CHANGE, INNOVATION, FLEXIBILITY: A NEW MODEL FOR PUBLIC MANAGEMENT Renzo Remotti [email protected] AIDEA 2013 Lecce, 19 – 21 Settembre 2013.

CHANGE, INNOVATION, FLEXIBILITY: A NEW MODEL FOR

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

Renzo [email protected]

AIDEA 2013Lecce, 19 – 21 Settembre 2013

“In recent years, some economists and political scientists have sought to address the problem of institutional change by formally modelling the

constraints that formal and informal rules impose on the preferences of rational actors. Specifically, they sought to explain punctuated equilibria as well as change dynamics in market as well as non-market institutions (for

example, legislatures, bureaucracies, local government), using constrained optimization and game theoretic models. A growing body of empirical work using these tools suggests that the "new institutionalism" could provide the basis for integrating the study of market, polity, and community under the

rubric of rational choice. Potential applications to development policy include improved diagnosis of institutional constraints, better design of projects and

programs, and more rigorous evaluation of ID impact.” (Naving G., 2001)

Public Sector reform around the world

In England • the traditional model called

Westminster Model (1854-1918)

• the first attempts of reform (1918-1997)

• the reform ( 1997 – onwards)

In Italy• Lucifredi Council (1953)• Medici Council (in the 60s)• Giannini Report (1979)• Bassanini Reform (1999)• Introduction of a kind of

evaluating system of the public management by means of the law n. 150/2009. (Remotti R., 2010)

This kind of change was due both to the new structure of the welfare state and to the extension of the idea of sustainable

development to public services.As for the former it is clear that the request for equality and

social fairness is growing because citizens are getting more and more aware of their rights and new rights are coming out and

they are dealt with by public agencies, such as privacy, environment protection, preservation of the genetic heritage,

protection and development of cultural heritage and free time.

Why a new model of management?

Nevertheless the recent economic crisis of 2008, which started in the USA and spread all over Europe to affect contemporary economies, has revealed a new feature of the problem. In fact

the implementation of the rights is strongly linked to the efficiency of the Welfare state and it is usually given to public

people. In other words the public field plays an important role in the economic systems. (I.L.O., 2010)

The new management models should be less centralized, as independence at a local level would make the organizations

more reactive to the citizens’ requests and more adaptive to the changes of the territory. The above mentioned new models

should be aimed to improve staff promotion too.

The new management model for cultural sector

• It is an adaptive organization, i.e. it tries to adapt to the external demand, to citizens’ expectations and to staff requests too.

• It is a kind of organization which respect the environment, which doesn’t only mean the natural environment, but also the human one,

• It is a participatory organization, i.e. the only way to carry out the first two steps of the process is to make all, both the internal stakeholders, the staff, and the external ones, the citizens, take part in the process.

The legal paradigm is going to be replaced by a kind of an economic-managing-like culture which sees the public management as a complex system founded on a good-

management principle.The two models, by the way, are not contrary but

complementary, so that we can even say they belong to the same model, though it is now a complex one. It can be divided into two different phases, the legal one and the economic one.

The legal phase is characterized by the check-up action and represented by the evaluation by the managing judge, which

means that the managing act meets the law. If we think about the three standard nullity elements of the managing act we

realize that violating law means a kind of formal clash between the public act and the text of the law or the disability as well as

the excess of power.

On the contrary the economic phase covers the actions the public management addresses the user, since it

analyses the consequences and the impact of what has been planned on the territory in which it operates.

The legal phase normally answers the question “what kind of opportunities can the legal system offer to

organize a museum?. This is not the only question the system is going to answer. There are others referring to

the measures to be taken to guarantee the safety of the working environment or the different roles to be

covered by the staff, the maximum capacity of the museum or the choice of a catering service.

On the other hand the economic phase may answer questions such as “ How can we maximize the resources available in order

to maximize the museum activity?”.

Anyway the above two mentioned phases are both extremely important to make the system works. They are complementary

phases and if one of them doesn’t work properly the other would suffer from that. If we think for example about wrong staff shifts, we may simply infer there would be troubles and that would surely interfere with the ordinary activity of the

service provider.

However if we schedule some unreasonable targets too with such short-hand deadlines or over-checking procedures were

implemented the staff may not accept such changes and requests or support safety rules in order not to miss the

production premium.Recent studies, however, have proved that conformity to law increases the wealth of the community. That means the State

induces the need to act and produce legally.(Cooter & Schaefer 2007). Such need for legal actions is inspiring to the people

belonging to that organization.

That is why the model of public management must be put into contact with the staff and the territory, so that we can tell it is

ecological. That means the system must take into consideration all the relationships which binds it both internally and externally.

The public management is able to match the changes in the environment, so we can say it is adaptive.

It is clear by now that the concept of efficiency has completely changed within that system.

It’s important for the public management to keep a strong cohesion with its inner structure as well as to be able to keep in

contact with the needs of the territory.

The main organization must support the departments which are more connected with the territory and so it can guarantee the

department its managing independence.

