Contracting for Public Value: New Thinking for More Effective, Accountable, and Sustainable Public Service Contracts

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) play an increasingly central role in the delivery of public services worldwide, promoting long-term institutional cooperation through multisector partnerships. If well-structured and managed, PPPs offer the opportunity to expand public service capacities while sharing financial and operational risks and responsibilities with private partners. Yet many PPPs experience conflict and fail, squandering public resources and falling short in serving the public interest.Contracting for Public Value extensively analyzes the contractual arrangements and relationships that serve as the scaffolding for PPPs, and how they can be designed, developed, and managed to promote more effective, accountable, and sustainable partnerships for public services delivery. The book focuses on two in-depth case studies of complex, multiactor PPPs--one in the United States and one in the United Kingdom--that employed outcomes-based contracts in arranging for service provision to vulnerable populations. Drawing on multiple theoretical models, the book characterizes the organizational structures, contractual features, and exchange relationships among the respective sets of PPP partners. It presents theory-informed, comparative analyses using rich case-study data to illuminate how the formal and relational contract features structured the collaborations and either supported or impeded the success of the PPPs. The analysis generates new knowledge that challenges the predominance of the traditional formal contract that has governed most PPPs and introduces new thinking about relational contracting and systems change to enhance the success of PPPs.Practitioners will derive specific, original guidance and examples from this book on how to champion public value in designing and executing a PPP contract, center relationship building and fortify PPPs with effective institutional and accountability mechanisms, and sustain long-term, public-private collaboration.

Table of Contents:
1: Crafting Public-Private Partnerships that Champion What is Good for and Valued by the Public 2: Contractual Pathways to Sustained Public-Private Partnership Collaboration and Success 3: Two High-Profile Public-Private Partnerships on the Spectrum from Formal to Relational 4: Analysis of a March Down Different Paths to Public-Private Partnership Failure Versus Success 5: Performance and Accountability 6: New Thinking for More Effective, Accountable, and Sustainable Public-Private Partnerships Appendix 1: Clauses Potentially Undermining Public Value Appendix 2: Translating Public Values to PPP Contract Design and Practice Appendix 3: Translating Judicial Insights into Language for PPP Contracts

About the Author :
Carolyn Heinrich is a University Distinguished Professor of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations and Political Science and the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics at Vanderbilt University. She holds secondary appointments in Economics and in Health Policy in the School of Medicine. Her research focuses on education, workforce development, health and social welfare policy, and public management. Deanna Malatesta is an associate professor at Indiana University's O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Her research focuses on public-private partnerships, inter-organizational collaboration, and contract governance. She earned her MPA from Rutgers University-Camden and her doctorate from the University of Georgia. She is a coauthor of the widely acclaimed public management textbook Understanding and Managing Public Organizations. Eleanor Carter is a UKRI Future Leaders Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Blavatnik School of Government and the academic co-director of the Government Outcomes Lab. Her research explores the potential of novel contracting arrangements, such as social outcomes contracts and impact bonds, to facilitate purposeful partnerships and effective services. Michael Gibson is a DPhil student in public policy and research and a policy associate with the Government Outcomes Lab at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. His research explores how trust between partners can be built and reconciled with the need for public accountability, and the role that different public values might play in influencing this. Nigel Ball is the director of Social Purpose Lab at University of the Arts London. He has extensive experience in the field of social change spanning government, social enterprise, and academia. He has built a career taking new projects and ideas and making them real, spanning a long succession of leadership roles. He was instrumental in the development of Oxford University's Government Outcomes Lab, and its annual Social Outcomes Conference.

Review :
A terrific analysis of how to procure public services. The key is not just a good contract but the building of a relationship to deal with the inevitable unknowns. The combination of conceptual discussion and case studies makes this a vital read. Contracting for Public Value advances public management by showing, through comparative case analysis and process tracing, that authority dynamics and communication patterns matter more than rigid contracts. The authors center relational contracting-balancing formal agreements with trust, flexibility, and shared purpose. Their actionable guidance helps public managers design collaborative, learning-focused partnerships that deliver sustainable, citizen-centered results and stronger public value. This book is essential for anyone seeking effective, accountable public service delivery. For commissioners and providers who must make complex PPPs work, this book is practical, evidence-based, and usable. It shows with force how to embed public value and formal relational contracts-distilling hard lessons from Indiana-IBM and the Kirklees KBOP-so deals perform for citizens, not just spreadsheets. The applied research behind Contracting for Public Value is groundbreaking. The authors brilliantly articulate how government contracts can move beyond transactional relationships to create sustainable public value and the case studies clearly show the value of making the shift to relational contracting. A must-read for anyone committed to reimagining public procurement for the 21st century. Contracting for Public Value offers a groundbreaking synthesis of theory and practice on public-private partnerships. Drawing on comparative case studies and formal-relational contract theory, the authors provide rigorous insights and actionable guidance for advancing equity, accountability, and sustainable collaboration in complex social service delivery. As both a practitioner in the field and a legislator, I highly recommend this book to public servants who are committed to delivering the highest quality goods and services to those who have entrusted us with their tax dollars to meet their needs. Using rigorous case studies from the United States and abroad, this excellent work challenges the traditional public-private partnership contracts as rigid and stifling to sustainable innovation. Instead, it demonstrates that the better focus on combining relationships, accountability, and flexible systems serves the higher purpose of improving the systems that affect vulnerable populations and providing longer impact.