The Escondido Framework applies not only to the private sector company but equally to public sector organisations, to mutuals and to charities. The difference between the public sector and third sector bodies and private companies is the absence of potentially tradable risk capital. But this does not mean that they do not require capital in order to fulfil their purposes and that their managements do not have to think about how they position themselves against a variety of market interfaces. As chairman of an NHS hospital and trustee of a large medical research charity, I see very comparable challenges in terms of the strategy of the organisations towards staff, suppliers, funding sources, and end users to those I faced in my private sector career. And the managers in these sectors are no less vulnerable to the temptations to exploit and abuse the “virtual space” that they operate within if they are successful in pushing out boundaries surrounding their organisations.
Application to public and third sector organisations
