ABSTRACT
Public goods and services have traditionally been in the domain of the government because markets do not offer the private players incentives to provide them. However, it is evident that the bureaucratic form of organization in the government impedes its ability to deliver these goods and services effectively and efficiently. Public-private partnerships are mechanisms by which governments seek the participation of non-government organizations to deliver public goods and services to overcome some of these impediments. In this paper, the transaction cost perspective has been adopted to argue that the network form of organization, with the government organization as the focal point and the non-government organizations as the nodes of the network, is most efficient for a range of public-private partnerships. Further, information processing and agency perspectives have been used to argue that the adoption of a network form of organization results in decentralization, which improves decision-making by co-locating relevant knowledge, both general and specific, and decision authority while also reducing agency costs.
