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The purpose of the chapter is to develop the pragmatic logical framework for safeguarding successful Public–Private Partnership (PPP) implementations in water supply in emerging markets. The case analysis related to the research question of how efficacy of PPP implementations could be improved revealed considerable shortfalls within the current modus operandi. The research was limited to urban water utilities of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan with implications most relevant for emerging markets conditions. The proposed logical framework could improve efficacy and sustainability of PPP undertakings in water supply in developing countries. The framework is centred on the simple question: ‘What would constitute a meaningful quid pro quo within the envisioned PPP arrangement to eligible counterparts?’ The framework would necessitate properly answering many complex and uncomfortable questions of PPP arrangements, especially in terms of performance management, public accountability and underlying benefits to the parties. PPP in water utilities is a popular notion amongst governments and the international financial institutions (IFIs). PPP is commonly considered to be a tool for providing an optimal solution to chronic problems of water utilities in terms of underperformance and underinvestment. In-spite of massive efforts of modernization and institutional upgrade of the water utilities in Central Asia, success rate with PPP modalities is still rather low.

The paper seeks to assess the performance of 234 public and private water and wastewater utilities from industrialized and developing countries.

A group of financial and operational indicators was calculated for the sample utilities.

Some indicators calculated for the private sector, represented by US and UK water and wastewater utilities, demonstrated better values compared with public utilities, such as staff number per 1,000 connections and return on equity ratio and tariffs charged. On the other hand, the percentage of unaccounted‐for water and the debt to equity ratio evidenced no advantage in private over public utilities. Further, the performance of water and wastewater utilities of developing countries and Egypt does need improvement.

A key problem in most of water and wastewater utilities is the absence of performance assessment tools. To this end, this research utilized indicators as a means of performance assessment of water/wastewater utilities.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out an analysis of Italian water utility companies to determine whether their performance was related to certain relevant variables that have been broadly discussed in the existing literature. Among these are ownership structure, size and diversification. In addition, the paper considers another variable – the geographical location.

The paper reviewed the annual financial statements of 80 Italian water utility companies between 2004 and 2008. It also obtained data regarding tariffs, volumes supplied and population served from Conviri, the Italian national authority for water. Finally, the paper discusses the significant differences among clusters, using parametric statistic methods.

It was found that ownership structure, size, diversification and geographical location had an impact on the performance of water utility companies, although with different degrees of significance.

Further studies are necessary in order to improve the way that performance of water utilities is assessed. First of all, it might be helpful to improve our data categories, adding financial data, tariffs, volumes supplied and population served for more than one year and obtaining segmental reports for multi‐utilities. In addition, it would be interesting to apply other methods, such as DEA analysis, to confirm our research findings.

For a local authority it is convenient to entrust water services to publicly owned companies because they apply lower tariffs and make higher investments pro capita on the pipe network. Moreover, since economies of scale and scope exist, a company's growth and diversification should be encouraged.

In Italy the water industry is currently the focus of a vast political debate. As a matter of fact, a recent law (n. 133/2008 article 23‐bis modified in November 2009) encourages private administration of this industry. The results led to an improvement in the debate on the strategic choices and organizational structure of water utilities, giving helpful suggestions to policy makers and local authorities for developing future strategies.

The research findings improve the existing literature on performance assessment regarding water utilities, for the first time focusing on the Italian context, where companies with different features coexist: public and private utilities, small, medium and large companies as well as mono and multi‐utilities.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate and compare the efficiency of several water utilities using three frontier techniques. Moreover, this study estimates the impact of several qualities of service variables on water utilities’ performance.

The paper utilizes three frontier techniques such as data envelopment analysis (DEA), stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) and stochastic non-parametric envelopment of data (StoNED) to estimate efficiency scores.

Efficiency scores for each methodological approach were different being on average, 0.745, 0.857 and 0.933 for SFA, DEA and StoNED methods, respectively. Moreover, it was evidenced that water leakage had a statistically significant impact on water utilities’ costs.

The choice of an adequate and robust method for benchmarking the efficiency of water utilities is very relevant for water regulators because it affects decision making process such as water tariffs and design incentives to improve the performance and quality of service of water utilities.

This paper evaluates and compares the performance of a sample of water utilities using three different frontier methods. It has been revealed that the choice of the efficiency assessment method matters. Unlike SFA and DEA, a lower variability was shown in the efficiency scores obtained from the StoNED method.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a suitable benchmarking framework that encompasses multiple criteria of sustainable water supply services for assessing the performance of select North Indian urban water utilities and also to arrive at potential for input reductions (or efficient input levels).

The study considers 35 North Indian urban water utilities pertaining to two union territories (Chandigarh and Delhi) and three states (Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh) for sustainability‐based performance assessment using input‐oriented variable returns to scale data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. Important criteria considered for sustainable water supply services are service sufficiency, service reliability, resource conservation, staff rationalization, and business viability which in turn address the key sustainability dimensions (social, environmental and financial).

The approach when applied to a sample of 35 North Indian urban water utilities shows low‐performance levels for most of the utilities, with significant scope for reduction in operation and maintenance expenditure, staff size and water losses. State/UT‐wise analysis of sustainability‐based average efficiency presents the highest score for Chandigarh and the least score for Haryana, whereas the rest of the three states/UT score in between them.

Limited data availability has constrained the incorporation of other sustainability criteria (such as services to the poor, tariff design, customer services, revenue functions, etc.) for efficiency analysis of urban water utilities. Also, estimation of efficiency scores does not encompass the effect of exogenous environmental factors which are beyond utilities' managerial control (such as topography, population density, water source, ownership status, etc.).

This framework would be useful for the regulator or operator of the facility to rank the utilities and devise performance‐linked incentive mechanism or price cap regulation.

