Applying a qualitative case study approach to study values in public-private partnerships

Abstract

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are used for the provision of public infrastructure such as roads, schools and hospitals and related services such as maintenance, cleaning and catering. They are often considered to be an organisational manifestation of the new public management (NPM) paradigm. Whereas critical scholars suggest that the introduction of private sector management techniques and values into the public sector may harm so-called public values such as accountability, transparency and quality, supporters of the NPM paradigm believe the opposite, even suggesting that public values may be strengthened. This chapter goes beyond the often normative debate on the desirability of PPPs to instead describe how a multiple qualitative case study approach analysing how actors in PPPs give meaning to public values in practice can be applied to assess the extent to which public values are safeguarded in PPPs.