The Negotiation of joint purpose in public private partnerships

Public private partnerships (PPPs) in project finance involve public and private sectors working together usually in the development of large scale public projects. Their involvement represents a form of collaboration within the partnerships between two dissimilar organizations with different goals. Therefore a key issue in PPPs is how such collaboration resolves their differences and strives to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship. To achieve such symbiosis, these two organizations will have to negotiate with a joint purpose. Negotiation of joint purpose has been discussed under collaboration and negotiation theory. Drawing first on the literature of collaboration theory, this paper set out to investigate how the negotiation of joint purpose can be extended into the literature of PPPs. It will then proceed to examine the key issues in the negotiation literature that are important in the negotiation of joint purpose in PPPs. It will finally argue that only through negotiation of joint purpose in PPPs, symbiotic goals can then be set. The paper concludes with an identification of some of the key research areas in collaboration that would be beneficial to the study and further research of PPPs.