Abstract for: Towards a Sustainable Social Service Delivery System Through Public-Private Partnership: A Conceptual System Dynamics Approach

This paper presents an assessment of the dynamics of a Public-Private Partnership(PPP) in delivering social services and it aims at improving such partnership. Despite the significance of social welfare services this topic has received limited attention in literature. Therefore, we intend to bridge this gap by focusing on a case study of food donation service in Lecce, Italy. System Dynamics, proven methodology for analyzing complex social systems, has been employed to qualitatively analyze the service delivery system. This qualitative analysis has helped us first, to conceptualize the current system into several dynamic sub-systems, second, to investigate the social capital exchanging process and identify the system problems and finally, to design a new subsystem to be implemented in order to overcome the dynamic challenges. Establishing an IT platform is proposed as the operational requirement to foster effective communication among the actors to facilitate information sharing and also to ensure the positive synergy in the delivery of food to citizens in need. We discuss how working together in such environment enables actors to bring on board efficiency and local innovation to achieve commonly identified objectives such as maximizing the supply of the system as well as the number of supported needy citizens.