Public Service Performance: Exploring the Effects of Strategy Configurations Among Ownership Types

We focus on ownership as a critical issue for service delivery and examine under which strategy configurations ownership types realize performance. Examining different ownership types that coexist in service delivery (public, nonprofit, and private), we explore how and where different ownership types generate performance returns across customer, business, and social dimensions. Using a configurational approach, we find that ‘fit’ between strategy and ownership type can deliver both social and business performance returns for public providers, customer and social performance advantages for nonprofit providers, but only customer performance gains for private ownership types. Through additional analysis differences in the identity of prioritized stakeholders between ownership types are explored to better explain their performance goals. The influence of local government for public providers versus the prioritization of funders for nonprofit and private providers is the one clear difference between types. Implications for public management theory and practice are identified and discussed.