Public Private Networks

The provision of services and the production of wares and services nowadays often require the cooperation of partners from different sectors. These cooperations can comprise public and private organizations, companies, universities, NGOs, and other groupings as well as individuals. The cooperative collaboration is esteemed as a core element of democratic social systems within a free market economy (Kirsch, 1996; Pongsiri, 2001). As one relevant method of organizing such collaborations, public private networks (PPN) extend the concept of public private partnerships (PPP) by adding the idea of networking and its core elements. From a scientific point of view as well as from the business perspective there is a shortcoming in the systematic processing of ideas, motivations, and forms as well as implications for internal and external participants of PPPs/PPNs. In the following, partnerships between partners from public and private business environments will be discussed. (Pongsiri, 2001) In particular, PPPs and PPNs in the field of academic education will be portrayed, since the cooperation in knowledge intensive areas is seen as an important issue. (Inkpen, 1996; Seufert, von Krogh, & Back, 1999) In the following the concepts of PPPs and PPNs will be explained. This will be done by an extensive literature review. The aim is to provide the required definitions and to discuss the incorporated views of others.