In the following, I will present six practical suggestions that follow my observations and insights from the exploration of trusting processes in PPPs. First, the choice of strong relational
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PPPs is a brave one that can allow for future flexibility and openness, yet make them depend on trust and continuous (re)creation hereof. In other words, the strength of such contracts is also their Achilles heel and source of fragility. When choosing such a partnership model, public managers should be aware of the inherent need for trust to enable the adaptive and highly customized joint future. In a similar vein, private providers should be aware of the many unknowns and that future performance is a co-creation that cannot be without trust and commitment. While especially relevant in strong relational PPPs, the findings also highlight that trust becomes inevitably necessary when dealing with an ever open future.
Second, a practical suggestion that cannot be exaggerated is the importance of preparing the public organization and an active involvement of employees may not guarantee, but can clearly encourage, the development of trust. Furthermore, the preparation should not only be focused on the employee level, but just as much include the middle managers. The latter is not to suggest that the public top manager should not trust his/her middle manager or reintroduce hierarchical steering-models, but rather to emphasize the importance of a dedicated and trusting middle manager for the active and ongoing life of partnerships. As illustrated in the German cases, an active match of the collaborating middle managers may be one way of stimulating trusting and thus smooth relationships. Joint assessment days may be one way forward.
Third, the findings also highlight that the public-private distinction was experienced as generalized distrust especially amongst public employees. Although such categorisations seem to disappear at the top management level, preconceptions of the profit-driven private provider are being (re)produced in the everyday cooperation. For the private provider, the potentially lingering (or explicit) degrees of generalized distrust may require especially humble and understanding attitudes at least while getting to know each other. For the public top managers the latter only reemphasizes the need to prepare their organizations and not least challenge the taken-for-granted expectations. PPP is more than a major restructuring as it also involves a partner that needs to be incorporated in the years to come.
Fourth, with regard to the formation of PPPs, negotiated procedures are to be preferred by public decision-makers given their possibility for dialogue and to go beyond paper-work and documents to evaluate the private firms’ trustworthiness. While the latter cannot compensate for the advantage held by previous private providers (or long-term relationships), it at least opens up the field and enables others to present their competence in person (team). On January 15 2014,
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the European Parliament approved new rules for public procurement and concessions, allowing more flexible procurement procedures which cannot only enhance the focus on joint quality and development/innovation, but also, as has been the concern of this dissertation, allow better evaluation of each other so as to be able to suspend eventual doubts and trust the chosen firm to be able and willing to carry out the future task beyond the specifics in any contract.
Fifth, given that such negotiations throughout procurement procedures can still not fully compensate for the influence of prior experiences and relationships, it can be an advantage for private providers to actively cultivate their connections and eventually also hire well connected and reputed people. Generally, the findings suggest the usefulness of an active public-relations department that both may itself be building/sustaining relationships and keeping managers in the firm focused on nurturing their existing connections. Such a department or team may not least also be helpful in improving the understanding of specific ‘public’ challenges among private middle managers. Still, a well-functioning public-affairs department does not decrease the importance of performing and building good relationships between the coordinating managers in everyday cooperation.
Finally and sixth, while the dissertation does not directly address the issue of performance in terms of measuring the impact of trust (which would run counter to a processual orientation), it illustrates that trusting is inherently related to the performance of PPPs. On the one hand and more abstractly, it enables joint decision-making without which the partnership becomes an empty cover unable to perform as a partnership. On the other hand, all interviewed managers highlighted the importance of trust for the ongoing functioning of partnerships and as such it also relates to the partnership performance.
Hence, trust should not, as Williamson (1993) implies in his later work on transaction cost economics, be reserved for thick family relationships and friendships. Rather, effective suspensions of doubts are continuously needed in business relationships and specifically in more relational contracts. In turn, although trust has moved more and more centre-stage in publications, the dissertation re-emphasizes the need to acknowledge the fundamental and central role of trusting in IORs in general, yet, particularly in PPPs: There cannot be too much focus on building and nurturing trusting relationships. While this may unsettle practitioners who prefer risk calculations and plans, I can only re-emphasize that any calculation or plan may fail and at the latest then trust can be the lifeboat that may sail the partners safely to the other side.
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However, if it wasn’t for hard manufacturing work and continuous maintenance the lifeboat may be too ruined and fragile to save the partnership.