External Environments
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Metcalf.pdf
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management
Les Metcalfe • Antonio Lapenta
Published online: 18 October 2012
� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012
Abstract Partnerships are not new phenomena in public administration. However, there is now a more explicit recognition that managing public policy networks
involves partnerships within and across policy fields and linking interdependent
levels of government nationally and internationally. The aim of this paper is to
widen the scope of strategic choice in designing partnerships in public management
by developing an alternative approach: the Power-Role Analysis. As the term
suggests, Power-Role Analysis uses distinctions between types of power and the
roles and relationships corresponding with them to clarify and define different forms
of partnership. Power-role analysis provides a basis for considering systematically
the problems that arise in managing partnerships of different kinds. It also gives
guidance for establishing congruence between forms of partnerships and the results
to be expected from selecting one form rather than another. The Power-Role
analysis is afterwards performed, its focus being two empirical cases.
Keywords Partnerships � Strategic management � Power-role analysis � Strategic choice � Public management
1 Introduction: fashion and fundamentals in the partnerships debate
Strategic management involves setting new policy directions in response to
changing policy needs and political circumstances. External changes may trigger
new policy responses or redefined political objectives may prompt revaluation of
L. Metcalfe
Durham Business School, Durham University, Mill Hill Lane, Durham DH1 3LB, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Lapenta (&) Independent Public Management Consultant, Potenza, Italy
e-mail: [email protected]
123
J Manag Gov (2014) 18:51–76
DOI 10.1007/s10997-012-9233-6
existing policies. Whatever the motivation, political leaders routinely employ the
rhetoric of strategic management when launching new initiatives. But the success of
new political strategies often requires the parallel development of administrative
capacities because existing organisations are not fit for new purposes. Strategic
management includes creation of appropriate organisational structures and
management systems that will ensure that policies will work.
In recent years ‘‘partnerships’’ have become the fashionable solution in public
management reform. The favoured response to the question ‘‘How will this work in
practice?’’ has been to invoke the idea of ‘‘partnerships’’, especially public–private
partnerships. It is a step forward that this has moved debate away from the polar
opposites of state versus market. It is increasingly apparent that neither the state
alone nor the market alone provides adequate solutions to many problems of
managing public service provision and social development. Implementing strategic
change frequently requires a combined effort with public and private actors working
together in partnership.
However, while ‘‘partnership’’ has become a fashionable political slogan there is a
danger that it is regarded as a newly-discovered panacea for problems of public
management. Partnerships are not new phenomena in public administration.
Governments have long used partnerships as a tool for the delivery of public
services. Public procurement and contracting are established practice, even if the
language of partnership has not always been used. The reason is simple: most public
policies are managed through networks of organisations rather than being the
exclusive responsibility of a single organisation (Klijn 2005). However, there is now a
more explicit recognition that managing public policy networks involves partnerships
within and across policy fields and linking interdependent levels of government
nationally and internationally (Metcalfe et al. 2002). In the European Union (EU) the
progress of European integration requires the development of very extensive
networks of partnerships across all member states. The EU’s chronic management
deficit is partly due to failures to build capacities for managing partnerships across
national boundaries and levels of government to match strategic initiatives for
deepening and widening integration (Metcalfe 2000a, 2004). The architecture of EU
policy regimes is constructed from partnerships. The ongoing crisis in the Euro zone,
with its damaging implications for the stability of the banking system, the viability of
national public finances and negative consequences for macroeconomic performance
is by far the most serious example of the failure to build appropriate partnerships for
managing an exceedingly complex multilevel governance regime.
There is a worrying lack of usable theory about the design of partnerships. An
important obstacle to the systematic use of partnerships is lack of clarity about the
options available and consistent criteria for choosing among them. Fashionable
reform initiatives, often with a business bias, have shaped public perceptions of
what partnership means and what can be expected of partnerships in practice. Most
prominently, there has been a heavy emphasis on public–private partnerships as the
route to better value for money and superior performance in the delivery of services.
Part of the appeal of such partnerships is that they seem to represent a means of
bringing in business management methods, models and expertise without going to
the extreme of privatisation. Public–private partnerships are often contract based.
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The assumption being that binding contracts give greater incentives and stronger
sanctions for ensuring good performance by agents and provide principals with a
clearer basis for evaluating outcomes. The benefits of this more commercial
approach are defined variously in terms of efficiency of service provision, risk
sharing and accountability for results and changing the service culture to one that
ensures a ‘‘customer orientation’’.
A recent OECD (2008) report sets out what may be taken as a statement of the
current orthodoxy about public–private partnerships (PPPs). It describes PPPs as
occupying ‘‘a middle ground between traditional public procurement and
privatisation’’.
‘‘In this book,…the OECD defines a public–private partnership as an agreement between the government and one or more private partners (which
may include the operators and the financers) according to which the private
partners deliver the service in such a manner that the service delivery
objectives of the government are aligned with the profit objectives of the
private partners and where the effectiveness of the alignment depends on a
sufficient transfer of risk to the private partners.’’
Sometimes such claims may be justified—even if convincing evaluations are few
and far between. But there are growing criticisms that in practice public–private
partnerships have often proved difficult to manage and have not achieved the
expected results. In British government the Private Finance Initiative: a policy that
relies on businesses to provide finance for capital projects such as building roads,
schools and hospitals and to continue to manage them once completed: has been
criticised in Parliament and by the National Audit Office for being too expensive,
not transferring risk and making it relatively easy for businesses escape operational
responsibilities and financial penalties for poor performance. Besides, this quasi
commercial approach is not always appropriate. There are many fields of policy
where partnerships are essential to manage interdependence and coordinate service
delivery efforts but where the frequently reiterated assumption that the public is a
‘‘customer’’ is erroneous. Taxpayers, hospital patients, convicted prisoners,
businesses subject to regulation, and social welfare recipients are only a few
illustrations of the variety of ways in which governments define their relationships
with various publics. Treating all as customers seriously distorts the meaning of the
term and applies mistaken performance criteria.
Outsourcing service provision through contract-based public–private partnerships
is often seen as the alternative to direct bureaucratic administration. But further
investigation reveals a more complex situation. First, Public–Private Partnerships
can take many different forms. The OECD study referred to above lists fourteen
different types of PPPs arrayed along a continuum from those that are close to
conventional public administration to those that are similar to business. Second,
partnerships take a variety of forms that cannot be placed along this continuum.
Governments may involve different kinds of non-governmental organisations in
policy management. In many countries the relations between levels of government
or between government and ‘‘social partners’’—trade associations, trade unions,
employers organisations community groups NGOs—have been described in terms
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 53
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of partnership. They are often seen as ways of promoting democratic rather than
commercial values by encouraging participation in the policy process and enhancing
social cohesion. They cannot be compressed into the straitjacket of public–private
partnerships.
This highlights an important general issue. Partnerships may serve a variety of
purposes but there is a danger that discrepancies emerge between the set of values
partnerships are presumed to embody and the management tools through which they
are implemented. Partnerships are often held to more egalitarian and voluntaristic
than conventional hierarchical bureaucracies. In public–private partnerships agree-
ments are negotiated rather than imposed. In democratic partnerships consultation
and consensus rather than top-down processes are the preferred means of arriving at
policy decisions. There is a pervasive tendency to de-emphasise and downplay the
exercise of power in partnerships or even to treat partnership and power as
antithetical. However, contract management often requires hierarchical manage-
ment methods to ensure that the terms of agreements are adhered to. Furthermore,
participation in policy-making does not preclude the need for executive processes
involving the exercise of authority in the course of implementation. Power in one
form or another, as this paper will argue, is an integral part of managing
partnerships.
