Costs, outputs and outcomes in school PFI contracts and the significance of project size

This article examines operational Private Finance Initiative (PFI) school projects and reports the experiences of UK headteachers. It considers the impact of project size on value for money (VFM). Headteachers involved in small projects are more satisfied with costs than those involved in large projects, but headteachers involved in larger projects are more satisfied with affordability. Generally, heads are more satisfied with the buildings than with the services. The authors question the government’s recent policy changes to increase the size of PFI projects.

Accountability and Value for Money in Private Finance Initiative Contracts

Within the context of New Public Management (NPM), successive UK governments have claimed that PFI projects provide more accountability, and arguably, more value for money (VFM) than conventional procurement for the public (HM Treasury 1995, 2000, 2003a and 2003b). However, recent empirical research in the UK on PFI has indicated its potential limitations for accountability and VFM (Broadbent, Gill and Laughlin, 2004; Edwards, Shaoul, Stafford and Arblaster, 2004; Shaoul, 2005; and Ismail and Pendlebury, 2006) albeit these are based on either published accounts or a limited number of key stakeholders. This paper attempts to partially redress this gap in the literature by presenting an interesting case of the impact of PFI on accountability and VFM in Northern Ireland's education sector. The findings of this research, based on forty two interviews with a wide range of key stakeholders, suggest that stakeholders have different and often conflicting expectations and the actual PFI accountability and VFM benefits are much more obfuscated than those claimed in Government publications.

Coalitional Games and Contracts Based on Individual Deviations

We study what coalitions form and how the members of each coalition split the coalition value in coalitional games in which only individual deviations are allowed. In this context we employ three stability notions: individual, contractual, and compensational stability. These notions differ in terms of the underlying contractual assumptions. We characterize the coalitional games in which individually stable outcomes exist by means of the top-partition property. Furthermore, we show that any coalition structure of maximum social worth is both contractually and compensationally stable.

Non-intrusive tracking of commercial broiler chickens in situ at different stocking densities

Unlike several other farm animal species, the broiler chicken remains unprotected by species-specific legislation. The densities at which broilers should be kept is a highly contentious issue-some studies have demonstrated increased welfare problems at higher densities, whilst a few others have, contrary to expectations, suggested that broilers may actually find crowds of other birds attractive. A tracking method was developed and used to provide an insight into the social preferences of commercial broiler chickens in situ-inside commercial, closed-system broiler houses. The aim was to simultaneously assess the relative impact of global measures of density, such as target and actual stocking densities and local measures of the social environment on the behaviour and route taken to feed by focal birds. Birds were tracked inside 20 commercial broiler houses across the UK. Results from this study show that stocking density per se seems to have little direct effect on the individual behaviours of focal broiler chickens. However, there may still be an indirect effect of stocking density on broiler behaviour, mediated through the local social environment. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Accountability and Value for Money: A Framework for Exploring the Relationship in Private Finance Initiative Contracts

There is an implicit assumption in the UK Treasury’s publications on public-private partnerships (PPP) – also more commonly known in the United Kingdom as private finance initiative (PFI) - that accountability and value for money (VFM) are related concepts. While recent academic studies on PPP/PFI (from now on as PFI) have focused on VFM, there is a notable absence of studies exploring the ‘presumed’ relationships between accountability and VFM. Drawing on Dubnick’s (Dubnick and Romzek, 1991, 1993; Dubnick, 1996, 1998, 2003, 2005; Dubnick and Justice, 2002) framework for accountability and PFI literature, we develop a research framework for exploring potential relationships between accountability and VFM in PFI projects by proposing alternative accountability cultures, processes and mechanisms for PFI. The PFI accountability model is then exposed to four criteria - warrantability, tractability, measurability and feasibility. Our preliminary interviews provide us guidance in identifying some of the cultures, processes and mechanisms indicated in our model which should enable future researchers to test not only the UK Government’s claimed relationships between accountability and VFM using more specific PFI empirical data, but also a potential relationship between accountability and performance in general.