The work highlights how the organizational change in public administrations can be interpreted as a "difference in shape time, the quality or state of an institution" (Van de Ven, Hargrave, 2004) and how it is constrained by factors of inertia and resistance (DiMaggio, Powell, 1983; Meyer, Rowan, 1977). Therefore it must be considered path dependent and unpredictable ex ante. The cycles of variation, selection and consolidation, started with different legislation (Cooper at al, 1996 Soin, Huber 2013), do not take place according to predefined or predictable paths. They are instead the result of organizational changes imposed to management by the need to be compliant with new routines and procedures.
The longitudinal analysis carried out on the Region of Puglia allows to observe the changes in its organizational governance structure in the period from 1977 to 2013. The process of change that has characterized the administration must not be interpreted as the transition from one organizational model to another, but as a transformation process in which different models have sedimented and overlapped (Greenwood, Hinings, 1988). Each model was the result of the recombination of different regulatory and administrative requirements implemented in different moments.
In fact, each model assumes the role of an Iron Cage or "original iron cage " (Weber, 2002) that can influence governance processes and behaviors that have become essential to, for example, the pursuit of the objectives of the spending reviews. Therefore Each model represents a typical example of what is called a “deep structure” (Gersik, 1991), that is a stable protocol that limits the change as it is characterized by high stability, path dependence and strong connection with the environment.
Ultimately the paper helps to understand how an effective change of governance structures in public administration should be directed to a logic of recombination and reinvention rather than be led by the planned change paradigm.
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