Though partnership has been a fashionable theme of public management reform
some fundamental problems have been glossed over. Governments use partnerships
in situations where it would be inappropriate to use any of the various PPP formulae
but a generally agreed way of matching partnership structures to new political
strategies is lacking. The task of developing partnership options to match new
public management strategies has been poorly handled. Too much reliance has been
placed on imitation and there has been too little innovation. What is appropriate for
managing the construction of roads is not the same as for promoting economic
development. Running a hospital has different requirements from integrating the
work of welfare services for the elderly. Partnerships of a different kind are needed
to coordinate the work of agencies such as police, hospitals, social workers and
customs services dealing with drug abuse. Applying the blanket term ‘‘partnership’’
begs the question of what form of partnerships would be appropriate in each case.
2 Power-role analysis
There is an urgent need for a rethink to escape the confusion and provide a practical
framework for designing workable partnerships that meet diverse needs. In order to
define how partnerships can, in practice, deliver what they promise it is necessary to
go beyond fashion and look at fundamentals by clarifying the concept of partnership
and also being more specific about what types of partnerships should underpin
particular strategies. Questions need to be asked about the strategic options that
exist (or can be invented) and the capacities needed to manage partnerships
productively.
The aim of this paper is to widen the scope of strategic choice in designing
partnerships in public management by developing an approach we call Power-Role
54 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
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Analysis. As the term suggests, Power-Role Analysis uses distinctions between
types of power and the roles and relationships corresponding with them to clarify
and define different forms of partnership. It also provides a basis for considering
systematically the problems that arise in managing partnerships of different kinds. It
will be argued that the repertoire of partnerships options is much wider than those
on the public private partnership continuum.
Power-Role Analysis marks a departure from the most usual approaches to the
study of partnerships and departs significantly from what is often called ‘‘evidence-
based policy analysis’’. The latter more often follows practice rather than guides it.
To the extent that it tracks partnership reform initiatives and attempts to document
and categorise the various forms of partnership that have been adopted this is
unavoidable—but limiting. While such research has produced a wealth of empirical
material it runs into some recurrent methodological difficulties. Attempts to bring
order to empirical diversity necessitate the construction of typologies and
classifications. This is no simple task. The OECD study referred to above lists
fourteen different types of PPPs. In his survey of the field, Skelcher (2005)
highlighted the diversity of partnerships and the difficulties of finding a coherent
basis for classification. Typically, classificatory schemes prove to be neither
exhaustive nor mutually exclusive. New types of partnership are encountered that
force the extension of the classificatory system. However the ad hoc proliferation of
categories never proves conclusive. It is almost a matter of professional pride for
researchers to show that their newly discovered cases do not fit into any existing
standard category. Aside from this there is the problem of hybrids and mixed types.
Empirical cases display features of more than one ‘‘type’’ and straddle different
categories in a classificatory scheme. Hybridity seems to be more than just a minor,
occasional, occurrence because important cases often do not fall into established
categories.
In the light of this it is possible to make two quite different responses. One is to
continue to try harder to assemble empirical data about partnerships as a basis for a
bigger and better system of classification. This, however, assumes that we are
dealing with a finite and limited range of partnerships and the problems identified
above will gradually be resolved rather than become episodes in a never ending
story.
The alternative response proposed here, Power-Role Analysis, is radically
different. The aim of Power-Role Analysis is to establish general principles that can
be applied to the analysis and design of partnerships. It is more deductive in style
(but not anti-empirical). It asserts that there may be a virtually limitless diversity of
partnerships and inductive research will not reveal their fundamental features.
Power-Role Analysis builds on the assumption that the application of relatively
simple rules can, in combination, generate and guide the design of partnership
networks of considerable complexity and great diversity. It may be logically
impossible to infer the generating rules that give rise to the observable variety of
partnerships from even a very detailed knowledge of a wide range of empirical
cases. A paradoxical but important implication of it is that attempts to classify
empirical cases and generate empirical taxonomies of partnerships are not just
difficult but misconceived. More research effort and more cases will not achieve the
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 55
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desired result. This may come as a severe disappointment to a number of blind men
attempting to describe an elephant and unwittingly operating on the mistaken
assumption that they are all researching the same (non-evolving) animal.
Rules are not just constraints. They are design principles that act as stores of
information and signposts to regulate interactions among the components of a
system. Ulam (1974) showed that much more information is needed to describe the
resulting systems than to define the rules for designing them. While the principles
guiding the design and management of partnerships can be clearly stated the
practical results of their application can take an unlimited variety of forms. To draw
extravagant but useful parallel, what is needed is something equivalent to the
generative grammar developed by Chomsky in linguistics. Establishing a compre-
hensive and watertight empirical system for classifying partnerships is impossible in
the way that it is impossible to anticipate and catalogue all the possible sentences in
a language. The scope for developing innovative design options is open-ended and
not restricted to a finite set of partnerships. Hence, there is vast potential for
creativity in the design of partnerships as strategic management options in public
management.
Complex systems can have emergent properties that are difficult or impossible to
predict from a knowledge of their constituent parts. Holland’s (1998) elaboration of
this theme can be paraphrased as follows.
• Rules that are almost absurdly simple can generate coherent emergent phenomena.
• Emergence centres on interactions that are more than a summing of independent activities.
• Persistent emergent phenomena can serve as components of more complex emergent phenomena.
‘‘Power-Role Analysis’’ has both descriptive and prescriptive functions. First, it
provides a systematic way of analysing and mapping the great variety of forms of
partnership without the need to develop of an empirically based taxonomy. One of
the barriers to innovation in public management is that many strategic options have
not been considered because they do not fit with established institutional and
ideological preferences about the forms partnerships may take. There is no reason to
assume that partnership configurations are limited to those that have already been
tried. Nor that business management has already explored all the interesting options.
Indeed there are good grounds for hypothesising that the range of partnerships that
have been tried in practice is a small and skewed selection of those that are
potentially useful.
Second, Power-Role Analysis provides a set of ground rules or design principles
for aiding strategic public management. It offers a framework for identifying the
forms of partnership that match specific needs and prescribes guidelines for
developing them. Power Role Analysis brings new light to bear on the tension
between the logic of consequences or results and the logic of appropriateness in
public management (March and Olsen; 1995). It gives a basis for establishing
congruence between forms of partnership and the results to be expected from
selecting one form rather than another.
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2.1 Four types of power
‘‘We’ve seen repeatedly that much complexity can be generated in systems
defined by a few well-chosen rules. When we observe emergent phenomena,
we ought therefore to try to discover the rules that generate the phenomena.’’
(Holland 1998—p. 188)
There are many different approaches to the analysis of power and power will always
be a contested concept. But it is not the purpose here to offer a comprehensive
review of the subject. The task is a more limited one of drawing some key
distinctions between different types of power that underlie and structure the
relationships among actors in organisational environments. The underlying concept
of power in this context is a constructive rather than a destructive one. Power is
considered as an emergent property of cooperative relationships rather than the
reductionist concept of power as the ability to overcome resistance. It is power to do
work through coordinated effort and raise productivity rather than power to coerce
and impose sanctions. It is power in the sense that, for instance, superior teamwork
and the ability to work together makes one organisation or organisational network
more effective than another.
