The Shadow of Managed Competition: Lessons From The MSW Managerial Reform In Indianapolis

T. J. Lah

International Review of Public Administration, 2002, vol. 7, issue 2, 99-107

Abstract: Indianapolis has recently gone through an innovation in municipal solid waste management, known as managed competition which opened the trash collection to competitive bidding by both public and private service providers. This study asks whether this competitive approach reflects true innovation. This paper argues that there are problems associated with the managed competition system. Findings include: i) The enormous success may not be as large as it seems due to the measurement errors; ii) The process was not based on the strict bidding system but on the Request for Proposals; iii) Large numbers of city employees had to be laid-off; and iv) There are other associated problems such as vendor noncompliance and conflict between contractors. The analysis suggests that although the managed competition arrangements may appear very successful, the approach is in fact, a new way of dealing with the issue with different set of problems.

Date: 2002
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/12294659.2002.10805009 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rrpaxx:v:7:y:2002:i:2:p:99-107

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RRPA20

DOI: 10.1080/12294659.2002.10805009

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Public Administration is currently edited by Ralph Brower

More articles in International Review of Public Administration from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().