ABSTRACT

Governance, the means for achieving direction, control, and coordination, determines the effectiveness of management. There is much diversity and scope in the governance models employed to deliver parks, recreation, and tourism (PRT) services. In examining these assorted approaches, Glover and Burton (1998: 143) proposed a typology of institutional arrangements for the provision of PRT services: (1) governmental arrangements whereby public sector agencies alone provide a public service; (2) cross-sector alliances consisting of a contractual relationship between a public sector agency and a profit-making or not-forprofit organization (e.g. partnerships and contracts); (3) regulated monopolies whereby a non-public organization is granted a monopoly to directly provide public services (e.g. franchise); and, (4) divestiture whereby public services, lands, or facilities are sold or leased to profit-making or not-for-profit agencies. All these typologies of service delivery can be found among the outsourcing practices used in parks and protected areas. Some agencies use the profit-making commercial sector or the non-profit private sector to deliver some services. In the latter practice, the park agencies act as supervisory bodies. The Glover and Burton approach assumes that the starting point of discussion is the ownership of PRT services by the public sector, without fully exploring the obvious alternative, the ownership and operation by the private sector, either profit-making or non-profit (Harper, 2000).