Inducement and Public-Private Partnerships: a Case Study of Privatized Community Colleges
Pei-An Lu *
Abstract
The policy instrument, derived from the spirit of “new public management,” public-private partnerships (PPPs) ideally ought to be based on public and private sectors undertaking the public accountability reciprocally and, furthermore, transcend outsourcing, privatization and contract-out for building a sound and long-term relationship. After the PPPs with good intention have been initiated, the government plans and implements inducement for strengthening the relationship between the public and private sectors. Surprisingly, it has resulted in many unexpected shocks.
This study is grounded upon the planning, implementing and outcome of policy instrument. First, the author makes a description of normality and variation of PPPs; second, he probes what impacts have been made on PPPs from inducement; third, with a case study of privatized community colleges, he uses literature analysis and interviews to induce the context of development of privatized community colleges and its PPPs, and how the inducements (i.e. campus, grant-in-aid, performance assessment and degree meriting) influences PPPs and the performance of coproduction. The finding of this study is that the inducements do have some unintentional and even dysfunctional impacts on PPPs: first, the private contractors without their own campus would bear higher risks; second, the relationship between the public and private sectors tends to become asymmetric and reluctant collaboration; third, the advantages of collaboration such as service diversity, community-based services and deinstitutionalization would be reduced; fourth, improper encouragement for myopic behaviors and hasty task planning could happen; and fifth, there could be unbalanced and oneway accountability of the private contractors. These situations show that both public and private sectors have to deliberately deal with the orientation and legal foundation of privatized community colleges. In the meantime, the government should lead a symmetric and reciprocal partnership positively and try to keep the private sector from being controlled and dependent, and to keep the relationship well-balanced and interdependent.
Keywords: policy instruments, inducements, public-private partnerships,
community colleges, privatization
* Ph. D. Student, Department of Public Policy and Management, Shih Hsin University.
http://www.exam.gov.tw/public/Data/352314184571.pdf