Abstract
Public-Private Joint Ventures are one of the pervasive forms of Public-Private Partnerships in sovereign industries of emerging economies. They entail a state-international business relationship to extract and develop mineral reserves. The complexities in governing the partnership transcend the contractual agreement due to the tightness of the organizational form, and the state-biased hierarchal structure that favours Public Partners over Private Partners. One of the core exchanges is leading a shared staff that administratively and directly reports to public partners, while technically and indirectly reporting to private partners. Building on the concepts of, principal-agent theory, and network governance, this article addresses the leadership practices enacted by appointed public and private managers in leading the working staff of PPJVs. Qualitative empirical data was gathered by interviewing public and private senior executives in the field. The findings identified two practices within the management-staff exchange of the partnership.