ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to encourage research that helps to understand how affect and accounting are intertwined in the functioning of inter-organisational networks concerned with innovation. It explores how affect is mobilised to enrol actors into an inter-organisational network designed to address the New South Wales (NSW) State Government's social housing needs in an innovative but economically defensible way. The empirical analysis focuses on a public–private partnership (PPP) formed to revitalise an 81-hectare public housing estate in the western Sydney suburb of Bonnyrigg. The PPP was an inter-organisational venture among public, private, and non-governmental actors to deliver social housing infrastructure and services. Public housing has been a long-standing matter of concern in NSW because of the state's deteriorating housing stock. Actors in Housing were buoyed by the British experience of public housing PPPs, although much smaller in scale. These antecedent affective attachments contributed to a general understanding of the value-for-money (VFM) achievable from a public housing PPP.