This section elaborates Power-Role Analysis by defining four power bases on
which on which all partnerships rest. Subsequent sections outline the elementary
forms of partnership corresponding with each of four types of power. In this context,
partnerships are conceptualised in terms of pairs of reciprocal roles and processes
through which working relationships are managed.
Distinctions between four types of power provide different bases for the
development of partnerships. The four power bases are qualitatively distinct and are
generally recognised in the political science and organisational theory literature. For
convenience of reference they are labelled Hierarchical Authority, Exchange,
Expert Authority and Influence. A brief explanation of each of them will be given
here. Clarification is needed because public management reforms have tended to
narrow the options by assuming that exchange is a defining feature of public–private
partnerships and exchange-based partnerships are diametrically opposed to hierar-
chically-based structures. Moreover, there is usually an implicit, if not explicit,
assumption that hierarchy is inferior to exchange as a basis for organisation.
Power-Role Analysis establishes broader foundations by encompassing four
basic types of power which provide the organising principles for partnerships rather
than just two. Furthermore, each of the four types of power is accorded equal status
as the basis for building partnerships because partnerships are defined inclusively as
cooperative working relationships among organisations and their publics. Exchange
is neither necessary nor sufficient as a power base for partnerships. Indeed some
important forms of partnership are based on hierarchical authority. Nor is it enough
to see exchange and hierarchical authority as the only alternatives although for
ideological reasons they often dominate public debate. It is important to include
expert authority and influence as equally important strategic options because each of
these types of power is found in public management partnerships. Expert Authority
is found in the pervasive presence of professionals in governments. There are many
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instances in which public services rely on the expertise of professionals. In service
delivery this includes expertise in such diverse fields such as social services, health,
education, the administration of justice, transport and the military. In policy
formulation it includes experts in all the fields mentioned above as well as others
such as economists, environmentalists and information technologists. Influence, the
power of persuasion, is found in situations where there is a need for solidarity to
build consensus as a basis for joint action or for representing common interests.
Influence processes create solidarity and collective commitment through a voluntary
process of resolving internal differences.
The logic underlying this fourfold categorisation of power rests on two
fundamental distinctions (a) between unilateral and bilateral decision-making and
(b) between negative and positive feedback. Cross-tabulating gives four types of
power relations. Hierarchical authority is power based on unilateral decision-
making and negative feedback. Exchange is based on bilateral decision-making and
positive feedback. Expert authority is based on unilateral decision-making and
positive feedback. To complete the picture, influence is based on bilateral decision-
making and negative feedback. The two forms of authority are similar in that they
both involve unilateral decision-making but while hierarchical authority has a
stabilising negative feedback dynamic, expert authority has a change-promoting
dynamic. Influence and exchange are similar in being based on bilateral decision-
making but differ in relying respectively on negative and positive feedback
processes. Thus, influence like hierarchy is a stabilising process while exchange
reinforces change.
2.2 Partnerships as working relationships between organisations
The four types of power defined above are familiar enough even if this way of
presenting them is not the usual one. Their importance is that they provide the
design principles and generating rules that underlie partnerships as working
relationships among organisations. In the simplest and most elementary cases power
is embedded in bilateral working relationships organised in pairs of complementary
roles. The four types of power provide distinct bases for partnerships defined by
reciprocal roles played by individuals or organisations. Engaging in partnerships
involves a mutually accepted division of labour between partners plus specific
processes for coordination in performing tasks and managing the relationship. The
complementary roles that partners play and the means of coordinating their
activities vary systematically with the type of power on which partnerships are
based.
The table below summarises the four pairs of roles that correspond with each
type of power. Hierarchical authority is embedded in administrator-subject
relationships. Of course the terminology may vary, depending on the particular
institutional context. The equivalent relationship may between superiors and
subordinates or between regulators and regulatees. Expert authority is embedded in
professional-client relationships. The dynamics of the professional client relation-
ship are different from those of hierarchical authority because they are geared to
solving the problems of clients or developing the problem solving capacity of the
58 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
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client system rather than maintaining control and ensuring compliance. In the case
of exchange, power is embedded in customer supplier roles and relationships are
governed by a self interested search for mutually beneficial agreements to serve
their separate interests. Finally, influence processes are built around the roles of
representatives and constituents and relations of solidarity and common interest.
The main features of the partnerships constructed on this basis will now be
discussed further (Table 1).
From a strategic management perspective what is important here is that the four
different types of power are exercised through interactions between partners that are
structured by these pairs of reciprocal roles. The assignment of one partner to a
particular role or the claim by one partner to play a particular role presumes the
ability and willingness of the other to play the complementary role. If, for example,
a new strategic initiative involves a public private partnership, casting government
in the role of customer purchasing services and a business acting as service
provider, the presumption is that the government organisation concerned has the
skills and attitudes required to play the active customer role and fully appreciates
that businesses will act as self interested market participants seeking the best deal
for themselves. These may not be the kinds of skills and attitudes that public
officials accustomed to working in hierarchical role relationships have acquired. In
the interests of clarity it will be helpful to consider the four types of partnerships in
isolation. For ease of reference they will be labelled commercial, administrative,
professional and democratic partnerships.
Commercial partnerships are based on exchange and involve the negotiation of
performance contracts between customers and suppliers. This is the form that public
–private partnerships are assumed to take. Often commercial partnerships utilise or
simulate competitive market processes in order to secure best value on price,
quality, risk sharing and delivery. Commercial partnerships are strongly associated
with recent public management reforms. Instead of services being provided by
government, commercial partnerships change relationships round so that services
are provided to government by the private sector on a contractual basis. Commercial
partnerships rely upon the adoption of business style management methods and
utilise the pressures of competitive markets to ensure value for money in the
provision of services. A major misconception about this kind of outsourcing of
public services is that that it simply hands public management tasks to private
organisations. But both customers and suppliers have responsibilities for managing
the partnership relationship. Where commercial partnerships are established there is
a significant management role for government as customer. The role of customer
Table 1 Pairs of roles forming partnerships
Types of power Pairs of roles
Hierarchical authority Administrator-subject
Expert authority Professional-client
Exchange Supplier-customer
Influence Representative-constituent
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 59
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presumes a very active and critical attitude towards supplier performance.
Government as customer should operate on the principle of caveat emptor.
Administrative partnerships have much in common with the hierarchical
relationships between bosses and subordinates in traditional forms of machine
bureaucracy. Administrative partnerships are based on the extension of hierarchical
authority across organisational boundaries. The main issue here is ensuring
compliance by subordinates with the policies prescribed by higher authority. It is the
administrative superior who has the main management responsibility. The key
management issues in administrative partnerships centre on familiar questions of
decentralisation and central control and this is where negative feedback processes
are important. For example, in regulatory regimes much of the detailed work of
policy implementation is delegated to the organisations that are subject to
regulation. Administrative partnerships are currently unfashionable but they are
still an essential part of the public management repertoire and can work well
provided the appropriate investments are made in management capacities at the
periphery and the centre.
Professional partnerships are based on based on the exercise of expert authority
rather than hierarchical authority or exchange relationships. Professional partner-
ships are less prominent in public debate about public–private partnerships than
commercial partnerships. But this does not mean they are less important in practice.
Specialist knowledge is essential in many areas of public policy. ‘‘Knowledge
workers’’ are ubiquitous in government from traditional professions such as law to
newer groups such as information technology specialists. Professionals and
professional organisations are prominent across the whole range of public
management. The professional-client relationship presupposes trust in the integrity
as well as the expertise of professionals. Professionals have autonomy from both
political superiors that they are expected to use to for the benefit of clients. The
establishment and application of professional standards of performance depends on
peer-group controls rather than either market pressures or hierarchical prescriptions.
