TY - JOUR
T1 - Managing Contracts under the UK Private Finance Initiative: Evidence from the National Health Service
AU - Lonsdale, Christopher
AU - Watson, Glyn
PY - 2007/10/29
Y1 - 2007/10/29
N2 - Over recent years, a number of contributors to the public management literature have argued that the buyer-supplier relationships generated by the UK Private Finance Initiative (PFI) are qualitatively different from those generated by traditional contracting out. References have been made to equality, transparency, risk-sharing and trust. In this article, the authors test a contrary argument: that UK public managers negotiate and implement PFI contracts within an environment which is, to a significant extent, characterised by supplier opportunism, something that requires them to employ an extremely assiduous, if not necessarily distant, approach to contract and relationship management. The testing of this argument is undertaken with evidence from PFI construction contracts operated within the National Health Service.
AB - Over recent years, a number of contributors to the public management literature have argued that the buyer-supplier relationships generated by the UK Private Finance Initiative (PFI) are qualitatively different from those generated by traditional contracting out. References have been made to equality, transparency, risk-sharing and trust. In this article, the authors test a contrary argument: that UK public managers negotiate and implement PFI contracts within an environment which is, to a significant extent, characterised by supplier opportunism, something that requires them to employ an extremely assiduous, if not necessarily distant, approach to contract and relationship management. The testing of this argument is undertaken with evidence from PFI construction contracts operated within the National Health Service.
U2 - 10.1332/030557307782453010
DO - 10.1332/030557307782453010
M3 - Article
SN - 1470-8442
VL - 35
SP - 683
EP - 700
JO - Policy and politics
JF - Policy and politics
IS - 4
ER -