Good moves, mistakes and unexpected events in an initiative to improve public management in the ICT service provision at a university

Abstract

New public management aims to improve the efficacy and other performance criteria of public organizations. To that end, it is based on principles like specialization and public organization desegregation, and on practices such as outsourcing and the development of internal markets. This article presents a public university management action comprising the creation of an information and communications technology service enterprise. The bases for this initiative include theoretical approaches as well as practical issues. The value of this work is that it studies the referred initiative implantation process and its subsequent effects. The case method is used to analyse some theoretical proposals of new public management. The result is that good moves, mistakes and unforeseen consequences have been found, making it a source of learning for academics and professionals in this field. Points for practitioners Internal markets constitute an appropriate mechanism to achieve the benefits of new public management. However, when implementing it, care has to be taken in several aspects: (1) the use of private sector initiatives in the public sector is complex and many different aspects have to be considered; (2) the human resources of the contracting company have to be involved in the process from the very beginning and; (3) measures of performance of the process must be developed and put into practice. That said, internal markets allow an increase in the number of services delivered without increasing the number of work posts, providing the parent firm with the advantages of both outsourcing and insourcing.