Private Contractors as a Source for Organizational Learning: Evidence from Scandinavian Municipalities

The widespread use of government contracting opens uplearning opportunities in public organizations’engagementswith private contractors. However, whether public organiza-tions utilize these opportunities to improve their practices hasscant coverage in the government contracting literature. Weadapt insights from the organizational learning literature,develop an argument on the learning logic in governmentcontracting, and examine manager perceptions of learningoutcomes and whether intra- and inter-organizational andcontextual conditions shape the learning outcomes. The argu-ment is assessed against survey data reporting on the munici-pal park and road managers’contracting experiences inScandinavia. The findings show that government contractingin the context of the study is associated with positive learningoutcomes and indicates possible tradeoffs between conven-tional cost-driven and learning strategies. The implicationscontribute to discussions about the role and benefits of gov-ernment contracting beyond cost savings in the post-NPMreform era.