Authors: Teppo Leppälahti; Tuula Mittilä
Lately, local authorities have privatised services widely (Van Slyke 2003, p. 296) and network-type arrangements have been created between public and private sector organisations (Schienstock and Hämäläinen 2001, p. 128). The purpose of this paperis to report some early findings of an exploratory study aiming at identifying abilities of local authorities in their different networks. The findings of this study provide ideas to understand abilities which local authorities have and need when organising welfareservices in public-private networks today.The theoretical starting point of the paper is network competence (cf., Ritter and Gemünden 2003b) supplemented by governance types (Considine and Lewis 2003, p. 133). Behind network competence can be found Håkansson’s (1987) notion ofnetworking ability which includes on the one hand a firm’s ability to improve its overall position in a network and on the other hand its ability to handle individual relationships. (Ritter and Gemünden 2003b, p. 746 cf., Ritter, Wilkinson and Johnston 2004, p. 176) This paper complies with Ritter and Gemünden (2003b) andcalls a firm’s ability to manage their network of relationships a firm’s network competence (Ritter and Gemünden 2003b, p. 746). This study considers limitations of local authorities to organise their service production in a networked way because of legal and political reasons which may demand more hierarchical or corporate-marketorganisation (cf., Considine and Lewis 2003, p. 135). Adding the level of governance orientation to the model of network competence helps us to understand the context in which an authority valuates network management qualifications and executes relation-specific and cross-relational tasks.Early findings suggest that a part of local authority’s ability in network context may link with the governance orientation of the authority. Cross-relational planning task of the authority seems to have the link particularly, but also some other links may exist.The findings suggest considering governance orientation in addition to Ritter’s (1999, p. 471) network competence framework in studying the local authority’s abilities in network context.
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Publish Year: 2004
Conference: Copenhagen, Denmark (2004)