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

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Alonso, Jose M.; Andrews, Rhys
• 署名单位: Universidad de Cantabria; Cardiff University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLICY ANALYSIS AND MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1520-7094
• DOI: 10.1002/pam.22667
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 612-631
• 关键词: municipal enterprises; private production; stock transfer; GOVERNMENT; delivery; governance; sector; water; EFFICIENCY; UTILITIES

摘要

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.