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

Alonso, Jose Manuel 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 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 2000-08. 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 two 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:	Published Online
Status:	In Press
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:	19 Feb 2025 15:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/174429

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