A key question in professional partnerships is ‘‘Who is the client?’’ Sometimes
government itself is the client particularly in policy formulation. But often,
government employs the services of professionals to provide independent diagnoses
of needs and prescribe remedies for the problems of individuals, families,
communities, regions or industries or even another government. Development
projects frequently utilise the services of consultants and establish trilateral
relationships between professional, client and sponsor. Unlike hierarchical authority
when professionals exercise expert authority they cannot enforce compliance but
must secure the informed consent of their client.
Democratic partnerships are based on consensus and shared interests. This is
different from exchange relations and commercial partnerships where it is sufficient
that there is a coincidence of interests that enables willing buyers and willing sellers
to do a deal. Democratic partnerships are distinctive in being based on voluntarism,
participation and consensus. The role of representative is to facilitate the process of
defining and articulating the common interests of constituents. The importance of
influence and the power of persuasion in democratic partnerships is that it builds a
sense of solidarity and commitment to consensually agreed policies. Democratic
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partnerships are important in developing a sense of identity. There is less need for
extrinsic sticks and carrots to secure smooth implementation that there is with other
forms of partnerships. Paradoxically the stabilising function of this kind of
partnership is especially important in periods of change and transformation when
the erosion of an obsolescent consensus creates a risk of fragmentation and a new
basis of collective action is needed.
Representatives have functions in the maintenance of unity and the management
of change. The role of representative is to act on behalf of constituents but the
relationship is different from that of professional to clients. Professionals require a
sphere of discretion in order to arrive at an independent diagnosis of client needs.
Representatives are expected to be accessible and responsive to constituents
expressed wishes and demands rather than insulated from them. However a
representative is not simply a delegate who restates the views of constituents.
Influence is a two-way process of mutual persuasion in which representatives
coordinate the search for common ground and endeavour to ensure that the group is
able to speak with one voice. Participation in arriving at collective decisions
engenders deeper commitments to agreed courses of action. Conversely, neglect of
consensus building leads to superficial agreements that easily unravel when they are
put to the test of implementations.
These elementary forms of partnerships are the building blocks for designing
partnerships. In one sense this is a restriction of choice because public managers are
limited to only four types of partnerships. But in another sense it enormously widens
the range of strategic options. Actual partnerships can take many forms because the
four types of power generate different patterns of role relationships and these
relationships can themselves be combined in many different ways. Particular
organisational networks composed of interrelated partnerships can be of consider-
able complexity. One network may contain many partnerships combining different
types of power and correspondingly diverse patterns of role relationships. When
different networks are considered the combined operation of a limited set of
generating rules can produce a virtually unlimited variety of partnership structures.
3 Partnerships in strategic management
The main contribution of Power-Role Analysis is to assist in designing public policy
partnerships that are ‘‘fit for purpose’’ when governments launch new strategies. Its
key features are: clearer diagnosis of needs, definition of options and formulation of
solutions to strategic management problems. Sometimes strategic changes can be
accommodated within the existing organisational structure and its network of
partnerships and do not require organisational change or structural adjustment. More
radical policy changes cannot be effectively implemented without repositioning the
organisation responsible for it and redefining its relations with its counterpart
organisations. Power-Role Analysis provides the building blocks for designing
changes in internal power relations and redefining the configuration of partnerships
externally. A shift from one power base to another restructures the roles and
relationships between an organisation and its partners.
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 61
123
How do partnerships as strategic options fit into the process of organisational
design and structural adjustment? Their contribution is best understood by
considering strategic management as part of an organisational learning process.
Organisational learning is often viewed as a cumulative incremental process.
‘‘Learning by doing’’ is a common way of describing how an organisation may seek
to progressively improve performance and move step by step along a learning curve.
But organisational learning is not always a continuous incremental process.
Innovative reforms are marked by discontinuities and abrupt changes of direction
that require structural changes of step function form. Such turning points in the
evolution of organisations are both important and difficult because their imple-
mentation involves reorganising the distribution of power and associated shifts from
one type of partnership to another. Resistance to change focuses on maintaining the
stability of the existing power structure. As Machiavelli observed long ago:
‘‘It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor
more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new
order of things. For, the reformer has enemies in all those who profit from the
old order and only lukewarm defenders in those who would profit by the new
order.’’(Machiavelli, The Prince, ch. VI, p. 22)
In the context of contemporary business strategy essentially the same phenomenon
is expressed in different terms. The pathological side of organisational learning is
that vigorous efforts are made to maintain the status quo and avoid radical changes
that threaten the established structure of power and distribution of rewards, even
though this runs the risk of long term failure. Organisations become trapped into
what Sull has termed ‘‘active inertia’’; a built in bias towards preserving the status
quo through a combination of commitments to outmoded beliefs and obsolete
systems, structures and relationships. What may once have been an innovative
strategy and the cornerstone of corporate success becomes a liability. Organisations
fail to adapt because they are unwilling or unable to recognise the need to unlearn
and set a new course that would disrupt the configuration of roles and relationships
on which power and privilege are based.
Even if most organisations are reluctant learning systems in a changing
environment it is important to have a model of organisational learning that
encompasses processes of structural change as well as incremental change. Strategic
management is about organisational learning that goes beyond incremental change
and gradual step by step adjustment. Change of strategy requires change of
structure. Strategic management is part of an organisational learning process that
includes more radical reorganisations. Ashby’s (1960) cybernetic concept of an
ultrastable system provides a general model applicable to organisational learning
that has clear affinities to later work in organisation theory.
Although the cybernetic model of adaptation was not developed with particular
reference to organisations, its basic ideas underlie some well-known theories of
organisational learning. One is the single-loop/double-loop learning model of
Argyris and Schon: single-loop learning being concerned with maintaining
organisational performance within established policy parameters and double-loop
learning with managing change and establishing new policy parameters. Another is
62 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
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the distinction between exploration and exploitation in March’s (1991) analysis of
organisational learning. March hypothesised a trade-off between adaptive processes
that refine exploitation of opportunities in a given environment and exploratory
processes involve innovation and search for new opportunities in different
environments. The trade-offs managers make often favour exploitation of the
status quo over exploration of a wider set of strategic options.
Ultrastability can be understood as defence in depth against environmental
change. A stable system may perform efficiently in a given environment but be
vulnerable to change when there are marked environment changes. An ultrastable
system has the capacity to recognise and respond to two types of change. One is the
capacity to perform effectively by responding to minor variations and low amplitude
fluctuations within a given task environment. A stable system may be well adapted
to particular environmental conditions. But specialisation to particular environ-
mental conditions makes stability precarious. It is vulnerable if it lacks the reserve
capacity to undertake fundamental reorganisation to deal with structural change and
establish a new equilibrium. An ultrastable system is one with the resourcefulness to
undertake fundamental reorganisations to align organisational structure with new
strategic imperatives. Ultrastable systems have this flexibility and development
potential because they possess dual feedback systems that maintain stability in
relation to a particular environment but can also make step changes and enable them
to reorganise when faced with more fundamental structural changes.
‘‘There will be feedbacks to give stability against frequent impulsive
disturbances to the main variables and there will be slower acting feedback
giving changes of step-function form to give stability against the infrequent
disturbances of step-function form.’’ (Ashby 1960 p.136)
Thus, first order feedback provides stability against small incremental changes
within a given environment by making quick responses and piecemeal adaptation.
