Part 7.6: Future strategies: beyond multi-utilities?

The formation of multi-utilities, once started and having matured, could eventually develop in the opposite direction - towards a fragmentation of the value chain and increased outsourcing of those tasks and functions that belong to the service provision. The present utility is often composed of the production unit, maintenance, billing, acquisition, the back office and a call-centre. Together, they form the entity "utility". The future utility could be characterised by a network economy in which the different subtasks are out-contracted in order to realise even further economies of scale by focusing on a specific task only. The remaining utility unit is reduced to a coordinating entity of the whole.
(SOURCE: Junne, 2000)

The network-style economy implies that the composition of the stakeholders of the water sector would be changed, new organisations will make their entrance and interact in more or less intense, at times only temporary way. Traditional boundaries between the various stakeholders become less strict or blurred.
Networks are, by definition, open for transformation and accessible by an indefinable number of organisations, interest groups, stakeholders. This, in turn, gives them a public character. Hence, eventually both the public and the private sector could merge towards a hybrid network organisation in which the boundaries between public and private are transcended.
(SOURCE: Junne, 2000)