The ecological organization: the obiectivies.

The department is made of a system of brains, so that the individual independence within the organization is guaranteed.

The department Manager is a kind of intermediary figure between the inner demand ( the staff needs) and the outer needs ( the users’). Where it is possible, self-organization is

implemented.

The staff tries to meet the demands coming from the outer territory, according to the law and under the supervision of the

appointed supervisor.

The staff tries to reduce the negative impact on the environment and uses measuring index worked out by the scientific community.

Inner check-ups, being them by outer organizations or by the managing director, are reduced to their minimum and

implemented only in case of poor results. Anyway conciliation and not sanction is preferred.

At present in Italy few public structures have implemented the above mentioned ecological model, but the State Archive of Asti has been organized according this model and we have already

recorded good results.

The ecological organization: the results

The Italian Archive ManagementThe Italian Archive Management belongs

to the Ministry for Heritage and Cultural Activities. According to the performance schedule 2012-2014 written in conformity to art. number 10 letter a) d.lgs. n. 150/2009 following changes or integrations, the General Board of Archives is made up of 3 internal managing offices ( balance, preservation and study affairs), 14 main independent offices, 8 of which are non-managing and peripheral, 101 provincial archives, 35 Branches, 19 Archive Superintendences on a regional basis. The main target of the archives is to preserve, protect and to make the most of it.

We can estimate a total amount of on-stock-materials of 1.596.838 linear metres, i.e. four time the distance covered from the Earth to the Moon.

The total amount of staff employed in the Archive Management is 2.797 people, with the average number of 16 people in each institution. The average age is 53.97 years, whereas for the Managers is 57.21. The 53% of the managers is represented by women. The growing staff rate is up to 0,01%.The average gross monthly wages is Euro 1.310,00.

The State Archive of Asti was founded by a Ministry Decree dated 15th April 1959. In 2000 it changed its location after the restoration of a past enclosed nunnery dated the XVII century. The building is 4.000 mq wide and about 1.000 mq are destined to exhibitions and cultural event in general. It store about 14.000 linear meters of documents.There is plenty of room for exhibitions and a concert hall to host about 150 seats. Thanks to a voluntary agreement between the Archive and the Town Council the concert hall has a grand-piano. As you can see from the graph number 1 the staff has been reduced from 12 to 8 employees from 2003 to 2012.

The ProjectBetween 2003 and 2007 the staff has pointed out two main problems. Firstly the strong marginality of the location, as h building is on the outskirt of the town so that the public attendance was rather low. The documents stored in the archive, even if they were historically important, were not of such an interest to many scholars. However in town, apart from the local town theatre, there wasn’t a place where associations or single connoisseurs can organize cultural events. The room inside the building which hadn’t been used so far seemed at that time the most suitable for these aims.

Change Phase – In 2006 a Web site, which included interactive Host and CMS for free, was created and the user, who wants to organize a kind of event in the Archive, should fill in a short form on-line. (http://www.archiviodistatoasti.beniculturali.it)Innovation Phase – the staff approved of an inner regulation, so that the granting or the rejection of the request for the Archive room was established. This procedure was implemented only for overtime events, so that the staff was asked for some voluntary work overtime, since the Archive was not able to provide reasonable money premium. Such requests are then to be presented to the staff council, a kind of inter pares institution, which will choose whether to accept or to reject them for every single event.Flexibility phase – some kind of non-money premium was established thanks to the Time banking procedure. Each staff member is to receive the review document to include the extra time, which are to be turned into time for personal rest, without damaging the standard working dynamics. So the standard 40-hour working time is not affected and the timetable of the employees is to become more flexible.

The resultsGraph shows the trend as for visitors between 2003 and 2012. Taking into consideration that 1.641 visitors were recorded between 2003 and 2007, we can claim that the project produced a ten-time increase.

The performance can be seen in this Graph

A simple index evaluates the performance of the Institution on the basis of the staff number at work, as per article n. 4 of the Ministry Decree n. 150/2009, as well per the following amendments and further new parts. The index , which was chosen by the Director, was called Fruition Index, i.e. the result between the total amount of staff (e) and the total amount of visitors (a) as follows:F.I. = ∑ e / ∑ aSuch us: e ≥ 1 or a ≥ 1

Conclusions

Among the goals I scheduled there wasn’t any analysis of wider outcomes. It is important to point out that the

increase in the number of visitors produced a possible influence on the economic activities in the surroundings. If

such projects were to be carried out in archaeological as well as museum areas of wider size, it would be likely that

businesses in the surrounding areas would enjoy some kind of benefit. This point is complex and serious as it involves the relationship between cultural sites and heritage and

economic development, which would need a further study.If we consider the scheduled goals, we can say that the

model was successful.

The controversial point is the Ministry, as between 2008 and 2012, despite the different results we got if compared to other archives, which share more or less the same space, the

Archive Management didn’t increase either the financial investments or the staff as far the State Archive of Asti is concerned, even if the art. 21

d.lgs. n. 150/2009s.m.i stated the contrary.