Changes in policies and subroutines enable the organisation to adapt to variations
and fluctuations in the tasks and challenges it faces. But, should more radical
structural shifts in the environment occur, an ultrastable system has the capacity to
respond by changing its relationship with its environment, perhaps by redesigning
its external relationships and in the process redefining its own role. Second order
feedback acts more slowly and intermittently to deal with discontinuities and major
environmental changes. Second order feedback processes instigate radical reorga-
nisations of internal structure and external relationships and lead to the redefinition
of relationships between organisation and environment. Managing stability implies
a capacity based on negative feedback to correct departures from established
policies. Organisational learning includes the capacity to manage structural change
by steering major reorganisations before restoring the relationship between
organisation and environment to a stable form.
This model of organisational learning can be regarded as having two components
depending on whether the organisation in question is moving up a particular learning
curve or making a strategic shift to a different learning curve. The standard complaint
about the military (literally) and many organisations (metaphorically) is that they are
much better equipped to fight the last war by moving along their existing learning
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 63
123
curve than revising perceptions, changing strategy and shifting to a new learning
curve more attuned to emerging realities. The challenge for strategic management is
to effect the reorganisation necessary to shift to a new learning curve. Often this
means changing partners and restructuring partnerships. This is where Power-Role
Analysis can make a critical contribution to strategic management.
To counter these pervasive tendencies and underpin strategic initiatives
organisations need second order feedback processes to align internal structure and
external relationships with new strategic objectives. A key element in this second
order feedback process is the ability to reorganise and restructure partnerships with
other organisations and the public. The transformation of partnership structure
involves step changes from basis of power and one pattern of partnerships to
another. As the foregoing analysis indicates, step changes in roles and partnerships
re-configure the types of power and forms of partnerships between organisations and
their environments. This enables organisations to follow up strategic policy changes
more deliberately and effectively than if no organisational change accompanied and
complemented changes of policy.
The types of power and forms of partnership discussed above provide the
building blocks for structural adaptation to support and implement strategic change.
The four types of partnership provide a well-defined set of options that organisation
can use to design and manage relations with other organisations and with the public
they serve. They do not, however, provide a fixed and limited menu for policy
choice. Structural change to follow up policy initiatives is too complex and variable
to be fitted into one of four relatively simple formats. Strategic management
requires the vision to combine the elementary forms of partnerships and building the
management capacities needed to ensure that they work in a coordinated way.
3.1 Combining partnerships in practice
While for clarity of exposition it is important to explain each type of power and each
related form of partnership separately from each other and in isolation from the
process of strategic management in practice they are combined. This is one of the
strengths and also one of the difficulties of Power-Role Analysis. Its strength is that
even with only four power bases and four types of partnerships it is possible to
generate a very large variety of organisational forms. Partnership configurations can
be matched to particular situations in a systematic way rather than choices being
limited to a few standard forms. The difficulty, however, is that flexibility comes at
the price of bigger investments in management capacities and particularly high level
expertise in designing partnership structures and managing their implementation. As
the following examples show, synthesising organisational designs by combining
partnerships creates additional management tasks and responsibilities beyond those
of managing individual partnerships.
3.2 Strategic options and management capacities
The following examples serve to illustrate some of the applications of Power-Role
Analysis and the management capacities needed to manage combinations of
64 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
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partnerships in organisations and organisational networks. The examples range from
general issues surrounding principal-agent theory to the practical case of managing
an opticians practice and from the management of purchaser-provider relations to
the design of a European Agency.
3.3 Managing principal-agent relations
It is helpful to begin with a well-known and much researched example. One of the most
familiar and ostensibly rigorous ways of conceptualising public management problems
is to use a principal-agent model. The simple formulation of this is that an agent is hired
by a principal in order to perform a task on behalf of the principal. There are various
standard examples of such a relationship in employment contexts in business, in law and
in politics. The principal-agent model is claimed to be a very general one. The analysis
usually develops from the standpoint of the principal. The principal’s problem is how to
guarantee compliance and ensure that the interests of the agent do not intrude on the
unwavering pursuit of the principal’s interests. How can the compliance of the agent
with the wishes of the principal be assured when agents may have interests and agendas
of their own that are at variance with those of the principal? In ensuring compliance
there are two facets to the principal’s problem. The first is information asymmetry. The
agent is likely to have more information and greater control of information than the
principal. The second is defective incentives. The principal must find ways to constrain
and motivate the agent’s behaviour to align with his/her interests.
The usual response to these difficulties has been to look for ways of tightening up
task specification, improving information flows about performance to the principal
and matching incentives to desired performance outcomes. This can be caricatured
as a ‘‘call centre style of management’’ with detailed specification of required
behaviour and continuous intrusive monitoring of performance. (The customary
euphemism is something like ‘‘Your call may be monitored for purposes of staff
training.’’). These prescriptions and many like them reformulate the old assumptions
and restate the prescriptions of organisation theories of the past such as Frederick
Taylor’s scientific management and so-called Theory X management. What they
have in common is exclusive reliance on a hierarchical administrative partnership
model of unilateral decision-making and negative feedback.
But this does not really address the role conflict that is at the heart of the principal
agent relationship. As normally defined, the relationship creates a tension between a
exchange and hierarchical power relationships. There is a conflict for the principal
between the role administrator and customer and for the agent between the role of
supplier and subordinate. Within the same relationship there are processes of unilateral
and bilateral decision making and positive and negative feedback. The principal’s in
this perspective is not reducible to finding ways of imposing top down control but of
managing each phase of the relationship and also managing the conflict between them.
3.4 Visiting the optician; client or customer?
The next example may appear less general and less obviously connected with public
management issues than the principal-agent model. But in fact it raises some general
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 65
123
issues that have recurred in public management reform. A visit to the optician is a
common experience for most readers of this paper. The usual assumption is that the
relationship has an expert authority basis and creates a professional client
partnership. The optician employs expertise to administer eye tests, identify visual
impairment and form a diagnosis as a basis for prescribing e.g., new lenses. (Other
outcomes are possible but for purposes of illustration this one will serve). New
lenses are needed to correct myopia, astigmatism etc. and have to be purchased.
Here the relationship undergoes a step function change often marked by moving
to a different part of the premises and being served by different staff whose main
function is to sell lenses and frames. This is a commercial customer–supplier
relationships based on exchange rather than expert authority. And, it is a
relationships based on quite different norms and assumptions from a professional-
client relationship. Whereas a professional-client relationship is governed by the
values and norms of professional service centred on serving client needs a customer
supplier relationship is guided by profitably satisfying customer wants. The
distinction matters in practical terms because in the event of dissatisfaction the
implications are quite different in the client and customer phases of the relationship.
A mistake in diagnosis by a professional optician that leads to the wrong lenses is a
cost to the organisation rather than the client. The client has to trust the professional
judgement of the optician. Selecting frames is an exercise in consumer choice any
mistake is the responsibility of the customer.
Private sector opticians have to manage the combination of these two forms of
partnership by setting norms of client service and thresholds of commercial
viability. Such considerations are also common in public management where public
organisations have to combine disparate performance criteria. Purchaser-provider
networks are important instances of this.
3.5 Managing the purchaser-provider relationship
The replacement of top down line bureaucracy with various forms of purchaser-
provider relationships is one of the symbols of public management modernisation.
