The Governance of Mandated Partnerships: The Case of Social Housing Procurement

Abstract

Partnership working is nowadays a seemingly ubiquitous aspect of the management and delivery of public services, yet there remain major differences of opinion about how they best work for the different stakeholders they involve. The balances between mandate and trust, and between hard and soft power, are crucial to current debates about public service partnerships. This paper explores the example of social housing procurement in Northern Ireland, and the requirement to form mandated procurement groups. The research shows that the exercise of hierarchical power is still important in network governance; that mandated partnerships alter the balance between trust and power in partnership working, but the impact is uneven; and that these relationships are (re)shaping the ‘hybrid’ identity of housing associations. The balance between accountability for public resources and the independence of third sector organisations is the key tension in mandated partnerships. The Northern Ireland experience suggests that trust-based networks could provide more productive working relationships in partnerships for service delivery.

Keywords::

• Housing associations
• housing investment
• hybrid organisations
• network governance
• Northern Ireland
• social housing procurement

Acknowledgements

All of the research has been undertaken collaboratively by Jenny Muir, Queens University Belfast, Nick Acheson, University of Ulster (Supporting People case study not included in this paper), and David Mullins, University of Birmingham. We are grateful to our funders and to the stakeholder and case study organisations who have taken part in interviews over the two years of the project.

Additional information

Funding

This project was part-funded by the ESRC and Office for Civil Society through core funding for the Third Sector Research Centre, which enabled initial case study work in Summer 2011. The longitudinal element of the project was enabled by a research contract with the Northern Ireland Housing Executive.