Entrepreneurial Governance: A Case study in public sector property asset management

Abstract

Recently, public sector property asset management has come into focus for a variety of reasons. Firstly, public sector finances are severely constrained in most western countries and property represents a significant cost to national and local governments. Secondly, the need to provide a greater range services requires that new property assets be developed. Two broad schools of thought have emerged as a result. One is the school of thought suggesting that corporate asset management structures from the private be incorporated into public sector asset management, including a full cost and benefit analysis incorporating life-cycle costs. The second is that the State of Government simply provide the services and consider property simply as a factor of production of those services with a focus simply on cost reduction. Within a New Zealand context, a philosophy emerged in the mid-1980s that views Governmental services within a framework of ientrepreneurial governance.i This change has led to a variety of public sector property management outcomes and may illustrate a possible hybrid of these two schools of thought. This paper will review the emergence of New Zealand public sector asset management from this entrepreneurial framework and provide examples of how it has been both successful and has led to unexpected outcomes.