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Scrutinizing Public–Private Partnerships for Development: Towards a Broad Evaluation Conception

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Abstract

The proliferation of public–private partnerships (PPPs) for development as an answer to many public challenges calls for careful evaluation. To this end, tailored frameworks are fundamental for helping understand the PPPs’ impact and for guiding corrective adjustment. Scholars have developed frameworks focusing on the partners’ relationships, the order of effects, and the distinction between outputs and outcomes. To capture a PPP’s complexity and multiple linkages with its environment, we argue that a thorough evaluation should adopt a stakeholder-oriented approach and consider the costs and benefits that a PPP implies for them—especially as taxpayers’ money is (at least partly) involved. For this purpose, we build on a stakeholder-oriented evaluation framework from the nonprofit business partnership literature. In line with our broad evaluation conception, we extend it with the manifold ripple effects that PPPs for development have and include the time dimension for the links between different PPP stages and related outcomes to become clearer. Applying this framework to an illustrative case, we highlight important direct and especially indirect stakeholder outcomes, which a narrow evaluation would omit, point to the challenges involved in the evaluation endeavor, and identify interesting future research areas.

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Notes

  1. For interesting examples, please have a look at www.weforum.org/issues and www.bpdws.org.

  2. Defining appropriate indicators is a challenging and controversial process. In view of the space constraints, we leave a deeper elaboration of this task to further papers.

  3. In Jordan and elsewhere, the public education sector faces institutional and financial constraints that affect the scope, accessibility, and quality of education services (World Economic Forum 2005). Improving educational performance requires substantial resources and expertise, which has led to the increased involvement of private and civil society actors in public education projects (Patrinos et al. 2009). The Jordanian Ministry of Education started using PPPs for development as a means to advance national education services.

  4. Probst et al. (2010) base their case on internal and external PPP documents, including the annual progress reports. They also draw on interviews with the partner organizations and beneficiaries, as well as a field trip, which helped capture the perceived direct and indirect PPP effects.

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Acknowledgments

The author thanks M. May Seitanidi, Sandra Waddock, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

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  1. University of Geneva, 40, Boulevard du Pont d’Arve, 1211, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Lea Stadtler

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Stadtler, L. Scrutinizing Public–Private Partnerships for Development: Towards a Broad Evaluation Conception. J Bus Ethics 135, 71–86 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-015-2730-1

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