A Confluence of Interests

Abstract Over the past decades governments throughout the world have increasingly looked to public-private partnerships to resolve increasingly complex issues. Within these partnerships trust and control play a vital role. This thesis examines the different ways boundary spanning activities within a public-private partnership impact trust and control to improve the networks’ performance. The Hindon project, a fascinating public-private partnership that emerged when public and private organisations from India and the Netherlands came together to tackle the complex problem of cleaning the heavily polluted Ganges river, serves as the case study and provides a real-world example of the various theoretical concepts covered. This thesis identified three core boundary spanning strategies; networking, aligning boundaries, and forging common ground. These strategies contained numerous boundary spanning activities that effected trust and control within the partnership. This thesis found that the different forms of trust made partners more flexible, whilst the various control mechanisms enhanced accountability. Therefore, this thesis concludes that when successfully implemented boundary spanning activities improve the performance of public-partnerships by making them more robust, whereby they better suited to withstand the uncertainties and complexities associated with international public-private-partnerships. This thesis has been divided into six chapters to guide the reader through the research. In the first chapter, the research is introduced and its scientific and social relevance explained. Chapter two contains a theoretical framework that examines the existing research on the topic and explores the various concepts that will be used in the case study. The third chapter outlines the methods that have been used to conduct the research. Chapter four presents the results from the various data collection methods. The fifth chapter discusses the findings, connecting them to the literature and research question. Chapter six contains the conclusion and addresses the limitations of the research.