Beyond the Orthodoxy of New Public Management: The Outcome Evaluation in the Italian Strategic Cities

Collaboration is still being debated in public management studies. As specific way of creating public value, the collaborative working is mainly encouraged by the austerity, that implies putting resources together, not only the financial ones. Hence, new forms of service integration are asked in order to improve public service delivery in a more efficient and effectiveness way. Even if public administrations have embraced this trend, the focus adopted is mainly oriented to the planning and the programming approach rather than to the evaluation phase. What is the outcome of public service delivered through a collaborative approach? What is the outcome evaluation of the collaborative process? These kinds of outcome are evaluated? This study aims at investigating which kind of outcome is outlined by the Italian Strategic Cities in their collaborative strategic planning for cultural services delivery. As a main finding, the research extends the knowledge on the outcome evaluation of the collaboration in terms of process and in terms of impact of public services delivered