Suchergebnisse

From cost accounting to strategic cost management: the experience of Italian higher education cost management in public services has often been viewed with disenchantment. The perception of costs is associated with spending reviews and cuts in personnel, disregarding their strategic role. This chapter re-positions cost management at the strategic level. This repositioning is central to revaluate costs in their true essence: the calculation of how we use resources. This strategic view has two main benefits. The first is related to the results of cost allocation, that offer insights on how we consume our resources for service delivery. The second is related to the process for calculating these costs. There are several decisions in the process that might change the results; these decisions are not purely technical: they are a constitutive process in which managers, if involved, reflect on the services and products but also the organization and their responsibility centres. This chapter poses the attention on these issues, presenting the experience of the Good Practice project. Good Practice is an Italian benchmarking initiative in which state universities voluntarily provide their costs, within the same protocol, in order to have a reference for their strategic management. The project started in 1999 under the initiative of the Italian Government, but from 2003 it has been brought forward and financed by universities directly. The project overall has involved more than 50 state universities during its 20-year life. The chapter focuses in particular on three cases that are representative of how universities adopted a strategic approach to cost management. Three types of cost-strategizing configurations are identified: organizational reshaping, service balance and resource programming. The study offers a picture that is very distant from the often-employed cost-cutting approach. Cost data are instead part of a more strategic vision, although always coupled with other data. The chapter is organised as follows. The next section illustrates the context and the method. Then, the distinctive features of the strategic approach to cost are presented. The empirical cases are illustrated in the third section, followed by a discussion of the managerial implications.

Data Science (DS) is expected to deliver value for public governance. In a number of studies, strong claims have been made about the potential of big data and data analytics and there are now several cases showing their application in areas such as service delivery and organizational administration. The role of DS in policy-making has, on the contrary, still been explored only marginally, but it is clear that there is the need for greater investigation because of its greater complexity and its distinctive inter-organizational boundaries. In this paper, we have investigated how DS can contribute to the policy definition process, endorsing a socio-technical perspective. This exploration has addressed the technical elements of DS - data and processes - as well as the social aspects surrounding the actors' interaction within the definition process. Three action research cases are presented in the paper, lifting the veil of obscurity from how DS can support policy-making in practice. The findings highlight the importance of a new role, here defined as that of a translator, who can provide clarity and understanding of policy needs, assess whether data-driven results fit the legislative setting to be addressed, and become the junction point between data scientists and policy-makers. The three cases and their different achievements make it possible to draw attention to the enabling and inhibiting factors in the application of DS.

Measuring public service effectiveness has become a central issue for public authorities worldwide, often driven by governmental pressures to ensure value for money. In this context, social media data represent a potential powerful tool in the hands of public authorities to support the evaluation of public service performance. By relying on an action research project in the higher education field, this study explores how social media data can contribute to measure service effectiveness by focusing specifically on Twitter in the higher education field. The final aim of the paper is to develop a set of measures, derived from Twitter data, to quantify the effectiveness of higher education services. This investigation supports a broader discussion about the extent to which social media data can contribute to performance measurement in the public sector.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the adoption of managerial innovations in the public sector, identifying the reasons why their uptake and use may fail.Design/methodology/approachThe problem is investigated empirically through a case study approach. The change processes resulting from the adoption of two managerial innovations within the same Italian Central Government Institution are illustrated in detail.FindingsBoth cases represent a failure in the adoption and use of managerial innovations, attributable to a complex interplay of external and organisational forces. The empirical investigation points out the relevancy of individuals' actions and choices. The real explanation for the failure of both projects in fact seems to be key individuals' inability: first to "make sense" of what the innovation was about and second to communicate this "sense" throughout the organisation.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings are based on data from the Italian Central Government, and as such are not extendable elsewhere. However, the mechanisms of change examined here may be of wider interest to other public sector organisations.Originality/valueThe paper analyses a real‐world attempt to deploy managerial innovations in the public sector, and the resultant impact. A theoretical framework based on institutional theory and its recent advances is used to better understand the plural factors influencing the use of managerial innovations.