Sustainable Public Management

Neil M. Boyd, Eric C. Martin, Neil M. Boyd, Eric C. Martin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000440775
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Sustainable Public Management explores key issues in public sector sustainable management that span from Nation/State to local government. It highlights state-of-the art articulations of public-private partnerships, public engagement, inter-organizational networks, sustainability policy, strategy, standard setting, and reporting. Sustainable management is an important topic across organizational forms in the private, not-for-profit, and public sectors because of the its practice is tied to some of the most pressing environmental and social problems that exist in the world. The public sector is especially important due to its scale and scope across the globe, the tangible impacts that public service delivery can make in resource efficiency and effectiveness, and in directly tackling critical sustainable development goals.

This book will be of great value to scholars, students, and policymakers interested in Public Administration and Management, Sustainable Management and Development.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Public Management Review.

Part I
National & State-Level

Public-private partnerships as instruments to achieve sustainability-related objectives: the state of the art and a research agenda

Pinz Alexander, Roudyani Nahid and Thaler Julia

ABSTRACT

The growing importance of public-private partnerships (PPPs) suggests the need to assess their contributions to sustainability-related objectives. With a systematic review of business and public administration literature, this study elaborates on whether empirical evidence indicates that PPPs are appropriate instruments to accomplish the sustainability objectives of governments and which success factors are crucial for this purpose. Results reveal that business research on PPPs rarely integrates sustainability concepts; findings pertaining to their contributions to sustainability remain inconclusive. However, various success factors show the potential of PPPs, if appropriately managed. These findings suggest an agenda for research on PPPs in the context of sustainability.

Sustainability is a topic of great interest in modern society, centred on the goal of satisfying the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to fulfil their needs (Brundtland 1987). Modern views of sustainability generally cite three interrelated dimensions – economic, ecological and social (Hopwood, Mellor, and O’Brien 2005; Robinson and Tinker 1997) – that can produce ‘social equity and justice and economic prosperity in a clean, natural environment’ (Schaltegger and Burrrit 2005, 186). Moreover, sustainability is relevant to work in the public sector, where organizations strive for inter- and intra-generational justice and attempt to fulfil social, economic and environmental objectives through their regular activities (Leuenberger 2006). As Birney et al. (2009, 3) explain, ‘Every aspect of their role – from education to environmental services and from planning to social care – shapes how people live their lives. If public sector bodies do not take on this leadership challenge, citizens may find themselves cut off from sustainable lifestyles’. Therefore, sustainability should be a central guideline for public sector decision-making and actions (Fiorino 2010), subject to active management (Krause, Feiock, and Hawkins 2016).

The public sector also is likely to use unique measures to manage sustainability. For example, public sector actors can deploy regulation, legislation, directives or guidelines to accomplish sustainability-related objectives pertaining to environmental protection, social equity and economic development (Albareda, Lozano, and Ysa 2007; Eberlein and Matten 2009). They also might ensure sustainable public service provisioning by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of their public sector work (Leuenberger 2006; Osborne et al. 2015). Because public–private partnerships (PPPs) offer the potential to improve economic, social and ecological dimensions of sustainability, they represent promising instruments in this regard (Koppenjan and Enserink 2009; United Nations 2002). As ‘cooperative arrangement[s] between the public and private sectors [that] involve . . . the sharing of resources, risks, responsibilities and rewards with others for the achievement of joint objectives’ (Kwak, Chih, and Ibbs 2009, 52), PPPs gain importance in times of shifting paradigms in public management, such as from traditional administration to new public management (Hood 1991) to new public governance (Osborne 2006) or public value governance (Bryson, Crosby, and Bloomberg 2014; see also Hodge and Greve 2007; Torchia, Calabrò, and Morner 2015). However, tensions can arise between private actors’ commercial interest and the long-term sustainability objectives of governments, so it is not clear how effectively PPPs contribute to ecological, social and economic goals (Koppenjan and Enserink 2009). This question has substantial relevance. In the face of intense debates about the social, ecological and economic responsibilities of public and private actors (Albareda et al. 2008) and discussions of sustainability as a performance dimension of collaborations (Skelcher and Sullivan 2008) or public procurement (Brammer and Walker 2011), it is critical to analyse whether PPPs deliver on their promises for accomplishing sustainability-related objectives, as well as how this goal attainment might best be achieved.

