Introduction of Shared Service Centres for the Public Sector: The Case of Estonia

In recent years there has been an increasing number of public sector Shared Service Centre (SSC) initiatives. The aim of this research is to explain the creation of SSCs for public sector accounting. Three public sector accounting SSC cases will be analysed. As these SSCs were created at different times (the first in 2002, the second in 2009, and the third in 2012) and represent different levels of government (local, regional and central), I intend to seek whether the motives and expectations towards the SSC were the same in all three cases. I will also identify the main actors or change agents of all three SSC adoption cases and analyse their role in the process. Although the number of cases is small and the results of the research are not generalisable, it might help to understand why public sector organisations are prone to introduce SSCs these days.