Contracting-Out Asset Maintenance: How Arrangements Adapt Over Time

Contracting-out and privatisation are key drivers of organisational and market change, which, along with technological and societal change, are “creating a new generation of infrastructures”. While new institutional arrangements have the potential to improve maintenance efficiency through consistent...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Furneaux, C., Brown, Kerry, Ryan, N., Gudmundsson, A., Tywoniak, Stephane
Other Authors: -
Format: Conference Paper
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ( IEEE ) 2009
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/21834
Description
Summary:Contracting-out and privatisation are key drivers of organisational and market change, which, along with technological and societal change, are “creating a new generation of infrastructures”. While new institutional arrangements have the potential to improve maintenance efficiency through consistent and repeatable patterns of action - unanticipated difficulties in implementation can reduce the performance of these arrangements. Faced with unsatisfactory performance of contracting-out arrangements, government organisations may adapt and change these arrangements over time, with the aim of improving performance. This paper enhances our understanding of `next generation infrastructures' by examining adaptation of the organisational arrangements for the maintenance of these assets, in a case study spanning 20 years.