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The paper discusses the balance between values and economic efficiency in the public sector in comparison with the private sector. The argument is that the public sector, hence the public welfare service institutions, can learn much from the private service sector, hence the private service firms with regard to the relation to values, ethics, corporate social responsibility (CSR) and efficiency in order to improve the balance between values and efficiency in the public sector.

The paper discusses the concept of balance in relation to the development of the management of private service companies as a useful alternative to new public management (NPM). It discusses this with regard to three issues: the evolution of the management of private companies; what can the public sector, hence the public welfare institutions, learn from the evolution of management of private companies? How would it be possible for governments to work for an alternative to NPM, on the basis of the experiences of management of private companies, improving the balance between values and economic efficiency in the public sector?

It is argued that a deadlock in the development of efficiency management in the public sector, hence in the public welfare service institutions, is created. It is argued, furthermore, that this deadlock to a great extent, paradoxically, is created because of the focusing on NPM for almost two decades as the most important tool to develop efficiency management in the public sector. Finally, it is argued that the experiences in private companies regarding how to find a proper balance between values, ethics, CSR and economic efficiency can be very helpful in developing a strategy within the public sector to unlock the deadlock regarding the development of efficiency management. That is why the experiences of management of the private services companies can become a constructive alternative to the experiences of NPM in the public sector at the level of welfare institutions.

There would be potential for more research on CSR, business ethics and values‐driven management in relation to the public sector.

The paper offers new insight into the relation between values, CSR and management models in the private and in the public sector.

Over the last few years several projects have been procured under the Private Finance Initiative, which brought with them some challenging, often novel, legal issues. A new statutory framework has been established creating new legal entities and regulating the powers and obligations of those new entities. The public procurement regime of the European Union has had to be carefully considered by both the public and private sector parties as failure by either to adhere to the strict rules and procedures can result in the imposition of sanctions. Attitudes to the way in which contracts are structured have had to change. The public sector had to step back from the more traditional involvement and control it has exercised in the past, and permit the private sector to come up with innovative solutions to the public sector's output requirements. The issues of force majeure and change of law have had to be looked at very closely and mechanisms for the sharing of the risk negotiated between the public and private sectors. A uniform approach to these legal issues would be welcomed along with some standarization of fundamental terms.

The paper aims to elucidate effective strategies for promoting the adoption of green technology innovation within the private sector, thereby enhancing the value of public–private partnership (PPP) projects during the operational phase.

Utilizing prospect theory, the paper considers the government and the public as external driving forces. It establishes a tripartite evolutionary game model composed of government regulators, the private sector and the public. The paper uses numerical simulations to explore the evolutionary stable equilibrium strategies and the determinants influencing each stakeholder.

The paper demonstrates that government intervention and public participation substantially promote green technology innovation within the private sector. Major influencing factors encompass the intensity of pollution taxation, governmental information disclosure and public attention. However, an optimal threshold exists for environmental publicity and innovation subsidies, as excessive levels might inhibit technological innovation. Furthermore, within government intervention strategies, compensating the public for their participation costs is essential to circumvent the public's “free-rider” tendencies and encourage active public collaboration in PPP project innovation.

By constructing a tripartite evolutionary game model, the paper comprehensively examines the roles of government intervention and public participation in promoting green technology innovation within the private sector, offering fresh perspectives and strategies for the operational phase of PPP projects.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) in the developing and emerging economies as a multifaceted challenge from viewpoint of the 10 keys ‘for’ and ‘against’ PPPs: feasibility; planning; optimization; modernization and development; financing; project delivery; project operation; supervision; user satisfaction and accounting issues. The conceptual model and the reasons were formulated by the authors some 10 years ago, based on the literature and case-study reviews. Relevance of those reasons was verified in practice. The knowledge and critical perspective on the above-stated reasons are relevant for the implementation of PPP projects in any national economy – developed, emerging or developing, but it is quintessential for the implementation of PPPs in the economies that are at the early stage of implementation of PPPs. Although for the identification of the above-stated reasons, wide comparative literature and case-studies review was conducted, the reasons were verified in practice in Slovenia only. Slovenia is considered as one of the most advanced transition countries of Central Europe and a developed economy. This chapter can improve public policy, teaching, learning and practice of PPP implementation in developing and emerging economies. The value of this chapter is in the approach which goes beyond the usual defending or renouncing of PPPs. This chapter also clearly identifies the importance of a sincere motive for the implementation of PPPs by the government as a prerequisite for the successful implementation of PPPs.

Emotions, understood as evolving mental states, are pivotal in shaping individuals“' decision-making, especially in ambiguous information evaluation, probability estimation of events, and causality analysis. Public–private partnership (PPP) projects represent a confluence of “economic–environmental–social” dimensions, wherein stakeholder behavior follows the sequential progression of “cognition–emotion–action.” Consequently, comprehending the effects of emotional shifts on stakeholder's decision-making processes is vital to fostering the sustainability of PPP projects.

The paper utilizes rank-dependent expected utility and evolutionary game theory to systematically examine the influence of emotional factors on stakeholders' behavior and decision-making processes within PPP projects. The paper integrates three emotional state functions—optimism, pessimism and rationality—into the PPP framework, highlighting the intricate interactions among the government, private sector, surrounding public and the media. Furthermore, the paper amalgamates the evolutionary pathways of environmental rights incidents with the media's role. Through equilibrium analysis and numerical simulation, the paper delves into the diverse interplay of emotions across different phases of the environmental rights incident, assessing the impact of these emotions on the evolutionary game's equilibrium results.

