Lessons from Case Studies: Working with Marketization

This chapter draws on insights from four case studies on how municipalities work with marketization in combination with survey data for illustrating and discussing a number of general lessons for marketization theory and policies. The discussions highlight: a) the role of organizational learning and incremental change in the implementation of contracting; b) the challenges of balancing needs for ensuring competition for contracts with the needs for ensuring contractual collaboration and effective contract management; c) the economic difficulties of municipal owned corporations operating within competitive environments; d) the widespread use of ‘corporate-like’ features for organizing in-house service provisions; and e) the future scope and limitations for developing contracting models within local park and road services.