The corporatization process: An owner perspective

The purpose of the paper is to: i) explore how the ownership-relationship between the public authority and the provider of the service is organized and managed to secure accountability in those cases the ownership remains public ii) how the purchaser-provider relationship is organized and managed so that public value are protected and iii) to what extent NPM still influences the reforms conducted within the public sector. Previous research has only touched upon the ownershiprelationship and the purchasing-provider relationship. This study shows that relationships are of importance for the outcome of the reform and thus for securing accountability and public value. A qualitatively oriented method with case studies is used and the empirical material is mainly gathered through semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that the outcome of the corporatization process is depending on the ownership-relationship as well as the purchaser-provider relationship and how these relationships are organized in the specific case.