Infrastructure companies are crucial to our economy and to our daily lives. More and more, these companies operate in the private sector and the government is little more than a shareholder. These private companies, however, are charged with the important task of creating public values. Governments therefore make use of regulatory oversight and legislation to ensure that these public values are properly served.
How can governments best approach this task? The regulatory framework must of course encompass the highest possible measure of relevance. This study, led by Bob de Wit, was designed to uncover the significant links between the strategies employed by infrastructure companies and the degree to which public values are created. The findings will make it possible to design highly effective regulatory oversight structures.
Companies’ strategies were scored on three strategic dimensions. The first dimension describes the way in which the company defines its objective. The second dimension describes the company’s strategy for growth (business strategy). The third dimension describes the company’s network strategy – how it deals with other companies.
The study investigated the influence of these strategic dimensions on the creation of five public values: sustainability, reliability, quality, affordability and accessibility.
Using a newly developed research method, 42 infrastructure companies from four different sectors in five countries were subjected to a comparison based on the strategic dimensions and public values mentioned above.
Of the fifteen potential combinations, three were identified as being significant: a network strategy that is aimed at cooperation has a positive influence on reliability; a business strategy that is aimed at fostering synergy between the various units of the company has a positive influence on the quality of services provided; an objective that is based on social responsibility has a positive influence on the accessibility of services.
The three significant links are interesting on their own, of course. Equally as interesting is the fact that other links that are not significant lead to a shift in perspective on governmental priorities and regulatory oversight. It is considered vital, for example, to place more emphasis on both market and customer orientation in the various sectors, whereas this study demonstrates that this dimension has no effect whatsoever on creating the five public values studied.
