Public-private partnerships in higher education in Morocco: an illustration of innovation in public governance

Abstract

This article examines a particular form of innovation, namely governance-related innovation, and proposes an analytical framework for understanding its scope and assessing its effects. Two observations motivate this approach. On the one hand, existing research on innovation has primarily focused on the private sector and has emphasized innovations aimed at improving organizational performance—whether in terms of products, services, or processes—to the detriment of innovations specific to the public sector, which instead seek to optimize social performance through a reconfiguration of decision-making mechanisms, funding arrangements, and production systems.

On the other hand, research on governance has mainly drawn on the notion of “social coordination,” while largely overlooking the issue of innovation. Based on a documentary and institutional analysis of the legal framework governing public-private partnerships in Morocco, as well as agreements, institutional reports, and official communications relating to seven universities and higher education institutions, this article shows that governance innovation requires further theoretical development. The analysis highlights four distinctive and closely interconnected features of innovation in public-sector governance: the transcendence of organizational boundaries, the mobilization of new resources, the redistribution of decision-making power, and the broadening of evaluation criteria to include equity. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the specificities of governance innovation and clarify its scope in the context of Moroccan higher education.

JEL classification: H7, H75

Paper type: Theoretical research