How Can We Explain SSC-Adoption? The Flemish Case

Fiscal retrenchment induces back-office consolidation programmes by many governments, municipalities and other public institutions. Back-office functions are grouped together in newly created horizontal inter-agency shared service centres (SSC). By doing so, government managers aim to achieve austerities through standardization of back-office functions while maintaining (or even raising) service quality and cooperation. This paper will contribute to the field by analyzing the Flemish case. The degree of SSC-adoption for 10 SSC is measured by the share of back-office functions (FTE) produced by a SSC on the total number of back-office functions produced by agencies operated by the SSC. The methodological framework will consist of two phases in a multi-method design. First, a configurational QCA-analysis on the determinants and their effects on successful SSC adoption. Second, a qualitative in-depth analysis on the processes behind SSC-adoption. A typical and a deviant case will be compared, with case selection nested in the QCA-analysis.