Accountability and corporate governance of public private partnerships

Brennan and Solomon (2008) identify six new frontiers in accountability and corporate governance research to stimulate research. This paper contributes to such research by devising a reporting framework and research agenda that relates to Brennan and Solomon’s fourth frontier, sectors and context, focusing on the regulated hybrid organisational forms of Public Private Partnerships, which operate at the interface of the public and private sectors. As the framework shows, these organisations are subject to multiple influences and demands. There is a need for more and different reporting than is the norm under the private sector’s decision-useful reporting framework. Although the framework focuses on what Mulgan (2000) describes as the core of accountability, it is not only a financial reporting framework but it also seeks to make concrete Kamuf’s (2007) argument that accountability might include accounting through narrative as well as the prevailing numeric evaluation. The paper stresses the need for information to be accessible to the public, and in particular argues that a stream of information between the public and private sector partners needs to be developed and disseminated to achieve accountability for public money that is increasingly spent in the private sector. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.