0000000000420722
AUTHOR
Dag Ingvar Jacobsen
Service quality and the optimum number of members in intermunicipal cooperation: The case of emergency primary care services in Norway
Intermunicipal cooperation (IMC) is often used as a mean to reap scale benefits. Most studies on the effects of IMC focus on cost savings, while service quality is overlooked. In this study, the focus is set on input quality in a service characterized by high asset specificity and need for redundancy: emergency primary care. We analyze how mode of governance affect performance by (1) measuring whether IMC versus single-municipal production affects input quality and (2) identifying optimum scale of operation; effect of the number of participants in the cooperation on input quality. The findings indicate that cooperation weakens the input quality of medical workforce, but that this negative e…
Professional autonomy or political loyalty? How Norwegian Chief Municipality Officers handles the balance between profession and politics
Den nye kommuneloven fra 2020 har som en eksplisitt intensjon å klargjøre skillet mellom politikk og administrasjon, i praksis skillet mellom øverste administrative leder – Kommunedirektør – og ordfører. Denne studien tar for seg hvordan skillet mellom politikk og administrasjon i kommunene faktisk fortoner seg for norske kommunedirektører. Den empiriske studien er en survey sendt samtlige kommunedirektører i Norge høsten 2020 (354) med en svarprosent på 58 (n=206). Spørreskjemaet besto av fire vignetter med beskrivelser av reelle valgsituasjoner, standardiserte valgalternativer, samt åpne kommentarer til vignettene. Resultatene indikerer at forholdet mellom politikk og administrasjon i enk…
Alignment of strategy and structure in local government
Strategic positioning and structural alignment in the public sector is a neglected area of research. This paper analyses the strategic positions of prospectors, defenders and reactors and structural alignment in Norwegian municipalities. Top managers responding to a survey perceived that the municipalities did align their organizational structures to the strategic positions for prospectors and defenders, but not for reactors, as hypothesized, but these relationships were modest. The top managers often found it difficult to provide consistent responses on their organizations’ choices of strategic positions. The authors show that many Norwegian municipalities have minimal alignment of their o…
Presidentialisation on the executive arena at the local level? The case of Norway 1992–2012
It is empirically contested whether the phenomenon of presidentialisation, i.e. the concentration of power around the leading political positions in non-presidential systems, is taking place or not. This study sets out to investigate whether presidentialisation on the executive arena takes place in a collegial political system, more specifically in Norwegian municipalities. Using several independent empirical data in the period from 1992 to 2012, the main conclusion is that there are few traces of presidentialisation on the Norwegian local level. However, there are tendencies towards political concentration in the sense that political power is centralised in the political elite. Rather than…
The impact of governing networks - the role of context, organizing and trust
Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series While our knowledge on the form and functioning of governing networks steadily increases, there are still holes in our knowledge of the impact of these networks. Using a multidimensional approach to measuring impacts, this article reports the perceived effects of the so-called regional councils in Norway. Impact is measured along four dimensions: impact on service provision, capacity to solve border-crossing problems, capacity to influence external actors and ability to develop collaborative relations in the netw…
Motivational Differences? Comparing Private, Public and Hybrid Organizations
AbstractWhile studies of motivational differences between managers in private and public organizations proliferate, few have compared managers’ motivation in hybrid organizations to the motivation of managers in private and public organizations. This lack of studies is surprising, as corporatization has been an important trend in the public sector over the last decades. Using a large survey covering almost 3000 managers from a representative sample of organizations in Norway, this study fills this hole by comparing how managers in hybrid organizations differ on extrinsic, intrinsic and prosocial motivation from their counterparts in public and private organizations.
External managerial networking in meta-organizations. Evidence from regional councils in Norway
Municipalities increasingly engage in cooperation with other municipalities to realize economies of scale and scope, to solve ‘wicked problems’ and to manage border crossing challenges. Often, such...
Room for leadership? A comparison of perceived managerial job autonomy in public, private and hybrid organizations
The study contributes to our knowledge of leadership in public organizations on three specific areas. First, it is a unique exploration of whether managers in publicly owned organizations perceive less job autonomy than managers in privately owned and hybrid organizations. Hybrid organizations are defined in two categories: shareholder companies with both public and private owners, and public companies (organizations selling their products or services, but publicly owned). Second, the study investigates possible mechanisms - more specifically formalization and professionalization - through which organizational ownership (public, private, and hybrid) is assumed to affect managerial autonomy.…
Success With a Bitter Aftertaste: Success Factors in Inter-Municipal Cooperation

 
 
 Inter-municipal cooperation is gaining in popularity in many Western countries, making it a matter of pressing importance to better understand what factors might contribute to the success of such arrangements. This article focuses on three Norwegian inter-municipal cooperative arrangements in the field of child welfare that are deemed to be successful, and the aim is to identify common features across the three cases with a focus on the governance structures of the collaborations. The study combines document studies and qualitative interviews, and reveals three main factors that can explain success: a sense of urgency, political and administrative support combined with …