Abstract
AbstractGrowing requirements for accountability and risk management put decentralized models of public governance under pressure. This article investigates the drivers for change from a completely decentralized, network-oriented model to a more centralized, and procedural governance model of school restaurants in a Swiss city. It focuses on the pressures and challenges that this municipality faces in terms of risks and accountability in order to identify the conditions in which network governance can be successful. We applied a qualitative approach that combined conducting 25 semi-structured interviews of main stakeholders and analyzing documentation. We found that increased demand for school meals from families, the perception of increasing exposure to insufficiently managed risks associated with growing accountability requirements constitute the main drivers for change to the centralization of certain risk-sensitive, costly, and low social purpose activities, thus providing the municipality authorities ...
Highlights
Public organizations worldwide are coping with new forms of governance that demand interactive decision-making that involves more participation from stakeholders and citizens
We found that increased demand for school meals from families, the perception of increasing exposure to insufficiently managed risks associated with growing accountability requirements constitute the main drivers for change to the centralization of certain risk-sensitive, costly, and low social purpose activities, providing the municipality authorities with more control over the system while preserving the associative function
Within this context of evolution from governance arrangements characterized by centralization and hierarchy toward more interactive and participative decision-making and services co-creation, this article has examined the evolution of a Swiss public governance network of school restaurants that goes into the opposite direction
Summary
Public organizations worldwide are coping with new forms of governance that demand interactive decision-making that involves more participation from stakeholders and citizens. This evolution is changing the concept of governance, which several authors have linked in the literature to the concept of networks (Considine, 2003; Kolida, 2006; Provan & Milward, 2001), focusing on the complex processes of interaction and negotiation in a network of public, private, and voluntary or non-profit organizations It reached the point where the primacy of network governance has been advocated over other forms of governance, in particular the delivery of public services exclusively by bureaucracies (Kolida, 2006). The transformation of governance may even reach the “state of agents” where government authority is dispersed and diluted, and government oversight over its “agents of the state”—whether for-profit or non-profit provides—is eroding (Heinrich, Lynn, & Milward, 2009)
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