Impose with Leeway: Combining an Engineering and Learning Approach in the Management of Public-Private Collaboration

The ongoing financial crisis is forcing governments to consider leaner (less resource intensive) forms of public service delivery. This is a difficult process, especially since recent private sector scandals demand that governments become more vigilant. Public-private collaboration (PPC) needs to address this ‘lean yet vigilant’ challenge. However, PPCs have proven to take a long time to establish and bring to fruition. Hurdles that delay the achievement of goals include the need to agree on standards in an environment with heterogeneous interests, changing laws and unclear revenue models. While literature on managing PPC hints towards the need for both compulsory measures (plan-driven, restrictive) and adaptive measures (learning-driven, leeway), case studies illustrating how these measures can be integrated in practice are scarce. Drawing on the Standard Business Reporting case in the Netherlands, this paper shows that both compulsory and adaptive measures are necessary to advance in multi-actor standardization processes. Our findings indicate that PPC managers need to impose with leeway by taking an engineering approach to architecture development yet providing leeway in the details.