Koen Verhoest

Innovation-oriented culture in the public sector: Do managerial autonomy and result control lead to innovation?

This article examines the effect of specific new public management (NPM)-related characteristics to explain innovation-oriented culture within public sector organizations. According to NPM doctrines, an enhanced managerial autonomy combined with result control will stimulate a more innovation-oriented culture in such organizations. Using multi-country survey data of over 200 public sector agencies, we test for the influence of organizational autonomy, result control and their interactions, on innovation-oriented culture. High levels of managerial autonomy and result control have independent and positive effects. However, the interaction between high personnel management autonomy and high result control has a negative effect.

Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: a state of the field and ways forward:

This article first provides a selective overview of the literature on bureaucratic autonomy and identifies different approaches to this topic. The second section discusses three major sets of open questions, which will be tackled in the contributions to this special issue: the subjective, dynamic and relational nature of autonomy; the complex linkages between tasks, organizational forms, and national path dependencies on the one hand and autonomy and performance on the other hand; and the interplay between autonomy, accountability and democratic legitimacy.

Public-private partnerships in Flemish schools: a complex governance structure in a complex context

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are used very widely but remarkably little empirical research has been published investigating the governance of PPPs. PPPs are complex infrastructure projects and present important governance challenges as the responsibilities of public and private partners are ambiguous and can be confused. This paper looks at the interactions between the elements of complexity and at the governance structure of PPPs, and their combined effect on performance. A case study in Flanders (the northern region of Belgium) is discussed.

Coordinating for Integrated Youth Care: The need for smart metagovernance

Abstract Integrated youth care (IYC) requires co-ordination between many (semi-)autonomous actors, which can be achieved with a collaborative governance regime (CGR). Smart metagovernance by central government is imperative herein, choosing the mix of metagovernance roles at the right time for the issue at hand. Using a single case study of IYC in Flanders (Belgium), this article shows how important and difficult metagovernance is. Framing, designing, managing and participating in a CGR requires metagovernors to know when to allow for autonomy and dialogue, and when to use the ‘shadow of hierarchy’.

Why Do Autonomous Public Agencies Use Performance Management Techniques? Revisiting the Role of Basic Organizational Characteristics

ABSTRACT This study investigates to what extent the use of different performance management techniques within (semi-) autonomous public sector organizations, also called public agencies, can be explained by the defining organizational features of such organizations. Using multi-country survey data of over 400 public agencies, the effect of these features—internal performance target setting and monitoring, multi-year planning, as well as the internal performance-based allocation of resources—upon three performance management techniques has been studied. This set-up recognizes differences among management techniques, as well as recurring factors, allowing us to make more general statements. Analyses illustrate that external result control by the minister and parent ministry positively affects the use of all performance management techniques examined in public agencies. However, each performance management technique is affected differently by specific organizational variables.

Ten Lessons from Ten Years PPP Experience in Belgium

In 2004 Flanders, the northern region of Belgium launched a range of large public–private partnership (PPP) projects for a total value of 6 billion euros. Ten years later, PPP has become a well-embedded procurement method for long-term public infrastructure projects. This article makes a critical ‘round-up’ of PPP experience in Belgium based on the perspectives of infrastructure professionals who were asked to provide their views on performance-related issues in PPP projects. Two workshops were held to further enrich the input and ideas. Based on this empirical material this article formulates 10 lessons to improve PPP performance, which is deliberately broadly defined. It argues that the dominant ‘value for money’ evaluations, following strictly financial or commercial logics (in both the private and public sectors), need to be broadened. Given the large impact and cost of large infrastructure projects on society, broader societal and spatial contributions of PPPs are needed.

Evolutionary Multi-Level Regulatory Arrangement. The impact of the resolution of incoherencies

This chapter is concerned with the influence of regulatory arrangements on regulatory coherence and vice versa. Regulatory coherence means an absence of redundancy, lacunae and contradiction within the regulation, which is the set of rules which regulate the market. Any incoherence in the regulation is supposed to be a problem that regulators must resolve. Given its distribution of competence and coordination instruments, the regulatory arrangement should offer more or less facilities to tackle incoherencies. More precisely, we consider the influence of the characteristics of the regulatory arrangement on the prevalence of regulatory incoherencies, and the capacity to resolve incoherencies. These characteristics are the degree of participation of all the regulators involved in the decision-making process and the concentration of decision-making power in the main sector regulator, usually the sectoral IRA. The answer to this question relies on a detailed empirical knowledge about the frequency and kind of incoherencies which occur and how they are resolved. In addition, it is interesting to see how the decisions and actions that resolve incoherencies incrementally change the regulatory arrangement.

Aim, Central Claims and Structure of the Book

Most research concerning regulation of the utilities sector concentrates on the creation of new institutions (that is, independent regulatory agencies, referred to in this book as IRAs) in the liberalization process (Kunneke et al., 2009) or focuses attention on the autonomy or independence of those sectoral IRAs, but without considering the wider context and interaction with other regulatory actors (Coen and Thatcher, 2008, constitute a notable exception). In this book, the concepts of ‘independence’ and ‘autonomy’ of IRAs are used interchangeably, implying that here both concepts are considered to be similar in meaning. However, given the complexity of regulation in practice and the number of organizations involved, highly independent regulatory agencies must increasingly share their decision-making power with regulatory actors.