Re‐examining the link between collaborative interorganisational relationships and synergistic outcomes in public–private partnerships: Insights from the Punjab Education Foundation's school partnerships

Summary Previous research has argued that public–private partnerships (PPPs) need collaborative interorganisational relationships (IORs) in order to deliver synergistic benefits: combined benefits that are greater than the sum of which each partner could have achieved alone. In contrast, this study of the Punjab Education Foundation's assisted school PPPs has found that despite the absence of many of the indicators of collaboration, the partnerships have delivered some synergistic benefits. This article explores how this has been achieved and highlights the importance of ‘cooperative IORs' in the assisted school partnerships. These findings thus question the necessity for collaboration in PPPs. They also suggest that a binary distinction between contractual and collaborative relationships in PPPs—prominent in the existing PPP literature—needs to be reconsidered. The article does not aim to decisively refute a body of existing research based on case study findings but rather questions some of the conclusions of this body of research, which seem to be worthy of further consideration.