Alexandra Van den Abbeele

Public procurement of consulting services: Evidence and comparison with private companies

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to shed light on the procurement process of consulting services within the public sector and to benchmark the obtained results with practices in the private sector.Design/methodology/approach – A two‐stage research design has been used. First, in‐depth personal interviews were conducted with six users of consulting services. The second stage involved a cross‐sectional survey of purchasers of a broad range of business advisory services. This included private as well as public purchasers.Findings – It was found that the procurement process of consulting services in the public sector differs significantly from that of private companies. Further analyses indicate that purchasers from public and private organizations are equally satisfied with the results of consulting services.Research limitations/implications – The results of the study indicate that public sector organizations may need to develop new buying skills in market management, specification, competitive process, ne...

Organizational Learning and Interfirm Control: The Effects of Partner Search and Prior Exchange Experiences

Partner search processes and prior exchange experiences constitute important organizational learning processes that provide firms with valuable partner information, which may enhance their ability to design control structures for new interfirm transactions. By increasing trust and by providing first-hand partner information, prior experiences may, however, also reduce the need for control and for new information during the search process. An analysis of 287 transactions between buyers and suppliers of information technology supports that partner search and experience facilitate learning and subsequent control design, but that partner experience simultaneously reduces the need for control and the intensity of the partner search process. Our findings thus indicate that partner experience can have opposite and offsetting effects on control design, which contributes to the discussion on whether prior exchange experiences complement or substitute formal control.

Using Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing to support Library Management Decisions: A Case Study for Lending and Returning Processes

With the rapid increase in the demand for new digital services, the high cost of information, and the dramatic economic slowdown, libraries have been pressured to improve their services at lower costs. To cope with these conditions, library managers must improve their knowledge and understanding of cost behavior, as well as be aware of the different costs involved in the library. Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TDABC) is a cost management technique that allows for developing accurate cost information on a wide range of activities. Few case studies have been implemented in libraries regarding very specific processes such as interlibrary loan and acquisition processes. More research is still needed to determine whether TDABC is useful and feasible to implement for a more extensive set of library activities. Through an analysis performed at an academic library in Belgium, this document introduces TDABC as a useful method for supporting lending and returning processes.

A Holistic Approach to Supporting Academic Libraries in Resource Allocation Processes

E-content revolution, technological advances, and ever-shrinking budgets oblige libraries to efficiently allocate their limited resources between collection and services. Unfortunately, resource allocation is a complex process due to the diversity of data sources and formats required to be analyzed prior to decision making, as well as the lack of efficient methods of integration. The contribution of this article is twofold. We first propose an evaluation framework to holistically assess academic libraries. To do so, a four-pronged theoretical framework is used in which the library system and collection are analyzed from the perspective of users and internal stakeholders. Second, we present a data warehouse architecture that integrates, processes, and stores the holistically based collected data. By proposing this holistic approach, we aim to provide an integrated solution that assists library managers to make economic decisions based on a perspective of the library situation that is as realistic as possible.

Management control in inter-organizational relationships:Lessons learnt from public-private partnerships

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become increasingly common. However, reported failure rates are high, underlining the challenge to effectively govern such relationships. The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the management control structure for different types of PPPs by adopting a comparative case study approach. The two cases under study are partnerships between municipalities and their private partners: a long-term infrastructure project and an urban regeneration project. Given the different nature of the activities and the accompanying risks, the PPP literature suggests that the cooperation in these PPPs is organized in very different ways, namely loose versus tight. We propose (1) that outcome-based control mechanisms play an important role in managing loosely organized PPP projects and (2) that behaviour and social control mechanisms play an important role in managing tightly organized PPP projects. Although our results support these propositions, our analysis also suggests that existing frameworks for private inter-organizational relationships (IORs) are insufficient for explaining governance structures in PPPs. Given the specific nature of PPP arrangements, we identify a number of socio-political risks and related management control mechanisms not typically discussed in theories of private IORs. More specifically, we conclude that conveners and project champions play an important role as political controls in the success of PPPs.

The effects of knowledge sharing on helping behavior: Implications for reward system design

We examine how individuals’ willingness to help others depends on whether or not this help involves knowledge sharing. We do so across environments that vary whether or not those providing help can receive rewards from the recipients of this help. In our experiment, employee-participants learn how to perform a task and decide how much help to provide employer-participants, where joint payoffs but also employees’ personal costs increase in the help provided. We manipulate whether or not employees’ help involves the sharing of task-relevant knowledge, holding the economic cost and benefit of help constant. Results suggest that knowledge sharing’s effect on helping behavior hinges on whether or not employees can expect rewards from employers for their help. Knowledge sharing decreases help in an environment where employees cannot receive rewards from employers, but increases help motivated by anticipated rewards. Our results are consistent with theory suggesting that individuals perceive their knowledge as an important part of their identity, making it costly to freely share but facilitating greater trust that recipients of this knowledge will reciprocate with future rewards. Moreover, our findings challenge the practice in accounting and economics of generalizing results from research studying helping behavior without knowledge sharing to knowledge-sharing domains. In doing so, this paper contributes to a better understanding of reward systems designed to promote knowledge sharing in practice.