Public–private partnership and corporate public sector organizations: Alternative ways to increase social performance in the Portuguese water sector?

Using survey data from the Portuguese Water Sector Regulator, the following study explores the relationship between social performance and the sector providing water service. In that sense, lower user prices and higher quality goods and services are linked to superior social performance. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that user prices have a stronger relationship with organizational costs than with property or the adopted management model in the delivery of public services. In contrast, the quality of the goods and services possesses a stronger connection with property rather than with organizational costs or management models. Such results contradict the New Public Management ideas; mainly that private sector participation through public–private partnerships in the delivery of public services will inevitably lead to a better use of scarce resources, and consequentially to lower user prices and higher quality goods and services. In the Portuguese case, policy implications are that public–private partnerships ceased until lower organizational costs, higher quality services and lower user prices are secured.