This article presents a comprehensive review of empirical business and public administration literature on PPPs, to elaborate on the question of whether empirical evidence indicates that PPPs represent an appropriate organizational form for accomplishing the sustainability-related objectives of governments. In addition, it summarizes the results of empirical studies that identify some critical success factors of PPPs crucial for that purpose (e.g. Kwak, Chih, and Ibbs 2009), that is, ‘the few key areas where “things must go right” for the [partnership] to flourish’ (Rockart 1979, 85). Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature analysis (Denyer and Tranfield 2009). First, we review the policy fields in which PPPs have been analysed from a management perspective. Second, we examine how far the sustainability concept has been integrated into such research. Third, we assess the potential of PPPs to accomplish sustainability-related objectives and then elaborate on the success factors crucial for this purpose. Fourth, we develop a research agenda for advancing knowledge about the management of PPPs in the context of sustainability. In this sense, our holistic approach to structuring PPP literature differentiates our analysis from other reviews that focus on specific subtopics, such as infrastructure development (e.g. Hodge and Greve 2007; Kwak, Chih, and Ibbs 2009), private finance initiatives (Broadbent and Laughlin 1999), the PPP concept (Weihe 2008) or the intellectual structure of the field (Marsilio, Cappellaro, and Cuccurullo 2011).

Sustainability and PPP

As the authors of the landmark report Our Common Future (Brundtland 1987) noted several decades ago, strong interdependencies mark the social, economic and ecological challenges of modern times. The well-being and very existence of humanity depend on the environment, so this report calls for a different approach to economic growth that can meet human needs while also respecting the constraints imposed by the environment. Governments accordingly have sought ways to implement policies that focus on human development, ensure participation in decision-making and establish equity in benefits, without neglecting environmental protections (Hopwood, Mellor, and O’Brien 2005). This Brundtland-established notion of sustainability involves a set of characteristics that help to establish the stability of the existing system for humanity. Several factors are necessary for its persistence, which makes them socially desirable goals (Costanza and Patten 1995). These goals reflect three different but interdependent subsystems (economic, social and ecological) that must be sustained internally and whose demands need be balanced to allow the current system to endure as a whole (Fiorino 2010; Robinson and Tinker 1997).

The economic or market system refers to the material well-being of people. In this subsystem, public policies focus on adequate standards of living and how to achieve them. The social system instead includes political structures and culture and seeks to support social issues such as equity, political freedom, gender rights, basic education, health care and democratic governance. Finally, the ecological subsystem pertains to the biosphere and its protection, as a means to sustain human existence. For this purpose, governments implement policies to improve human health and well-being (sanitation, clean air, safe drinking water), eco-system health (habitat protection, biodiversity, water stress, climate stress) and resource sustainability (water supply, renewable energy, forest resources, soil erosion/quality) (Fiorino 2010; Robinson and Tinker 1997).

Balancing and sustaining these sustainability-related objectives occur through a political process (Fiorino 2010). Several global conferences organized by the United Nations seek to foster the sustainability concept as a guideline for public policy. In 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro introduced Agenda 21, an action plan for sustainable development that can be implemented on international, national and local levels. The international community thus acknowledges the interdependence of ecological, social and economic subsystems; the plan also suggests means to fulfil system-relevant objectives (United Nations 1992). In turn, the importance of this programme was confirmed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (United Nations 2002) and the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development Rio+20 (United Nations 2012). At a recent United Nations Sustainable Development Summit in New York, Agenda 21 was complemented by Agenda 2030, which defines 17 sustainability goals that are valid for developing and developed countries (United Nations 2015) (see Table 1).

Table 1. Agenda 2030 sustainability goals.

Sustainable development goals	Description
1. No poverty	End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. Zero hunger	End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Good health and well-being	Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
4. Quality education	Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
5. Gender equality	Achieve gender...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I National & State-Level
• Part II Local Government
• Index