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Kuitert, L, Volker, L and Hermans, M (2018) The Impact of Shifting Values on the Role and Responsibilities of the Construction Client in Delivering Public Goods. In: Gorse, C and Neilson, C J (Eds.), Proceedings 34th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2018, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK. Association of Researchers in Construction Management, 455–464.

• Type: Conference Proceedings
• Keywords: public value management, public private partnerships, value shift, construction client, responsibilities
• ISBN/ISSN: 978-0-9955463-2-5
• URL: http://www.arcom.ac.uk/-docs/proceedings/a35e1ec8f664f8b2181f3ef9ad3b6c80.pdf
• Abstract:
  

  In today’s construction industry we witness an increase in public private collaboration in the delivery of public services, partly due to financial reasons and partly because of strategic issues such as innovation and effectiveness. By transferring operational responsibility to private suppliers, fewer possibilities exist to directly influence and steer the outcomes of these processes. Socio-political responsibilities, however, remain with public parties, requiring other kinds of safeguarding mechanisms. In this context, the main challenges for managers in client organizations increasingly become finding a way to manage the potentially conflicting values and balancing procedural obligations as a public entity and the increasingly important product and performance values.

  In this paper we address the safeguarding mechanisms of public client organisations in public service delivery. Based on a series of 44 semi-structured interviews general managers, CPO’s, directors of new development and director of maintenance related department from 18 different public construction client organisations, we identify the meaning and importance of and experience with ensuring public values in public private collaborative practices.

  We found that the transference of operational responsibilities to private parties causes a value shift from a focus at procedural values to steering on performance and product values. This ongoing value shift asks for an open, transparent, and long-term client-contractor commitment in which managers in public client organizations need to adopt a facilitating and frame-setting role while building sustainable relationships based on trust.

  These results indicate that the alignment of the role and change in responsibilities and organisational safeguarding mechanisms should be rather flexible in order to deal with the restrictions that procedural values such as lawfulness, reliability and transparency bring along. This requires significant changes in the interpretation of the commissioning role and the transformation of the collaborative relationship in public private collaboration which are not yet fully implemented in current construction practices.