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate ATO efficiency and a stepwise regression procedure performed to investigate the effect of contract type on the operational efficiency rate of the ATO.

This study shows that there are some inefficiencies in the water service supply industry in Italy. The estimated average pure technical and scale efficiency of ATOs are 92.62 and 93.91 percent, respectively, while the average technical efficiency is 87.61 percent and the lowest is slightly higher than 13 percent. Operational inefficiencies might not be determined by size only. In fact, results show that the water service provider and contract agreement typologies are associated with efficiency. In particular, operational efficiency is higher in those ATOs where the water service supply concession contracts that fit the schemes of the new legislative framework prevail or where the service is mostly provided by a private equity owned or by mixed public-private companies.

It was assumed that any incremental level of water quality beyond the minimum acceptable threshold as required by law is not important to increase the operation efficiency score; henceforth, no variables measuring the water quality were introduced in the DEA model. The result of the study may be not fully representative of the Italian water service sector, because the unavailability of accurate and consistent public databank in Italy did not allowed to have a larger sample.

This paper is one of the first in Italy to investigate the association between the operational efficiency of the ATOs and the nature of water service providers and contract agreements used.

This paper is one of the first in Italy to investigate the association between the operational efficiency of the ATOs and the nature of water service providers and contract agreements used.

Compares managerial values, in terms of loyalty, boss, money, big companies, profit, work, job freedom, and company rules, across different sectors of enterprise by questionnaire survey: 232. Iraqi managers participated in the study. MANOVA and ANOVA tests revealed some differences among managers in public, mixed and private organizations, with regard to manipulative and sociocentric values. Results, however, indicate that managers, regardless of their sector of enterprise, score high on sociocentric values.

Charitable Choice Policy, the heart of President Bush’s Faith‐Based Initiative, is the direct government funding of religious organizations for the purpose of carrying out government programs. The Bush presidential administration has called for the application of Charitable Choice Policy to all kinds of social services. Advocates for child‐abuse victims contend that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy would further dismantle essential social services provided to abused children. Others have argued Charitable Choice Policy is unconstitutional because it crosses the boundary separating church and state. Rather than drastically altering the US social‐policy landscape, this paper demonstrates that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy already is in place for childabuse services across many of the fifty states. One reason this phenomenon is ignored is due to the reliance on the public‐private dichotomy for studying social policies and services. This paper contends that relying on the public‐private dichotomy leads researchers to overlook important configurations of actors and institutions that provide services to abused children. It offers an alternate framework to the public‐private dichotomy useful for the analysis of social policy in general and, in particular, Charitable Choice Policy affecting services to abused children. Employing a new methodological approach, fuzzy‐sets analysis, demonstrates the degree to which social services for abused children match ideal types. It suggests relationships between religious organizations and governments are essential to the provision of services to abused children in the United States. Given the direction in which the Bush Charitable Choice Policy will push social‐policy programs, scholars should ask whether abused children will be placed in circumstances that other social groups will not and why.

There are two connected purposes: to reflect on the widespread current use and abuse of the term “public‐private partnership”, and to present a case study of an unusual joint venture associating a public and a private enterprise in delivering a multi‐utility service in the Canberra region of Australia.

The article combines the case study method with a review of relevant discourse about PPPs.

On the case study evidence presented, the article concludes that this joint venture comes much closer to being a genuine public‐private partnership than many arrangements loosely described as PPPs today.

The article invites the practitioner/academic community to think more precisely about the factors that need to be considered before it is appropriate to claim that a PPP exists.

The joint venture that is the subject of this case study has not previously been analysed in this way. The article suggests that it has value in serving as a model for the development of better thinking about PPPs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine public‐private partnerships with a particular focus on the impact that such partnerships have on territorial governance. These organizations are spread all over the world with the goal of promoting community participation and sustainable development, and engaging citizens and organizations in the decision making of local governance. This situation underlines important changes in governance and territorial governance models.

A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Analysing the existing literature, the paper focuses on specific type of public‐private partnership: the Local Action Group (LAG). Specifically, this study focuses on 63 Italian LAGs, in order to highlight their role in the challenges that local governance has to face.

Findings suggest that public‐private partnerships can represent a new model of governance – the Partnership Governance – with features that differentiate this form from other models.

Through a relatively novel statistical technique, combined with interviews, document analysis and direct observations, on the one hand the public‐private partnership phenomenon is observed, and on the other hand, a new mode of governance that is affecting the worldwide scenario in a current era and that is introducing ethical principles in governance systems is conceived.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of the policy tools to complement public involvement and public‐private collaboration in the deployment of next generation electronic communications infrastructures.

The special issue, of which this paper is a part, examines a number of policy tools that support public involvement and enhance public‐private partnering in next generation infrastructures, tools that are generally overlooked. The papers explore the main domains where these complementary actions might take place. They encompass policies directed to the demand and supply sides of the market, information society and industrial innovation policies, additional measures that can be taken by local and regional public administrations and new policy tools to foster user empowerment.

From the authors' perspective, public involvement and public‐private partnering for the deployment of next generation infrastructures in telecommunications will require an integrated policy approach. The appropriate policy mix includes instruments of innovation, information society development and new user empowerment.

This paper introduces a timely contribution to the debate on public support of next generation infrastructures in electronic communications.