Wout Broekema

What Factors Drive Organizational Learning From Crisis? Insights From the Dutch Food Safety Services’ Response to Four Veterinary Crises

Although organizational learning has been studied extensively, empirical studies in relation to crises and theory building have remained scarce. This study explored what factors affect the learning process from crises of a public sector organization. We studied the responses of the Dutch food safety services (NVWA) to the veterinary crises classical swine fever (1997–1998), foot-and-mouth disease (2001), avian influenza (2003) and Q fever (2007–2010). Data from in-depth interviews with key experts in the organization and from crisis management documents pointed to political–economic context, social–emotional understanding, organizational structure, organizational culture, crisis management stage and organizational forgetting as key factors. Remarkably, postcrisis evaluation reports, leadership and a shared sense-making of what lessons to learn were not found to play a central role.

Explaining Trajectories of Municipal Amalgamations: A Case Comparison of the Netherlands and Flanders

Although there has been a general trend towards local government mergers in Western European countries, the trajectories of municipal amalgamations vary widely per country. Through a comparative in-depth analysis of the Netherlands and Flanders we explore what factors help to explain the differences between trajectories of municipal amalgamations, as a starting point for understanding why municipal amalgamations do or do not occur. It is clear that amalgamation trajectories are highly complex and very much embedded in case-specific contexts. Major factors influencing municipal amalgamations trajectories relate to an explanation of path dependence. The complexity of amalgamation processes, however, carries the threat of easy oversimplification. Our conclusion, therefore, is that the deeper processes must be understood as a basis for studies that use more simplified, quantified data.