In the polarised political rhetoric of state versus market it symbolises the process of
rolling back the frontiers of the state and relying on competitive market forces. In
less ideological terms it represents a strategic decision to increase scope of public
procurement through a shift in the boundary between what government produces in-
house and what it purchases externally. (These are often referred to as the ‘‘make-
buy’’ decisions.) Purchaser-Provider relationships include many forms of public
private partnerships of the kinds described in the OECD study referred to earlier.
Governments have always purchased on a large scale. Military hardware and
infrastructure construction projects in transport and communications are obvious
examples of large-scale public procurement. What is different now is the
substitution of purchasing for direct provision into the area of public services such
as health, welfare, education and running prisons. The appeal of purchaser-provider
relationships rests on the belief that business can run services better, more
efficiently and more cheaply than government. Government for its part is free to
66 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
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shop around for the best buy. Once actual cases are examined the clarity and
simplicity of these beliefs becomes hard to sustain.
Insufficient thought has been given to the management implications of purchaser-
provider partnerships. Often they are treated as synonymous with the idea of
government as customer. But on closer inspection the relationships involved are
more complex. There is a three-way relationship between government, service
provider and the ultimate users of services. The exchange partnership between
government and service provider is only one phase of the relationship and one
element in the network. In addition, as in any project or contract management
relationship there is a hierarchical partnership structure as government attempts to
ensure contract compliance. In addition where government purchases professional
services such as health care or social welfare care for the elderly there is a
profession client relationship.
Unsurprisingly the relationships among the organisations involved become
tangled. Power-Role Analysis can at least provide a clearer diagnosis. In the first
place what is involved is not simply a substitution; a change from provision by a
public organisation to provision by a private organisation. Purchaser-provider
arrangements create the illusion of relieving government of management respon-
sibilities and financial risks by substituting exchange and customer supplier
relationships for hierarchical authority and superior subordinate relations. Contracts
are negotiated on the basis that businesses are paid to do and agreed job and accept
at least some of the financial risks inherent in doing so.
But this oversimplifies. Government never escapes management responsibility.
Indeed some of the public management responsibilities inherent in purchaser-
provider relationships require very sophisticated management expertise and
continuous government involvement. Broadly, government as purchaser has distinct
management roles to play in three overlapping stages of the process; (1) contract
design, (2) contract negotiation and (3) contract management. Each stage generates
a substantial workload that amounts to much more than ‘‘shopping around’’. In fact
there is generally a need for continuous involvement and monitoring of service
provision. The adequacy of government’s contributions in these areas is easily
compromised if different arms of government are responsible for different stages.
From earlier discussion it will be apparent that, like principal-agent relationships,
the purchaser-provider relationship involves both exchange and hierarchical
authority. Hence, it interlocks administrative and commercial partnerships and
requires government to play the role of customer as well as administrative superior.
Especially in large-scale projects running for years these are onerous responsibilities
in conditions where project management disciplines are weak and the assumption
that businesses run the risk of financial loss in the event of poor performance is ill-
founded. For example the contract for rail and track maintenance on the London
metro system was awarded to a consortium created by five companies. But when the
project began to run into serious delays and cost overruns the companies concerned
minimised their financial losses by allowing the consortium to go into bankruptcy.
Government was left with unplanned costs in excess of £400 million and
responsibility for completing the work. A more recent British example of risk-
takers avoiding taking risks is a railway company returning a franchise for running
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 67
123
services on part of the national rail network because it had overestimated the
revenue it would receive and was making losses. A segmented company structure
allowed it to retain two other franchises that had remained profitable. (This is now in
the litigation process.) In both of these instances government had failed to
appreciate the ways in which businesses could limit their exposure to risk at the
contract design and negotiation stages.
More difficult management problems arise when government is in the position of
purchasing services but is not the user of the services purchased. A triangular
relationship between government, service providers and recipients comes into
existence and has to be managed. The management of networks like this is further
complicated when government purchases professional services from a commercial
provider. For example, a strategic policy change in the UK shifted responsibility for
many services to the elderly out of the jurisdiction of the National Health Service
and into that of local government. At the same time local government budgets were
constrained and pressure exerted for them to outsource service provision for the
elderly to private care companies (Pollock 2005). In this context the delivery of
services that used to be guided by professional criteria are increasingly dominated
by a combination of commercially motivated cost controls and administratively
defined targets and checklists. With overlapping partnerships and contradictory
norms and thresholds there is ample scope for confusion about organisational roles
and policy priorities and disputes about responsibilities. Not surprisingly there are
also major problems of coordination because of the number of different
organisations involved and the absence of a shared model of how the system
should work.
4 EMEA, managing a European Agency
The 1990s saw a flurry of agency creation in the European Union. A series of
European Agencies were created for a variety of different purposes. The motivations
for their creation were a mixture of disillusionment with European integration in
general and dissatisfaction with management by the European Commission in
particular. There was a feeling that some specialised functions that had been
centralised and drifted up to the European level should be under closer national
control and that executive functions in the Commission should be ‘‘unbundled’’.
Symbolically European agencies have been distributed in various locations across
the member states rather than housed in the main centres of European institutions
Brussels, Luxembourg or even Strasbourg. The move to create agencies was also
seen by the Commission as a criticism of its methods and management.
The main lines of criticism were over centralisation and confusion of
responsibilities. Agencies seemed to provide a means of decentralising and
clarifying the locus of responsibility. It must be said at once that the creation of
European agencies owed little or nothing to anything resembling Principal-Agent
theory. Indeed as more agencies were established or planned the Commission
recognised that there was not a general ‘‘Agency Model’’ acknowledged that
agencies could take were taking a number of different forms.
68 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
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It is instructive to consider a rather successful case of European Agency
development because it illustrates some general issues about the design of
partnerships as well as the role of European agencies. The organisation in question
is EMEA the European Medicines Agency. EMEA is a decentralised body of the
European Union with headquarters in London. Its main responsibility is the
protection and promotion of public and animal health, through the evaluation and
supervision of medicines for human and veterinary use. The EMEA is responsible
for the scientific evaluation of applications for European marketing authorisation for
medicinal products (centralised procedure). Under the centralised procedure,
companies submit a single marketing authorisation application to the EMEA. Once
granted by the European Commission, a centralised (or ‘Community’) marketing
authorisation is valid in all European Union (EU) and EEA-EFTA states (Iceland,
Liechtenstein and Norway).
European authorisation is valuable to pharmaceutical companies that may have
spent upwards of €200 million and more than 10 years on R & D producing a new drug and are then able to sell it throughout the EU. They do not need to go through
the laborious process of securing separate authorisations in each country. An
authorisation establishes that a new drug is effective and safe in use and production.
EMEA’s primary task is conducting the evaluation of new pharmaceuticals against
the criteria of effectiveness and safety. It performs theses evaluations in a specific
way. Companies apply for an evaluation and dates are set on a timescale of 130
working days from the agreed date of submission. The company pays a fee for the
work done but EMEA itself is funded from EU resources. EMEA assembles a team
of relevant experts, not from its own staff but from a network of professional based
in national authorities, universities and research institutes and manages the
completion of the evaluation. On this basis it advises the Commission and
decision-making authority remains with the Commission. It is possible but difficult
for the Commission to disregard EMEA’s advice (Metcalfe 2000b).
In terms of Power-Role Analysis the key feature of EMEA is expert authority.
