Contracting-out in urban green-space management: Instruments, approaches and arrangements

Although contracting-out has become widespread among the OECD countries in the last couple of decades, there is limited knowledge about the arrangements chosen by urban green-space managers when contracting-out. In this paper, I take our current knowledge a step forward and present a comprehensive overview of the ‘infrastructure’ of contract designs used for contracting-out in urban green-space management. On the backdrop of a cross-national sample of a total of 14 cases from four countries, I build up a ‘toolbox’ of instruments, approaches and arrangements currently used by public clients for managing contracts with private contractors. In six major categories of instrument, I distinguish 41 specific instruments, and 15 embedded approaches for managing these instruments. Both instruments and approaches are grouped into standard and advanced kinds. Arrangements are categorized into three major types. Each type is characterized by a core combination of instruments and approaches and a limited range of variants. Finally, I explore national differences and organizational reasons supporting and directing the choice of overall contractual arrangement. For both the practitioner and the researcher, the paper can be used to inspect, compare, design and develop instruments, approaches and arrangements available in the toolbox of urban green-space management.