Contradictions in infrastructure management: The introduction of performance-based contracts at the Dutch highways and waterways agency

Increasingly, public organizations are being compelled to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their service provision. A key approach of public organizations for achieving these objectives is to extend private sector involvement. In infrastructure management, integrated, performance-based contracts are a concrete expression of this involvement. From an activity-theoretical perspective, this paper explores infrastructure management as activity system and elucidates the contradictions which the introduction of integrated, performance-based contracts at the Dutch Highways and Waterways Agency provokes within this activity system. Due to the mediating role maintenance contracts play in the interaction of public and private parties with regard to maintenance objectives, this paper shows that changes in the contract form and in contract controlling lead to the aggravation of already existing contradictions and the emergence of new contradictions within the infrastructure management system.