EMEA assembles and applies teams with expertise directly relevant to the
evaluation of particular pharmaceuticals. It would not be possible to do this from
in-house resources given the small size of the organisation but EMEA draws in
relevant expertise from and extensive and continually up-dated professional
network. Its partnership structure is professional-client. EMEA does not have
decision-making authority. Is this a weakness? In considering the effectiveness of
European agencies Majone, drawing heavily on US comparison suggested that the
touchstone of effective agencies is independent decision-making power. ‘‘To qualify
as fully-fledged regulatory networks, however, the European agencies and their
national counterparts still need autonomous decision-maker powers, and a firmer
legal basis for their independence.’’ (Majone 2002, p 321). Clearly EMEA would
fail this test. But the test is not an appropriate one for a professional organisation
with two distinctly different types of relationships with different clients. In relation
to pharmaceutical companies it has an arms-length professional relationship that
assures it independence in making evaluations. Vis à vis the Commission, its
professional autonomy is maintained because its role is advisory. It does not have
decision making power and therefore does not have to take into account the
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 69
123
non-professional considerations that are relevant in the more politicised context of
the Commission. Thus EMEA is insulated from both commercial and political
pressures and able to exercise professional judgement within a well-defined domain.
Furthermore its professional autonomy is safeguarded by the support and
participation of a well established professional peer group. EMEA’s effectiveness
needs to be seen in the context of the network as a whole rather than as an
independent decision-making body.
5 Power-role analysis in development co-operation in Bolivia: the Potosı́ Social and Healthcare Programme
A more exotic and intriguing case of designing and implementing a development
co-operation programmes illustrates the way in which Power-Role Analysis can
help untangle the complexities of network management and partnership structure.
The case is the Development of the Social and Healthcare System of Potosı́ –Bolivia
(hereafter Programme). The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has had a pivotal
role in the process. In the following pages a short description of the Programme, its
objectives and history is provided along with few details on the case study context.
The power-role analysis is afterwards performed, its focus being the Programme
(i.e., our focal organisation) and the network of partners and key stakeholders
engaged by its Steering Committee.
The Programme design was finalised in 1997 with the general aim of improving
health standards in one of the most difficult regions of the poorest country of Latin
America, Bolivia. The specific objective is the enhancement of effectiveness and
equity of the social and healthcare system in the Region of Potosı́. The Programme
has developed along three different phases of 3 years each, with an overall
expenditure of €10 millions. Currently, the Programme, pursues these objectives through specific coordinated actions on five different but interdependent compo-
nents (see Fig. 1) that include supporting the main hospital of the region, enhancing
and integrating the supply of social and healthcare services, the articulation of
medical systems (traditional and modern medicine), the Medical School –addressing
both infrastructural issues and the revision of curricula—enhancing child protection
policies.
In October 2008 the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs commissioned an
extensive external evaluation of the Programme (Missoni et al. 2008). In April 2009
it re-considered its priorities decided to investigate options to re-design the
Programme, giving particular attention to the design and management of networks
as a key element in its effective development. For this reason, the Local Technical
Unit (UTL) in La Paz, jointly with a group of external experts, is elaborating a new
phase of the Programme. The managerial issues that emerge are then choosing the
appropriate type of partnership, defining the capacities required to play the roles
prescribed and developing the capacities to manage the relationship.
A key characteristic of the management and governance of the Programme is a
participatory style channelled through representative structures. Strategic manage-
ment is the responsibility of a Steering Committee, including the Programme leader
70 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
123
and representatives of the main partners which re-defines the objectives and re-
directs the operational management activities. The various elements of operational
management are carried out by the Programme’s partners in cooperation with
external experts. A Control Committee is responsible for the supervision and
oversight of implementation. The strategic governance of the Programme is the
responsibility of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Programme is managed through a particularly complex network of
organisations and to give a clear perspective the focal organisation for our analysis
is the Programme Steering Committee. The analysis takes as a starting point the
analysis of the mission, followed by identifying in it the main features of its
operating environment by mapping of the different actors and identifying the type of
power and specific role exercised by each of them. (See Table 2) We will then
position the focal organisation in relation to the network of partnerships.
The Programme was introduced in a conflictive and fragmented network,
characterised by extensive organisational interdependence inadequate coordination
among leading actors. The steering committee of the Programme plays an
integrative role based on consensus building to align particular interests with the
general aim of the Programme.
A stakeholder mapping exercise identified 14 main organisational actors. The
configuration of partnerships among them is set out in Fig. 2.
PROGRAMME
1. Hospital Services
2. Integrated supply of social and healthcare services
3. Articulation of medical systems
(traditional and modern medicine)
4. Medical Sciences
School and curricula
5. Child protection
policies
Fig. 1 Main components of the Programme
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 71
123
One of the main actors is the regional government of Potosı́, responsible for the
definition of the health policies and for the management of the healthcare services. It
represents one of the beneficiaries of the Programme as well, especially with reference
to two of its components, namely the integrated supply of social and healthcare
services and the articulation of the traditional and modern medical systems. As a
partner in the Programme it has representative, professional and administrative roles.
It is directly involved in the Steering Committee and participates in deciding what is to
be done as well as contributing to the implementation of agreed policies.
Another major actor is the local government of Potosı́, responsible for
infrastructure investments and maintenance. Also in this case, the relationship with
the Programme is based both on authority and influence over the focal organisation.
Differences arise when considering the different role covered by the local
government and the Programme components on which this relationship insists
(the Hospital, the Medicine School and the child protection policies).
The religious system –both authorities and actors– is a key partner of the
Programme strongly related to two of the components: the supply of social and
healthcare services and the child protection policies. It manages the Solidarity Fund
and provides hospitality to low-income families of patients but, most of all, it
contributes to the Programme through its knowledge on the population needs
(professional partnership) and through the enhancement of the legitimacy (demo-
cratic partnership), as it represents a stable independent and informant actor,
exercising a relevant influence on the population’s health decisions.
The partnership with the child protection authorities (either legal or social ones)
exercise power along three different dimensions: authority, expertise exchange and
Table 2 The management and governance of the Programme
Task environment
(management)
Political environment
(governance)
O pe
ra ti
on al
Composition EXTERNAL EXPERTS
Partners and key stakeholders
CONTROL COMMITTEE
[Italian Embassy in Bolivia, Min. of Foreign Affairs (IT+BO), Technical Local Unit – UTL, Min. of Health
(BO), , Min. of Treasury (BO)]
Mechanisms Collaborative partnerships Technical and administrative evaluation
St ra
te gi
c
Composition
STEERING COMMITTEE
(Programme leader and
partner institutions representatives) Direction for Development Cooperation
Mechanisms
Stakeholder mapping and engagement
Environmental analysis
Definition of partnerships as strategic choices
Rules and policy guidance
Relationship Management
ITALIAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS – General
72 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
123
influence. The main object of the partnership is the development of better and more
integrated policies, through the design and the implementation of an evidence-based
policy making model that can be transferred also at the national level.
The Programme also builds on a partnership with the State University of Tomas
Frias which has professional and executive roles in defining the curricula in
conjunction with the medical professions.
Other International Cooperation Authorities and Programmes also operate on
areas close to those interested by the Programme. The Programme acts and interacts
with international development agencies of other countries through influence and
exchange mechanisms. The partnership with NGOs also involves supplier-customer
relationships (commercial partnership).
The Vice Ministry of Public Investment and External Financing (VIPFE) has the
responsibility of coordinating the several international financial contributions and
investments. It influences the Programme through its information and knowledge
base, especially during the design phase.
