Relevance of the paper to the topic
Over the last 25 years, the public-private partnerships (PPPs) catalysed a growing interest inpublic works to provide infrastructures, services, and innovation. Many governments of the most developed (and also developing) countries have been using PPPs, especially the financial instrument of project financing, as key variables of economic policy for growth. However, critical issues have emerged in such a way that interventions, guidelines, and standards have been decisive to enforce contracts, improve accounting information and performance.
There fore at this stage of the PPPs' diffusion, it is interesting to see how the accounting and performance measurement has had effects on how to interpret, modify and enhance the development of partnerships
An impressive literature and several studies have mainly focused on experiences in UK, Australia, New Zealand, by paying attention primarily to two components considered crucial to the success of a PPP, value for money and risk allocation (Broadbent, 2003; English, 2005; Grimsey & Lewis, 2005). All around those two concepts, theoretical frameworks and models have been proposed, by highlighting criticalities and potential effects.
Significance of the research
Starting from the most remarkable extant literature review on PPPs (Andon, 2012), this paper investigates what has been the influence of accounting to address Governments to usher PPPs in a new season. Also, it highlights what components are currently detected as determinants of performance for successful PPPs, by taking into account of sectors and types of partnership.
Research question
The research question regards “how” accounting information on costs and key performance indicators (of a PPP), in compliance with the "key building blocks" (Evans et. al., 2010), has contributed to a breakthrough in policies governing the use of project financing/PPPs.
To this, it should be added that some of the results may be attributed to both a consolidated experience and a greater appreciable awareness of how to lock down the risks of PPPs.
Methodology/approach
A first part of the paper is devoted to reconstructing the steps by which accounting studies have been contributing to the evolution of the literature on PPPs, to understand how criticalities - of political, institutional, contractual, and financial order - have been faced and overcome.
The second part analyses the Italian case, by an empirical investigation aimed at highlighting what were the main causes of impediments to prevent a more decisive use of this formula, by paying particular attention to the performance issues, occurred because of a wrong definition of contractual conditions and risks related to the project. It specifically focuses on national data from the Italian healthcare sector
Results
Results lead to understanding what are the current arrangements for monitoring of the phases of a PPP and, above all, what are the ones that seem to require more attention regarding selection, the financial attitude of the project, equipartition of the risk, information system, flexibility to change. For each of the profiles, we have been hypothesized of key performance indicators that are found certainly useful for monitoring
