To Promise a Promise: When Contractors Desire a Life-long Partnership

Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen
Additional contact information
Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen: Copenhagen Business School

Chapter 11 in Hybrid Forms of Governance, 2012, pp 205-231 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The idea of partnerships has united the right and left of the political spectrum, the public sector with voluntary organizations, voluntary organizations with private companies, and private companies with the public sector. In general, partnership is construed in opposition to contracts. Contracts are often criticized for being short-sighted, inflexible and control-oriented, making them inimical to fostering trust in society. As the multinational service firm ISS put it, ‘Partnerships are based on mutual trust and shared responsibility rather than contract and control as in traditional outsourcing’ (Søndergard 2003: 407). Partnership is articulated as everything that contracts are not. ISS and Hørsholm Hospital even compare partnerships to true love: Often a picture is worth a thousand words, and even though the comparison only goes so far, the difference between outsourcing and partnership is comparable to the difference between paying for sex on one hand and love on the other hand. Paying for sex is a ‘commodity’ where the interest of the buyer and the supplier are entirely different and where one supplier can be exchanged for another without difficulty. Love on the other hand refers to a relationship in which two people enrich each other in shared development. And as in love, a partnership requires openness and trust in order to succeed. (Hørsholm Hospital 2002)

Keywords: Mutual Trust; Hybrid Form; Voluntary Organization; Shared Responsibility; Factual Dimension (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:pal:palchp:978-0-230-36300-7_12

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780230363007

DOI: 10.1057/9780230363007_12

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().