RESUMEN
Managed Service Personnel (MSPs) have become critical sources of innovation, expertise and superior technology-enhanced performance. This understanding has, however, generated conflicting outcomes, as some hold a contrary view. This study examined the contribution of MSPs to achieving organizational targets in the northern cluster of a reputable bank in Ghana in order to determine the bank's outsourcing decisions, MSP responsibilities, and how such roles compare with those of permanent staff of the bank. The study employed qualitative approaches involving group and individual interviews with 66 participants. The investigation revealed that, among others, the bank outsourced MSPs for expertise, technology, innovation, and cost efficiency. It was also determined that MSPs outperformed regular staff in the areas of technology-enabled productivity, profitability, quality services, and organizational efficiency using unmatched skills, experience, and expertise. A novelty of the study is the culmination of new insight into a performance outlook developed to help organizational leaders make informed decisions. The performance outlook also present critical implications for theory, policy, and practice.
RESUMEN
There has been growing advocacy for public-private partnership (PPP) in healthcare in both policy and academic circles over the last 3 decades. However, our understanding of the tensions between the policy cycle and critical organisational trade-offs that characterise alternative forms of healthcare PPPs remains limited. In this paper, we use Walt and Gilson's policy analysis triangle to explore the policy and practice of two alternative models of healthcare PPPs-autonomous and integrative partnerships-at the sub-national level in Ghana, a typical case of a polycentric health management structure. The study is a sequential exploratory qualitative design, consisting of review of four policy documents and in-depth interviews with 13 key informants, comprising health managers from the regional and district health directorates, and medical directors of selected private health facilities. Our findings reveal that in spite of the natural potential of integrative PPP models to present a relatively stronger policy capacity to the private partner than autonomous models, the capacity of sub-national level public-private actors to participate in policy making and implementation remains very limited across both models. We further find that effective policy making and implementation requires significant governance attention to building the policy capacity of actors across vertical and horizontal levels of the partnership, regardless of the model of engagement. We suggest that this is achievable through instrumental multistakeholderism in PPP policy, planning and management. The paper contributes to developing understanding of the policy and practice of healthcare PPP in polycentric institutional settings.
