Description
The public sector spends some £450 billion annually on buying goods and services from the private sector and yet too often mutual distrust and cultural differences impede fruitful joint working because of their failure to understand each other. In this practical guide the authors argue that while the two sectors are stereotypically seen as dolphins (public sector) and sharks (private sector) causing mutual suspicion these barriers can be broken down once the two sides learn about each other’s characteristics and culture.
The authors describe how to change these perceptions at an individual level by appropriate interaction, dolphin to dolphin, shark to shark. They reveal how the two sectors can appreciate and even copy each other’s strengths, the private sector acquiring more dolphins and the public sector in turn more sharks, building a long-lasting relationship of equals that can help deliver better public services.
Michael Burton has spent over 30 years as a commentator, editor and author working for a private company covering the public sector. He is the author of The Politics of Public Sector Reform from Thatcher to the Coalition (2013) The Politics of Austerity: A Recent History (2016) and From Broke to Brexit: Britain’s Lost Decade (2022). He was for 20 years editor of The MJ (Municipal Journal) the market-leading weekly title for UK local government and a board director of The MJ’s parent publishing and events company.
Richard Smith is a former professor and private sector executive who then worked for a local authority leading its in-house workforce in a successful competitive tender against private contractors. It was this experience which later led him to create Public Sector plc, a concept based on ‘relational partnering,’ a multi-million-pound public-private property business. He is founder of the Centre for Partnering which promotes the value of partnering through a relational framework to deliver enhanced social and public value to communities.
