Does not-for-profit corporatization of local public services improve performance?

Alonso, José M. and Andrews, Rhys ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1904-9819 2025. Does not-for-profit corporatization of local public services improve performance? Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 44 (2) , pp. 612-631. 10.1002/pam.22667

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Abstract

The corporatization of local public services is an increasingly common public management reform worldwide. This study investigates whether a shift from in-house to not-for-profit corporatized service provision can result in improvements across multiple dimensions of performance. To do so, we examine the staggered adoption of Arms-Length Management Organizations (ALMOs) to provide social housing by a third of English local governments during the period 2000 to 2008. Utilizing a Differences-in-Differences (DiD) with Multiple Time Periods (MTP) approach, we find that corporatized social housing outperformed in-house provision on service quality, citizen satisfaction, and environmental sustainability, with little evidence of worse achievements on other performance dimensions. Event history analysis suggests performance benefits emerged around 2 years after corporatization occurred. Our study therefore implies that not-for-profit corporatization is potentially an effective strategy for improving local public service performance.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	Wiley
ISSN:	0276-8739
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 December 2024
Date of Acceptance:	1 December 2024
Last Modified:	14 May 2025 13:46
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/174429

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