Why do public organizations sometimes lose citizen approval even when their cross-sector collaborations run smoothly? This new study shows it can all hinge on who they team up with. Using two preregistered experiments in Germany (n = 2510), the article shows that a private partner facing low propriety beliefs “drags down” the involved public organization. In this case, regardless of project performance, the public organizations also face lower propriety beliefs. In other words, legitimacy perceptions spill sideways: citizens’ propriety beliefs about the private actor transfer to the public organization simply because they a PPP ties them together.
Reference
Sievert, M., Pinz, A., & Helmig, B. (2025). Legitimacy by Association? How Citizens Form Propriety Beliefs Through Horizontal Spillovers in Public–Private Partnerships. European Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emj.2025.06.007