This article presents a review of the recent literature on change management in public organizations and sets out to explore the extent to which this literature has responded to earlier critiques ...regarding the lack of (public) contextual factors. The review includes 133 articles published on this topic in the period from 2000 to 2010. The articles are analysed based on the themes of the context, content, process, outcome, and leadership of change. We identified whether the articles referred to different orders of change, as well as their methods and theory employed. Our findings concentrate on the lack of detail on change processes and outcomes and the gap between the common theories used to study change. We propose an agenda for the study of change management in public organizations that focuses on its complex nature by building theoretical bridges and performing more in‐depth empirical and comparative studies on change processes.
This upper-level open access textbook uses an interdisciplinary perspective to discuss the ‘what and why’ of public procurement, providing insight into the ‘how’ of contemporary procurement in the ...public sector. The authors use theories and exemplary practices to show the next generation of public procurement professionals how public value can be created via the acquisition of works, supplies, or services by organizations operating in the public domain. Perfectly tailored to university students in public administration, law, economics, or management and those in executive education, the book first describes and explains the public procurement process, the concept of public value, the legal context of procurement and how the procurement function is organized in public organizations. The book subsequently explains how a procurement policy can be developed and translated into a procurement strategy, how tenders can be organized, suppliers selected, and contracts designed and evaluated. A final discussion chapter addresses the changes and developments in public procurement and how public procurement is moving forward. The reader of this innovative and accessible book will therefore not only learn what public procurement entails, but also how they can become a professional change agent in the field of public procurement. Forward-thinking and comprehensive, this book offers ideal reading for anyone interested in public procurement.
Implementing new value systems in municipal organizations to add societal value is extremely challenging. Value tensions emerge inside public organizations when the traditional (TPA) and market (NPM) ...value systems are confronted with new collaborative value systems (NPG). A multi-level case study, based on interviews, observations and documents, was conducted in two large Dutch municipalities to analyze implementation challenges that civil servants encounter due to the implementation of NPG. By integrating a governance mechanisms-based approach with a value tension approach, the paper contributes to the understanding of internal hybridity in municipal organizations, and the wickedness of organizing public administration when implementing NPG, by identifying both vertical - formalization, flexibilization, and misalignment in top-down and bottom-up governance - and horizontal - different organizational pillars, professions, and value interpretations - implementation challenges. The paper concludes that in the paradoxical situation of complex policy arenas, values elements of TPA and NPG governance models associated with “doing it right” remained dominant in the trade-offs with new values of NPG modes associated with “doing the right thing”. Value conflicts hinder civil servants in ‘doing the right thing right’.
Governments use sustainable public procurement to reduce the negative aspects of production and consumption. The more sustainable the goods and services that the government buys are, the greater the ...impact on the market and the environment. However, studies show that the degree of sustainable procurement is not constant within a public organization, but varies across procurement projects. Studies into sustainable public procurement identify several organizational factors that drive or hinder the implementation of sustainable (public) procurement. However these studies have not yet examined how these factors influence the implementation and thus degree of sustainable public procurement. This paper tries to fill that gap and tests whether behaviour acts as a mediator between knowledge, commitment to change, and the application of sustainable procurement in procurement projects in the Dutch national government. To test our hypotheses a survey was held amongst public procurers working in the Dutch national government. The results show that sustainable procurement behaviour positively mediates the relationship between on the one hand affective commitment to change and knowledge, and on the other hand the application of both compulsory and voluntary sustainable public procurement in procurement projects. Especially voluntary sustainable procurement proved receptive for knowledge and affective commitment to change. It is therefore concluded that to increase the application of sustainable procurement public organisations should focus on increasing knowledge about sustainability and the environment, affective commitment to change and sustainable procurement behaviour.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue and outline its major themes and challenges, their relevance and the research opportunities the field presents.
...Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews prior literature and outlines the need to view public procurement as a policy tool to introduce the contributions to this special issue.
Findings
Public procurement has been consistently used to further public policies in a wide range of fields. The collection of articles in this special issue contributes to a broader understanding of the role and potential of public procurement in delivering desired policy outcomes in society. The articles show that public procurement largely has strategic aspirations, and its potential to deliver on wider societal issues is attractive to policy makers. The issues raised in this collection of articles, however, also demonstrate that public procurement often lacks strategic maturity and critical issues, notably around how to demonstrate and evaluate its impact and “success”.
Research limitations/implications
This paper aims to stimulate interdisciplinary research into the role of public procurement as a policy tool and its ability to achieve public value.
Originality/value
This paper discusses theoretical and empirical findings that highlight the importance of public procurement for achieving public value. The special issue examines the interdisciplinary literature on public procurement and shows how it is being used to achieve public value.
Public organisations develop sustainable public procurement (SPP) policies to compel suppliers to contribute to societal goals. Studies show that the ability, motivation, and opportunity that ...procurers have to procure in a sustainable manner affect the uptake of SPP. Most studies into SPP examine these factors only in the context of one type of SPP (e.g., green procurement). The goal of this paper is therefore to examine the relationship between ability, motivation, and opportunity and six types of SPP: (1) green public procurement, (2) social return on investment, (3) circular economy, (4) bio-based public procurement, (5) innovation-oriented public procurement and (6) international social criteria. An online survey was administered amongst procurers working in Dutch public organisations. The research shows that ability, motivation, and opportunity affect Green Public Procurement (GPP). Opportunity did affect green public procurement, innovation-oriented public procurement and circular economy, but not the other types of SPP. We were unable to identify an antecedent of more social types of SPP in this research. This research shows that findings based on GPP cannot be directly generalized to other types of SPP, and that there is a need for research into the antecedents of social types of SPP.
In the procurement process the decisions of project teams determine if the potential of sustainable procurement is attained. To optimize this, project teams should be encouraged to adopt new ...behaviour. The academic literature awards an encouraging role to the change agent. A comparison of the role of change agents in seven Dutch public procurement projects shows that change agents play an important role in sustainable procurement projects and help project teams progress towards sustainable procurement.
To achieve greater sustainability, governments need to continuously adapt their purchasing activities to innovations in the market. Sustainable procurement is a decision-making process in which the ...decisions of procurers determine if the full potential of sustainable procurement is used. The decisions and thus behaviour of procurers are therefore crucial for the successfulness of sustainable procurement. According to organizational theory, commitment to change could influence this behaviour. Hence, in the study, we examined if commitment to implement sustainable procurement increases sustainable procurement behaviour by Dutch public procurers and what determines this commitment to implement sustainable procurement are. Our study shows first that both affective commitment to implement sustainable procurement and procedural justice increase sustainable procurement behaviour. In addition, the results show that commitment to change acts as a mechanism between fit with vision, ecological sustainability attitude, procedural justice and sustainable procurement behaviour.
Governments use activation policies to stimulate unemployed citizens in finding work. Caseworkers are, as front‐line workers, responsible for concrete activation trajectories based on these ...activation policies. Little is known about how caseworkers try to get clients to participate in these activation trajectories. In a qualitative, inductive study (consisting of observations and reflective interviews) in two welfare agencies, we identified 10 motivational strategies that caseworkers employed. The full‐range leadership model appeared to be an appropriate perspective to understand, systematize, and reflect on these strategies, in particular as our analyses show that these motivational strategies can be placed on a continuum ranging from laissez‐faire to transactional and transformational strategies. We found that caseworkers matched their motivational strategy to the situation and client but preferred transformational strategies. Our findings implicate chances but also challenges for activation in practice and literature on front‐line workers.
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