Shared Services in Government: Game-Changer or Gaming the System?

Abstract

In recent years, and in the context of fiscal consolidation, an increasingly prominent strategy for administrative reform has been the pursuit of inter-organisational collaboration and ‘sharing’ in back-office corporate services, such as HR, payroll, procurement and estates management. This follows a long tradition of private sector emulation in public service delivery, but also represents a specific, targeted and austerity-driven expansion of previous, largely sub-national efforts to drive efficiencies from non-core organisational processes. Shared service arrangements are often pursued to generate financial and procedural efficiencies, improve service quality and encourage modernisation and innovation within government. Although questions have been raised about the achievement of some of these goals, the continuing enthusiasm with which national governments across the OECD are now pursuing back-office consolidations indicates that the concept is likely to outlive the current fiscal crisis. This challenges scholars to better understand the governing and operational consequences of the new standardisation, contractualisation and interdependencies engendered by shared service arrangements. This Panel provides an opportunity to build an ambitious research agenda by considering shared services developments internationally at different levels of government, and in different policy and functional domains. In so doing, it will help build greater theoretical and analytical frames for understanding this emerging phenomenon and its effects on both politics and government.