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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.

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.

This paper explores similarities and differences between public sector internal auditing and its counterpart in the private sector. Features examined include organizational status, outsourcing, using internal audit as a “tour of duty” function, activities and relationships with the external auditor. The study is based on a survey of chief internal auditors in organizations in Australia and New Zealand. Results suggest that there are differences in status between internal audit in the two sectors, with public sector internal auditors less likely to report to the chief financial officer. While a similar amount of work is outsourced, public sector organizations are more likely than those in the private sector to outsource to the external auditor. There is little difference between internal audit activities and interactions with external audit in the two sectors. However, private sector internal audit is perceived to lead to a greater reduction in audit fees compared to that in the public sector.

Segmentation theory argues that the labor market is composed of a variety of non-competing segments between which rewards to human capital are determined by institutional structures. This paper presents new evidence on sector-wise earning differential for both male and female samples to assess the implications of segmentation theory.

Primary data is collected through simple random sampling technique with a survey questionnaire from 954 employed individuals of Southern Punjab, the less developed region of Pakistan. OAXACA decomposition technique is adopted to estimate earning differential.

Empirical estimates of OAXACA decomposition reveal that the extent of discrimination between public and private sector is greater in case of females than in male samples. Education and region are crucial factors behind sector-wise earning differential for both male and female samples. Job characteristics are more valued than occupation to explain sector-wise earning differential. Occupation largely contributes to explain public–private sector earning differential in male sample than in female sample. Moreover, job security is highly valued by females than males.

Segmentation of the institutional structure in a developing economy is empirically verified by using primary data due to non-availability of data on some variables from secondary data sources. This study attempts to explore the key factors of public–private sector wage differential for male and female samples separately due to the differences in their preferences for work and earning functions.

The purpose of this paper is primarily to analyse the implementation of shared services models in business enterprises or private sector and the benefits realised, thereafter; to a greater extent, focusing on the lessons learnt from such operations and exploring the potential of applying similar models in the public sector.

This research attempts to examine whether or not the concepts regarding shared service in the private sector are valid and applicable in the public sector.

Even though the shared services concept and related models are significantly prevalent across the business enterprises or private sector and government sector, the author argues that the shared services model developed in the private sector may further significantly facilitate governments and public agencies in dealing with the recent changes (i.e. due to global financial crisis) in their environments and to become more effective and efficient.

This paper brings together some of the key discussions from the business and private sector on shared services and discusses their applicability in the public sector context.

This chapter uses data from the World Bank’s Private Participation in Infrastructure project database, and hand-collected evidence on project performance, to examine how PPPs are applied to infrastructure development in Africa, and how well they have delivered expected benefits. It has two analytical parts: an investment trend analysis and a meta-analysis of project performance and explanatory factors. The analysis shows growth both in number and volume of PPP investments that is weaker than that observed in other developing regions, and more volatile. The performance of PPP contracts appears to be improving over time with an overall cancelation rate of 7% over the assessment period. Although PPPs have contributed to increasing infrastructure stock, they have not completely met their potential, especially with respect to increasing infrastructure access rates. The main determinants of performance include accuracy of costing and allocation of risks, consistency of macro policies with the objectives and functioning of PPPs, coherence of sector policies and plans and local capacity. Contract cancellations are mainly explained by the misalignment of outcomes with government objectives, in particular, access and investment objectives. These findings suggest that PPP application should be well planned to ensure coherence of a wide range of policies, readiness of institutions and capacity of public sector actors. This chapter contributes to closing information gaps on a relatively novel policy instrument, and provides useful evidence to support prudent policy making at the time of considerable growth in PPP application.

Purpose: Worldwide economies have been shattered by the alarming increase in Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) in Banking Sector. In India, the rise in NPA levels gives a clear insight into the health of industry and state. This study aims to determine how NPAs in India impact the profitability of eight banks chosen from the public and private sectors; specifically: Punjab National Bank (PNB), Bank of India (BOI), UCO Bank, Punjab and Sind Bank (PSB), HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, and Yes Bank; during the period 2009/2010 to 2017/2018.

Design/methodology/approach: The study utilised IBM SPSS version 20 application to carry out our statistical analysis of measures of central location (mean and median), measures of dispersion (standard deviation), to carry out the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test to check the normality of data, the Mann–Whitney U test (for two groups) for median comparison between private and public sector banks and the Kruskal–Wallis test (for more than two groups) for median comparison for more than two banks. p ≤0.01 and p ≤0.05 were the two-tailed significance level used for determining the significance of all statistical tests.

Findings: Trend analysis and statistical tests show that the trend in public sector banks to have NPAs is higher compared to private sector banks, and losses arising from NPA impact the banks’ profitability.

Practical implications: It is apparent that NPAs are a large threat to banks in India as it reflects the state of the Indian economy. The growth of the economic cycle is predominantly dependent on the smooth and profitable functioning of private and public sector banks. This current study focusses on and compares the impact of NPAs on the profitability of public and private sector banks. NPAs have grown exponentially more in the case of public sector banks than private sector banks, which has affected the former banks’ financial health and performance. Increases in the level of NPAs adversely affect the working style and long-term stability of public and private sector banks in the economy.

Social Implications: NPAs have a negative influence on the profitability of the banks as well as on the economic growth of the country too. However, it is recommended that management in the banking sector, particularly the public banks, should use various preventive and recovery strategies to reduce the risk of failure and to keep track of NPAs to stay safe.

Originality/value: This study aims to determine how NPAs in India impact the profitability of eight banks chosen from the public and private sectors; specifically: PNB, BOI, UCO Bank, PSB, HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, and Yes Bank; during the period 2009/2010 to 2017/2018.

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.

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.