This paper is a significant departure from the other international benchmarking initiatives/studies as it develops a holistic framework for benchmarking in the water sector that encompasses multiple criteria of sustainable water supply services using DEA as a tool.

The study seeks to add to the understanding of the diffusion and decline of environmental reporting practices.

Semi-structured interviews and municipal water utility publications are analysed to identify factors which have influenced the diffusion and subsequent decline of environmental reporting practices within the Finnish water sector.

The findings suggest a dynamic view of the diffusion and decline of environmental reporting, showing that a variety of forces operated jointly over time. The initial swift diffusion may be mostly explained from the perspectives of fad and fashion, whereas the subsequent gradual decline of such reporting appears to have been driven mainly by internal organizational factors and a lack of outside pressure.

The paper relies on a qualitative dataset, implying that extensive care is needed when seeking to generalise or apply the findings to different contexts or organizational fields.

The findings presented here should prove interesting for public sector managers, who are considering how, if at all, their organization should engage in social and environmental reporting.

The paper provides new insights into public sector sustainability reporting and presents reasons for its decline. In addition, the analysis illustrates the applicability of Abrahamson's typology of innovation diffusion to the study of social and environmental reporting practices.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how benchmarking affects transparency and economic performance in the public sector.

The paper applies a quasi‐experimental method to 1989‐2000 time series data on benchmarking and non‐benchmarking water utilities in The Netherlands.

Benchmarking immediately enhanced transparency, but only affected utility economic performance after benchmarking information entered the public domain. This confirms that benchmarking enhances transparency and performance. The findings do not support the yardstick regulation hypothesis that utility managers will only tighten financial discipline when benchmarking is embedded in a regime of managed competition.

The main limitation of this study is its single‐industry scope. Further testing of benchmarking effects in other public services is needed to validate its findings.

The paper presents evidence from the Dutch water supply industry focusing on transparency and performance in collaborative benchmarking.

The purpose of this paper is to present a yardstick efficiency comparison of 269 Indonesian municipal water utilities (MWUs) and measures the impact of exogenous environmental variables on efficiency scores.

Two-stage Stackelberg leader-follower data envelopment analysis (DEA) and artificial neural networks (ANN) were employed.

Given that serviceability was treated as the leader and profitability as the follower, the first and second stage DEA scores were 55 and 32 percent (0 percent = totally inefficient, 100 percent = perfectly efficient), respectively. This indicates sizeable opportunities for improvement, with 39 percent of the total sample facing serious problems in both first- and second-stage efficiencies. When profitability instead leads serviceability, this results in more decreased efficiency. The size of the population served was the most important exogenous environmental variable affecting DEA efficiency scores in both the first and second stages.

The present study was limited by the overly restrictive assumption that all MWUs operate at a constant-return-to-scale.

These research findings will enable better management of the MWUs in question, allowing their current level of performance to be objectively compared with that of their peers, both in terms of scale and area of operation. These findings will also help the government prioritize assistance measures for MWUs that are suffering from acute performance gaps, and to devise a strategic national plan to revitalize Indonesia’s water sector.

This paper enriches the body of knowledge by filling in knowledge gaps relating to benchmarking in Indonesia’s water industry, as well as in the application of ensemble two-stage DEA and ANN, which are still rare in the literature.

To introduce a new, low‐cost and easy‐to‐use leak detection system to help water utilities improve their effectiveness in locating leaks. The paper also presents an overview of leakage management strategies including acoustic and other leak detection techniques.

The design approach was based on the use personal computers as a platform and enhanced signal processing algorithms. This eliminated the need for a major component of the usual hardware of leak pinpointing correlators which reduced the system's cost; made it easy to use, and improved the effectiveness of locating leaks in all types of pipes.

Effectiveness of the new leak detection system for pinpointing leaks was demonstrated using real world examples. The system has promising potential for all water utilities, including small and medium‐sized ones and utilities in developing countries.

The leak detection system presented in the paper will help all water utilities, including small and medium‐sized ones and utilities in developing countries, to save water by dramatically improving their effectiveness in locating leaks in all types of pipes.

The paper presents information about a new effective system for locating leaks in water distribution pipes. Effective leak detection tools are needed by water utilities worldwide.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Irish Government mobilised accounting concepts to assist in implementing domestic water billing. While such is commonplace in other jurisdictions and is generally accepted as necessary to sustain a water supply, previous attempts were unsuccessful and a political hot potato.

The authors use an actor-network theory inspired approach. Specifically, the concepts of calculative spaces and their “otherness” to non-calculative spaces are used to analyse how accounting concepts were mobilised and the effects they had in the introduction of domestic water billing. The authors utilise publically available documents such as legislation, programmes for government, regulator publications, media reports and parliamentary records in the analysis over the period from 1983 to late 2014.

The analysis highlights how the implementation of domestic water billing involved the assembling of many divergent actors including the mobilisation of accounting concepts. Specifically the concept of “cost” became a contested entity. The government mobilised it in a conventional way to represent the resourcing of the water supply. Countering this, domestic water users associated “cost” with a direct impact on their own resources and lives. Thus, an entity usually associated with the economic realm was embroiled in political processes, with much of what they were supposed to represent becoming invisible. Thus the authors observed accounting concepts being mobilised to support the gaining of a specific political ends, the implementation of domestic billing, rather than as part of the means to implement a sustainable water supply within Ireland.

This research has some limitations, one being the authors draw on secondary data. However, the research does provide a detailed base from which to continue to study a new water utility over time.

This study demonstrates the complications that can occur when accounting concepts are associated with gaining of a political ends rather than as a means in the process of trying to achieve a sustainable water supply. Further, the process saw the creation of a new utility, which is a rare occurrence in the developed world, and a water utility even more so; this study demonstrates the role accounting concepts can have in this creation.