The public-private partnership (PPP) disaster of a new hospital – expected political and existing business interaction patterns

Purpose One of the most salient contemporary societal trends is the increasing amount of public-private collaborations. In spite of the increasing awareness of the need to scrutinise the promises of public-private partnership (PPP), there is an important but seldom-asked question: How does the assumed interaction pattern behind PPP correspond with the interaction pattern appearing in empirical studies of the content of business exchange? The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the discrepancy between the expected and actual pattern of interactions in PPPs. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents a specific PPP concerning the construction of a Nya Karolinska (NKS) hospital building, which ended up as an economic and functional disaster. With an interactive approach as point of departure (Hakansson et al. 2009; Waluszewski, Hakansson, Snehota, 2017), this paper investigates a) the interaction pattern of the business landscape expected by policy/politicians in the NKS construction case and b) how the assumed interaction pattern appears in relation to the interaction pattern of the business landscape outlined in empirical studies of exchange, in the business landscape in general and of the construction setting in particular. Findings Given that the public side is neglecting the interactivity and interdependency of the private business setting, the disappointment with the NKS PPP project does not appear as an odd deviation. Rather, as a natural consequence of a public side expecting autonomous actors able to deliver innovation, quality and cost control just because they are exposed to competitive forces - but in reality interfacing with private actors which interests are directed to interdependent investments in place; own and related suppliers'. Social implications The competitive forces of the private setting are by politicians and policy assumed to function in an automatic way; breeding cost efficiency, quality and innovation. Furthermore, there is also an assumption of speed and ease of change. With the trust in these characteristic sof the private setting at hand, politicians have a "cart blanche" to withdraw from direct involvement in the creation of producer-user interfaces. Originality/value The paper underlines that as soon as the public-private exchange concerns goods that cannot be transformed to or treated as homogeneous 'commodities', as most often is the case of in this type of processes, there are reasons to be extremely careful in the design of the interaction interface. There are differences both in resource and activity structures between the two sides of the exchange interface and these differences have to be actively dealt with.