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1.Introduction
Over the past couple of decades, the public–private partnership (PPP) policy has gained considerable attention in both developing and developed countries. Generally, PPP is described as a procurement method in which the public and private sectors combine their skills and expertise with the aim of delivering a public facility or service (Cheung et al., 2010a). Normally, in PPP schemes, risks are identified and shared among parties, preferably to the party with better mitigation techniques (Ke et al., 2010; Chan et al., 2011).
In PPP practices, the public sector is often regarded as the initiator, enabler and a key decision-making party in the partnership arrangement (Yuan et al., 2009). It is the public sector that mostly begins the PPP procurement process and also acts on behalf of general public and users during negotiations. Indeed, the public sector has a major role to play toward the successful implementation of PPP projects (Li et al., 2005a; Wibowo and Alfen, 2015). Thus, there is a need for an in-depth and thorough analysis of the views of the public sector in PPP implementation practices. Essentially, during the past couple of decades, many researchers have explored the public sector’s view on the implementation practices of PPP by covering various areas, including risk management, critical success factors (CSFs), best-value objectives, drivers/reasons and obstacles for PPPs (Osei-Kyei et al., 2014; Li et al., 2005b; Ismail and Haris, 2014a; Zhang, 2006; Chan et al., 2011). However, majority of the studies offered discussions from a specific country’s perspective, and more importantly, they did not cover many other critical issues such as training and education, external stakeholder management and success criteria in PPP implementation practices. Though other studies including that of Cheung et al. (2010a) have also attempted to offer discussion on the public sector’s perspective on PPP practices, their study rather focused on developed countries. Considering the fact that the PPP concept has become a global practice, which is being used in both developing and developed economies/countries (Osei-Kyei and Chan, 2017), comparing the public sector’s views among developing and developed economies/countries is more valuable and beneficial. This is because international investors, consultants and financiers will be considerably informed of the expectations of contracting authorities or...