Establishing Preconditions for Spanning the Boundaries in Public Private IT Megaprojects

Inter-organizational cooperations between public and private partners, called public private partnerships (PPP), are increasingly gaining more importance concerning renewal, standardization, and optimization of the information technology (IT) infrastructure of public sector organizations. Reasons for this trend include the search for partners with necessary technological and innovative knowledge of sourcing IT and the identification of cost-saving potentials. Unfortunately, IT-PPP-cooperations are particularly susceptible to failure due to the clash of different cultures. Divergent understandings, expectations, and pressure from the relevant stakeholders hinder a working partnership. Therefore, in this exploratory, qualitative single-case study from the German TollCollect IT megaproject, the authors draw on findings from boundary spanning literature to explain how establishing preconditions for boundary spanning and actively bridging the gap between the partners, moderated by external stakeholder support, affects the formation of mutual trust and success of an IT-PPP-megaproject.