Emotions significantly influence the microlevel decisions of PPP stakeholders, adapting continually based on event dynamics and media influences. When the private sector demonstrates optimism and the surrounding public leans toward rationality or pessimism, the likelihood of the private sector engaging in speculative behavior escalates, while the surrounding public refrains from adopting a supervisory strategy. Conversely, when the private sector is pessimistic and the public is optimistic, the system fails to evolve a stable strategy. However, when government regulation intensifies, the private sector opts for a nonspeculative strategy, and the surrounding public adopts a supervisory strategy. Under these conditions, the system attains a relatively optimal state of equilibrium.

The paper develops a game model to examine the evolutionary dynamics between the surrounding public and private sectors concerning environmental rights protection in waste incineration PPP projects. It illuminates the nature of the conflicting interests among project participants, delves into the impact of emotional factors on their decision-making processes and offers crucial perspectives for the governance of such partnerships. Furthermore, this paper provides substantive recommendations for emotional oversight to enhance governance efficacy.

This chapter examines whether changes in return to education affect workers’ mobility between jobs. Employee panel data are used to study staff movement from the public sector to the private sector or vice versa from 1995 to 2005. It is found that in line with the situation in other advanced economies, the wage structure in the public sector in Israel is more compressed than that in the private sector, for employees with similar characteristics and in general, and that the difference widened during the period reviewed. Hence, the findings support the contention that the public sector compensates employees less for their skills than does the private sector. In addition, it is found that during that period the return to education increased in the private sector by about 1 percentage point more than in the public sector. In an analysis of those who switched from one sector to the other, our findings imply that if the return to education changed at the same rate in both sectors, the probability of highly educated workers moving from the public sector to the private sector would be 5 percent lower, and the probability of highly educated workers moving from the private sector to the public sector would be 2 percent higher.

This study seeks to estimate union wage effect in the public and private sectors of Ghana, respectively. It also seeks to ascertain whether the union wage effect in the two sectors varies.

The authors use data from the Ghana Living Standards Survey 6 (GLSS 6, 2012/2013) and Ghana Labour Force Survey (GLFS, 2015). In terms of estimation technique, the authors employ the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition technique to estimate union wage effect in public and private sectors, respectively.

The findings indicate that union wage effect in the public sector is positive and higher relative to that of the private sector.

The findings imply that strict enforcement of Section 82 of Labour Act 2003 (Act 651) will curb the political influence of public sector unions over their employer (Government).

This research paper has not been presented to any journal for publication and it is the authors' original work.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-01-2023-0045

Historically, public and private sector enterprises have been viewed as existing on opposing ends of the performance measurement spectrum, due to seemingly incompatible worldviews. Private sector enterprises are traditionally viewed as profit-driven and focused on a return on investment paradigm, while public sector enterprises are seen as mission-oriented and answerable to a paradigm less focused on investment and more on improving enterprise capability. The authors propose that, in fact, these worldviews are not mutually exclusive, as private and public sector enterprises must both account for investment and mission concerns. In order to leverage real synergy to be gained from distinct but complementary viewpoints, a systemic approach to evaluating organization performance through the novel fusion of operational test and evaluation and multi-criteria decision analysis is developed. Use of this framework is demonstrated within an enterprise that involves consideration of public and private sector concerns. The authors hope that the approach proposed in this chapter will enable public and private sector enterprises to comprehensively address performance.

An examination of the commonalities and differences between performance management practices in the public and private sector.

A literature review of 100 publications in international academic journals over the last 20 years.

The chapter develops a framework which links the dimensions of the public/private-distinction (ownership, funding, control and type of goals) to the design and use of performance management systems (PMS). This framework subsequently informs a literature review, which can be summarised as follows: Multi-dimensionality of the PMS is core in both public and private sector organisations, but quite many private sector papers point to a financial focus at the top of the PMS, while public sector organisations show a broad variety of performance indicators, including those on societally relevant goals. In addition, a link between the PMS and strategies can be found in the public and the private sector, but the match between different strategies and PMS design is more elaborated in the private sector. These findings are largely in accordance with our expectations. The review also finds support for the assumption that performance information in public sector organisations is primarily used for external accountability reasons, while internal managerial control is the main purpose in private firms. The use of performance information is quite intensive and mostly functional in both sectors, which does not meet our expectations. Overall, the differences between performance management practices in the public and private sector are less stringent than expected.

Due to limited evidence about the importance of performance-related pay systems and no evidence about targeting in both sectors, a more focused literature review on these issues would be desirable.

Mutual learning between both sectors, for example the public sector can learn from the private sector on how to link strategy to the PMS and the private sector can learn from the public sector about serving a multitude of stakeholders in the PMS.

A comprehensive review of performance management practices in the public and private sector.

Recent criticism of the UK's public sector has rekindled the debate about public service leadership in comparison with the private sector, particularly in the context of the financial austerity we face for years ahead. This article first reviews recent research on leadership and compares the public and private sectors, finding both commonalities and differences. The article then considers the kind of leadership required of public service leaders in the present economic climate and to handle crises and emergencies. The place of individual leadership and collective leadership and consensus is discussed, with a suggestion that charismatic individual leadership may play a more important role in the public sector than it typically has done in less turbulent times in the past. The public sector is becoming more like the private sector in this respect. The article ends with key implications of the analysis for leadership in practice.