Merging Public Entities to Improve Public Management Efficiency

Abstract

Merging public entities is an important process for achieving managerial performance, by reducing personnel costs, eliminating overlapping duties, optimizing resources and implementing competency-based management systems and digitalizing services. Although the premises of merging public entities are based on and for improving public management efficiency, promising economic and financial efficiency, however, the merging process has several major barriers, identified in the loss of specialization of entities that have different roles, cultural integration and distancing from the citizen. Merging public entities with distinct roles (such as research or training institutes) can ignore the logic of specialization and can affect national and international competitiveness, and the alignment of different organizational cultures will make success depend also on empathetic leadership that can manage the personal transition. There is a risk that the emphasis on economic efficiency will lead to the neglect of the social mission, transforming the citizen into a simple "client" of public services. For an effective merger, it is recommended to go through a structured process that takes into account: assessing the compatibility between the missions, cultures and competencies of the targeted agencies, auditing the financial status of the staff and legal obligations before the final decision, prematurely appointing the new management to define the vision and structure of the new organization and implementing common standards to measure the quality of services provided to citizens post-merger.