We have seen that the partnership management structure involves, so the question of how are we going to make decisions and how are we going to coordinate the different partnership activities. So, focusing on these two dimensions, we can actually think of different partnership designs. In the following, we will actually have a look at three designs as suggested by Provan & Kenis. So in the first design, you have a Lead Organization that has a major stake in the partnership and that actually is involved in coordinating all the partners contributions. I is also then often this organization who has initiated the partnership and who sets the overall framework. For this design to work, it is important that there is only a moderate number of partners involved, who, in turn trust, really the operational lead. Moreover, so the partners should have a moderate goal conventions and the Lead organizations should have the capacity to actually manage the partnership. Normally, you have to find these partnerships that have more regional focus why these partnerships then offer a technical solution. Moreover, you can think of a partnership designed where all partners are jointly responsible for coordinating and managing the partnership. This is what we call the shared governance design and for this design to be effective it should be only a small number of partners involved. Otherwise, it would be too complicated to always agree on every matter in terms of strategic and operational issues. And additionally to make this form effective, it is important that the partners have a high goal consensus and so that it is easy to really come up with compromises. Then as the third design we have the form called administrative organization and in this partnership design actually a lot of different actors come together to tackle a very broad and complex society challenge. In view of these manifold actors involved, it is quite difficult to do it on an informal basis. So, in these administrative organizations, the partners appoint and structure entity in order to coordinate the different partners contributions. The partner set such come together in committees and board meetings in order to vote and to decide on specific issues. Here, you have a high level of institutionalization. So, ideally, you choose your partnership design according to the contingencies in your partnership environment. However, in reality, it often happens that power battles and regulations actually also influence how you design your partnership. Well I tell you we could go on for hours on this topic but I think it's time for reflection. Time for reflection, I would ask you to look back what dimensions can be used to distinguish between different public-private partnership designs. What is it that distinguishes the different public-private partnership designs? Now a key dimension of designing the public-private partnerships is to acknowledge the different stakeholders. The guiding questions are therefore, who will or should be affected by the partnership? So be aware that here the stakeholder concept becomes really important. Who are the groups of interests, who are the people who are the institution the organizations that are affected. For example, the question is will the public-private partnership offer new services to a specific community group. how will these stakeholders be involved in the public-private partnership? A common problem in the public-private partnerships is that the partner organizations are so concerned about their own interaction working well as a partnership that they may forget that the partnership is a means to an end. They want to provide a solution that is tailored to the social need and thus often need to involve the actors on the ground. And they shouldn't forget the actors on the ground. The different stakeholders all those who have an interest in finding a solution and they are part of the system. So why must you involve the stakeholders on the ground? You may need their input in order to understand the problem. That is not a common problem. You are not often exposed to this. We are talking about complex issues. So you also have to investigate in the needs of the stakeholders that are part of the system. You may need on the other hand, their feedback. The feedback on the solutions are possible solutions you offer and you may need their support for implementing the goals and the actions of the public-private partnership. Or if you want to trigger important change in society you may need to create a shared sense of ownership. So that your target group feels like being part of the solution and is also willing to make behavioral changes. You only create partnership or contribution or collaboration if you really include them into your process. How will you involve? So therefore the target group, remember that it requires very specific management capabilities and resources to coordinate your target group to find a balance between efficiency and on the other hand, the stakeholder involvement. Now this means, you better think about consultation and meetings that you have to organize to get them all involved and to collaborate well. You may encourage the formation of networks of institutions or forums and/or a focus groups that help you to give the target group a voice and this is what they need. You need to give voice, to think about how to give voice to the different stakeholders. You may need to promote capacity building on the ground, so that the involved people no longer depend in the long run on the public-private partnership. This also means that you really have to communicate, that you have to train the people, and then you have to provide them with the necessary resources. Now all this has to be acknowledged and integrated into the preparation phase of the public-private partnership cycle. And finally we will move to the last phase which is the review and measurement phase. So here we will analyze how can you evaluate the partnership performance. So this is a very complex question and in order to approach this question we will have a look at the model suggested by Kolk, Van Tulder. And Kostwinder. What I like about this concept or this framework is that it shows you partnerships as a system with different elements that you all have to take into consideration when you want to measure or evaluate the partnership. Starting with the measurement aspect, you can have a look at the partnership inputs so that's the contributions that the partners provide to the partnership. At the same time, you can have a look at this throughputs. So throughputs are the partnership characteristics in terms of the partnership structures, strategies, and processes. Then, finally, you will come to the partnership outputs. It's the results or let's say the outputs are the services and products that the partnership delivers and you can actually measure them very easily in terms of numbers and so on. What is more challenging to actually evaluate is then the partnership outcome but this is very important. The outcome of a partnership is the actual impact on society that it wants to have. For this, you have to define clear indicators to evaluate and measure the outcomes. Based on this measurement, you can then go a step further and do an evaluation. There are two dimensions are very important to evaluate is on the one hand, the efficiency of the partnership so comparing the partnership inputs with the partnership outputs. This gives you insights into is the question such as is the partnership working efficiently? What are best practices? What should be maybe change in terms of internal operations to be more efficient? Then moving to the other dimension, which is really crucial. That is the partnership effectiveness. Here, you compare the partnership outputs and the partnership outcomes, which then helps you to understand all the products and services that we deliver, really having the impact that we want to have or should we maybe change our products and services in order to have our desired impact. So, once again, this is a framework that helps you understand partnerships as a system and to take into consideration all the different elements in order to evaluate them. Okay. Well, we come to the closing of Lecture 3 and here, I only want to say, in this session, we focused on the key features of designing, managing public-private partnerships. We strongly encourage you to have a look at some of the readings that Lea nicely quoted in this third lecture. It is worthwhile to really go deeper into the topic to enhance your knowledge about how to design and how to manage better public-private partnerships.
