Insights on Italian and Indian health care systems from VSA perspective

Purpose – Health is considered to be an integral part of the socio-economic development of a country. The purpose of the paper is to analyze potential contribution, criticalities and conditions of success of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) as a strategy to face the complexity of nationally relevant Italian-Indian service systems. Design/methodology/approach – The methodology is built upon the basis of the Viable Systems Approach (VSA) as integrated with the fundamental interpretative elements of Service Science (SS) and Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) to contextualize interpretation to the management of service systems. Findings –PPPs appear to be an interesting solution when resources are scarce leading to a positive conclusion. Practical implications – From theoretical perspective, the study contributes to the scholarly understanding of complex health care system in Italy and India. It also suggests a generic framework for VSA as applicable. Also from practical perspective, the study stimulates managers to a critical reflection about current health care management approaches. Originality/value – The paper proposes a new approach to the study of health care, capable of highlighting relevant aspects of the system’s dynamics, shifting focus from its structural, objective description to its systems, subjective interpretation. The paper also discusses decision making challenges, such as the equality in the populations’ access to health service, suggesting managers to leverage on creating conditions of consonance among the diverse stakeholder for a successful health care PPPs.