The Bolivian Ministry of Treasury plays mainly a hierarchical role, including into
the State Budget funds previously being out-of-budget and directly managed by the
Programme. The Bolivian Ministry of Health is for obvious reasons a key
stakeholder that interests all the Programme components and that could contribute
in a determinant way to expanding some of the activities scope to the national level.
The administrative relationship is being enforced by including the Ministry in the
Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
(General Direction for Development
Cooperation)
Local Technical Unit
1. Hospital Services
2. Integrated supply of social and
healthcare services 3. Articulation of medical systems (traditional and
modern medicine)
4. Medical Sciences Faculty and curricula
5. Child protection policies
Programme Steering
Committee
PROGRAMME COMPONENTS
Religious authorities and actors
Central Technical Unit External Experts
Administrative partnerships
Legenda
Professional partnerships Democratic partnerships Commercial partnerships
Child protection authorities
University Other international
cooperation authorities and NGOs VIPFE
Min. of Treasury (BO)
Min. of Health (BO)
Min. of Foreign
Affairs (BO)
Daniel Bracamonte
hospital
External experts
Private contractors
Regional Gov. of Potosí
Local Gov. of Potosí
Fig. 2 The partnership structure of the Programme
Partnerships as strategic choices in public management 73
123
Programme control committee. The relationship with the Bolivian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs is also based on its administrative authority. The Ministry
contributes to the highest-level bi-lateral cooperation agreements.
The Daniel Bracamonte hospital is a key stakeholder because rebuilding the
Hospital was the main activity of the first part of the Programme and the starting
point of the Italian cooperation in the Potosı́ Region. In a way, compared to the
Ministry of Health, which is the strategic key stakeholder, the Bracamonte is the
operative key stakeholder of the Programme.
Finally, it is worth mentioning two other actors. The external experts involved by
the Programme in the design and implementation phases through a professional kind
of partnership and the private contractors with whom a commercial buyer–supplier
partnership is established, mainly in the implementation phase.
This still research in progress and the implementation game will stretch the
partnership structure and challenge the network management.
Nevertheless we can highlight some remarks on how performing the Power-Role
Analysis helped managers and policy makers:
• It has made it possible and easier to provide an overall picture of the whole network and the specification partnership management weaknesses and coor-
dination needs in particular areas rather than just broad statements about the
desirability of better coordination in general;
• While in each case the partners have reciprocal roles in a division of labour, the basis of cooperation is quite different from one to another. Moreover, quite
distinct capacities are needed to play these roles and to manage the partnership.
Power-role analysis seems to offer a fruitful way formulating the issues of
designing organisations and frameworks of management and accountability in a
way they can address key issues such as diversity and interdependences.
• When more systematic attention is given to the relationship between the various components of management and governance clearer links will develop between
the dual interests of public managers in performance management and
responsible governance. Using the power-role analysis provides managers a
guidance in conceptualising—also among partners—the relationship between
accountability and effectiveness in a more positive and productive way.
6 Conclusions
Partnerships have become an important feature of contemporary public management
and a major theme of reform. This paper has sought to look beyond some of the
fashionable types of public private partnerships to more fundamental questions
about the range of partnership options that are available and the design principles
that underlie them. The means of doing so is Power-Role Analysis, a compact set of
guiding principles that provide a framework for designing partnerships to match a
wide variety of different needs and circumstances.
The purpose of this paper is to provoke discussion and set a new agenda for
partnership research that can guide practice rather than follow it. To that end, we
74 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
123
summarise some key points on how Power-Role analysis can contribute to strategic
management and highlight issues that are worthy of further consideration.
First it widens the range of strategic choice in the design of partnerships by
systematising ways in which the roles of partners can be defined and combined.
Four types of power embedded in clearly defined pairs of reciprocal roles and
working relationships can be combined to generate a considerable variety of
partnership configurations. Diversity of outcomes is generated by the application of
simple rules.
Second, Power-Role Analysis highlights the distinctive management require-
ments of different types of partnerships. Well managed partnerships come at a price
in terms of management responsibilities. Public private partnerships are sometimes
mistakenly seen as means by which governments can divest themselves of
management responsibilities. In reality, partnerships change the character and
distribution of public management responsibilities but do not allow governments to
abdicate. Rather the opposite. The development of appropriate management
capacities and systems is a strategic management task.
Third, Power-Role Analysis can help to provide a coherent overview of the
linkages among the organisations in a network and the location of points of stress
and coordination failure. Combinations of partnerships create demands on
management for coordination and strategic management on a continuing basis
and not just at the inception of a new strategy. Since partnerships often interlock the
activities of many organisations in public policy networks shortcomings and failures
at the network level are liable to lead to confusion, buck passing and the breakdown
of working relationships as mutual trust evaporates. In reform processes the
redistribution of power among various organisational actors requires new forms of
partnership management arrangements and rebuilding of trust in the ability and
willingness of partners to fulfil their assigned roles and work together reliably.
Considerably more work will need to be done to test Power-Role analysis on a
more solid empirical basis in order to fine-tune the model. If the debate is to be
moved forward, developing a better understanding of how such a method for
performance enhancement impact on trust can be one of the important issue to be
analysed.
Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the many who cared enough about the Programme and the future of Potosı́ to share their opinion with them. Professor Eduardo Missoni of Bocconi University
and Dr Valentino Luzi, senior health expert and consultant for the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
deserve a special mention for the fruitful and open dialogue they offered. The Italian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs has had a pivotal role in the process. We are particularly grateful to Dr Domenico Bruzzone,
Director of the Local Technical Unit of La Paz, Dr Silvio Mignano, Italian Ambassador in Bolivia and Dr
Alessandro Gaudiano, Head of the Asia, Oceania and Americas Division of the General Direction for
Development Cooperation.
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Author Biographies
Les Metcalfe is currently Visiting Professor of Public Management at Durham University UK and works as a consultant on public management reform. His fields of professional interest include public
management at the national level and in international organisations with a special focus on policy
networks and multilevel governance. Prior to returning to the UK Dr. Metcalfe was Professor of Public
Management at Bocconi University, Milan and before that held a similar position at the European
Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), Maastricht, in The Netherlands. At EIPA his main interest was
management and governance capacities in the European Union. He previously served on the staff of
Prime Minister’s Office in London, in a unit focussed on public management reform, having previously
worked at London Business School, where he took his doctorate. As well as researching and publishing
extensively on public management he has engaged in consulting assignments including work for the
European Commission and most recently the Council of Europe.
Antonio Lapenta is an economist and public management specialist. He holds a PhD in Health Care Management and Economics (2008) from Magna Græcia University of Catanzaro, Italy. He has
conducted training and research for the Policy Analysis and Public Management Department of Bocconi
University, Italy from 2004 to 2008. His research interests include stakeholder management, public
interest networks and international development cooperation. He served as strategic advisor to the
Bolivian Health Minister for the creation of a National Health System (June 2010–January 2012). He is
currently an international consultant and advisor for government institutions.
76 L. Metcalfe, A. Lapenta
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- Partnerships as strategic choices in public management
- Abstract
- Introduction: fashion and fundamentals in the partnerships debate
- Power-role analysis
- Four types of power
- Partnerships as working relationships between organisations
- Partnerships in strategic management
- Combining partnerships in practice
- Strategic options and management capacities
- Managing principal-agent relations
- Visiting the optician; client or customer?
- Managing the purchaser-provider relationship
- EMEA, managing a European Agency
- Power-role analysis in development co-operation in Bolivia: the Potosí Social and Healthcare Programme
- Conclusions
- Acknowledgments
- References
