PUBLIC PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

As shown Porter and Kramer (2011) suggest that the public should partner up with the private enterprises as one of several task for foster the companies to address the grand challenges. Porter and Kramer thereby contribute to interlink the latest

decades discussion of Public Private Partnership directly to this “new” matrix approach to business and growth policies of “picking the problems”.

Conceptually, Public Private Partnership (PPP) is often defined rather broadly centred on the idea of shared goals and objectives. Equally, the term is applied to covers a wide variety of constellations, where public and private entities collaborate on more or less shared targets (Linder, 1999, Weihe, 2007; Hodge and Greve, 2009). Hodge and Greve (2009) e.g. identifies five different families of public private partnerships (Hodge and Greve, 2009: 1):

• Institutional co-operation for joint production and risk sharing.

• Long-term infrastructure contracts.

• Public policy networks.

• Civil society and community development.

• Urban renewal and downtown economic development.

While emphasising such broad and diverse use of the term, the term is most often used in a rather restricted manner in respect to contractual arrangements between the public partner as a demander and the private partner as a supplier of specific goods and/or services (e.g. the Wikipedia explanation of the term).

As such the Public Private Partnership discussions are to be seen in relation to – and extension of – the traditional New Public Management (NPM) debates on public outsourcing and privatisation.

Savas (2005) e.g. discusses PPP as one specific constellations of what he al together frame as “marketization” and “commercialization” with the same overall objective to engage private sector actors to perform the public services more efficiently (Savas, 2005).

Conversely, Sørensen and Torfin (2011) sees the public private partnership as part of an emerging change of view on the public administration emphasising innovation as way to gain qualitative improvements of the public services and not just efficiency gains.

Sørensen and Torfin (2011) argue that the NPM focus on streamlining the public administration is increasingly supplemented by increased expectations for simultaneous quality improvements. This therefore calls for innovating new practises that – contrary to NPM – manage to increase the effectiveness and not solely efficiency of public administration and services. Sørensen and Torfin frame these current developments as “collaborative innovation in the public sector” (the tittle of their book, here translated from Danish). They emphasis that this relates both to internal public capability to innovative, but also to do things together with

the private sector in stead of the previous thinking of either public or private (Sørensen and Torfin, 2011).

Public Private Partnership as a narrow contractual arrangement originates as an approach to raise private money for public construction tasks. This is, however, increasingly broadened in focus and scope into covering public tendering in several diverse fields – in Denmark especially discussed in relation to social services and health care.

Traditionally, the tendering of either goods or services focuses either on the final physical delivery (the construction or product) or the operation of a service (such as e.g. outsourcings of cleaning at hospitals – emphasis and measuring on the cleaning process and not clean as the qualitative outcome). PPP instead links the designs, implementation and operation into one tendering process that both contain a longer lifespan than traditional tendering, but further centred on a more flexible contract focussed on the function instead of rather fixed specifications of either the product to be purchased/build or the service to be carried out (Hodge and Greve, 2009;

Weihe, G. 2007).

Applying a longer timeframe centred on the functionality allows for including incentives for more innovative improvements; exactly the point with the concepts of public R&D procurements mentioned above. The concept is that the linking of design and use allow the private entities to incorporate the running cost (lifecycle cost) in the design. Understood as such, the PPP further resemble a specific public application of the concept of Product Service System.

Equal to the distinction under R&D procurements in terms of respectively longer contract allowing for introducing new technologies when available vs. specifically demanding the innovation of new solutions, the PPP discussions are – at least in Denmark – also being broadened in terms of also addressing the latter. The Public Private Partnership term is in Denmark extended to the concept of Public Private Innovation (PPI⁴⁰). This term captures specific public private partnering constellations focused to develop and test new products as “prove of concept”

before entering specific procurement decisions. Contrary to the PPP, such PPI implies specific joint cooperation on the development and/or testing of projects and new solutions that is of relevance for the public services and challenges. Any specific procurement decision is left for later specific tendering and procurement decisions (KL and Udbudsportalen.dk, 2010).

40 In Danish: Offentlig Private Innovation (OPI) as extension of Offentlig Privat Partnerskab (OPP)

The term PPP is as mentioned also applied much broader covering several diverse forms, where the public and private sector collaborate to reach common shared goals that not necessarily imply any contractual arrangement for carrying out specific task. This takes all kind of different organisational setups including:

networks; joint declarations of cooperation; voluntary agreements; the forming of an overall secretariat/board; as well as formal joint companies or entities. The Danish municipalities have actually a rather long tradition for the latter in respect to e.g. public utilities etc. (Weihe, G. 2007).

Relevant for the Carbon 20 project, Malmborg (2003) uses the term in relation to Swedish regional development projects about the municipalities’ active promotion and facilitation of the uptake of environmental management systems by local companies. In this partnership constellations, the local public entities specifically engage companies in a rather loose network organisation centred on facilitating the local companies to implement EMS – either conducted by municipalities themselves or hiring consultants to execute the facilitation (Malmborg, 2003; 2004).

Extending on among others Malmborgs’ understanding of public-private partnership, Lehmann (2008) adds academia making it a Public-Private-Academic-Partnership (PPAP). Lehmann still focuses on the role of the public partner as the ones orchestrating the network cooperation to disseminate EMS, however in cooperation with academia (Lehmann, 2008).

Etzkowitz (2008) equally to Lehmann also address this triple partnering among those three actors with his concept of Triple Helix (Etzkowitz, 2008).

Etzkowitz main focus is opposite on the universities were he argues for a “new”

role of engaging and partnering with the business sector in the production of knowledge. His focus in relation to the public is mainly restricted towards the different funding schemes arguing that such should become more ventures and entrepreneurial. Contrary, Lehmann emphasises that the public (here local authorities) also has an active facilitation role as well as often being the one orchestrating the cooperation (Etzkowitz, 2008; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000;

Lehmann, 2008).

Lehman does also draw on the innovation literature (e.g. Lundwall) as inspiration of the role of academia as carrier of the innovative perspectives – Etzkowitzs’ main focus. But where Etzkowitz focus is mainly on the joint technological development project between universities and companies, Lehmann address the process-oriented facilitation of companies to innovate on the green agenda. In addition to the innovation perspective, academia is furthermore often directly involved as partner in respect to foster learning, gather experiences and disseminating the good examples (Etzkowitz 2008; Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000; Lehmann 2008).

The Carbon 20 project reassembles both Malmborg’s use of PPP and especially Lehman’s PPAP in its set-up where the municipalities, assisted by Aalborg University, attempt to influence the companies to take up the green agenda.

THE RELEVANCE OF DISCOURSES FOR THE GREEN GROWTH