Between saying and doing... governing the processes of change in Public Administrations

On the occasion of the awarding of diplomas to the outgoing classes and the welcome to the new participants in the two paths, a round table was held, coordinated by Professor Elena Zuffada, director of the two paths, who shared the experiences of three university professors who have directly managed change within the Public Administrations in which they have received managerial positions. The speeches of the speakers were particularly significant, we report a summary. 

Antonio Barretta, General Manager of the University Hospital of Siena, Full Professor of Business Administration at the University of Siena, said: "Referring to my scientific research activity and the managerial experience gained, I have testified to the importance, in the management of change, of both intra-organizational and inter-organizational collaboration. The economic-business doctrine has identified the mechanisms that can support collaboration, resorting to it means supporting the collective effort and making the weight of change shared and, therefore, less burdensome.
 

Davide Galli, Director of the Mission Unit for the implementation of PNRR interventions at the Ministry of Justice and Associate Professor of Business Administration at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, noted: "After years spent alongside many public administrations, in the classroom and in the field, dealing with performance measurement and evaluation, it seemed natural to me to try to put my skills into practice and the PNRR was my swan professional black. Of course, it was not a leap into the void, on the contrary: dealing with the implementation, monitoring and reporting of what is basically a performance contract allowed me to test in the field the resilience of some managerial principles that I have always supported. What is measured takes on exceptional importance and this centrality can also lead to unexpected consequences and the occurrence of some paradoxes. In these three years I have seen many of the phenomena I had studied occur. I am proud to have been able to support the idea that measurement is not an end in itself, it is not a question of numbers behind which to entrench oneself, but of complex managerial phenomena that cannot be separated from people, even when it comes to 12,000 employees hired on a fixed-term basis to improve the efficiency of the judicial system. It has been, and still is, a complex experience, in which the main obstacle is hostility towards reporting processes: there is a general opposition to respecting shared standards, especially when these standards have been defined by other parties. The challenge is to adapt to the needs of the recipients of the report. After all, without this relationship, without attention to the feedback, not always positive, that the recipients of the report return, this process becomes an ineffective experience. I believe that being able to build a relationship of trust within and outside the PNRR Mission Unit that I direct has been my main achievement, the ingredient that has sometimes made it possible to reorient the course in time and see the efforts made by such a complex and important Administration as the Ministry of Justice recognized."
 

Elisa Pintus, former Deputy Head of Cabinet at the Ministry of Education, Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Valle d'Aosta, explained: "I was called to the MIUR, Ministry of Education, University and Research, which until a few years earlier, had 12,000 employees, to the Cabinet Office with responsibilities for Innovation, Digitization and Performance Management. In my three years of experience, many of the things we study about public institutions happen:

• Political turnarounds (three Ministers and two Prime Ministers follow one another);
• Turnaround of top management (with the Ministers, the Heads of Departments also change);
• Redefined organizational frameworks (Organization Regulations, etc.).

What should we expect?
I think it is useful to remember that, from Adam Smith to the historic Olivetti case, up to the culture of corporate social responsibility, the SDGs and, now, ESG, there has always been talk of the fact that the company has a social role. Therefore, this evidence does not disappear overnight, even beyond the regulations. It is a sensitivity that exists and will continue to exist in society, perhaps with wavering trends, but we will not abandon it completely precisely because it comes from afar and is inherent in the very meaning of the economy.

Did the somewhat pressing regulations trigger the backlash effect?
In recent years, the focus on ESG has strengthened to the point of having heavily entered regulations, particularly European ones. But it must be remembered that even in the absence of regulations, the GRI and SASB standards had been consolidated over time, as a push from the company itself and the recognition that if the company works it is also important to be aware of how it works, so studying it from the inside becomes crucial.

What is your point of view on this?
For us, in addition to promoting an economy made up of values and not just profits, being able to see how organizations work is crucial to understand if they are financeable, if they are reliable partners also from a financial point of view. 

Let's close with an example.
A paper by the Bank of Italy a few years ago showed how risk analysis models, i.e. the so-called probability of default of a customer, work badly or not in the case of the Third Sector. 

Why?
Because these models are based on economic and financial information, while the Third Sector is typically not capitalized, does not have large support capital, by definition does not make profits. According to those models, therefore, the Third Sector should not be financeable and, in fact, this has been the case for a long time. What we do know is that the Third Sector is resilient and is able to repay the loans it receives, because the reasons that lead to the good performance of a non-profit organization are different from those that can be read in the financial statements. They are belonging to networks, the ability to respond to the needs of society, the reputation they have, the quality of their staff and motivation. These are all intangible factors that can be more clearly grasped from non-financial analyses and ESG factors.

What does this make us understand?
The need to understand organizations from the inside, beyond the balance sheet data, becomes relevant in all cases. The company is not only made up of numbers, but of processes and attention to various dynamics. Organizations that are not able to measure and report on these aspects have within them phenomena that they are not mapping and governing and that represent elements of possible fragility. The reporting organization is aware of how it works and, in this sense, much more reliable.

But, certainly, the most critical area is given by the fact that, after a few months, the Minister resigns and the Prime Minister, accepting his resignation, divides the MIUR into the Ministry of University and Research and the Ministry of Education. Everything to be redefined!

I am the Deputy Head of Cabinet, a role that stands - in the bed of the Cabinet Office - as a "transmission belt" between public policies, and the role of the political decision-maker, and the administrative machine having to find robust institutional synergies and trajectories of action congruous with respect to public policies. A very interesting point of view to really understand how public institutions act.

I am in a moment crossed by some of the most critical events of the historical period we are experiencing: the Covid 19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine which, abruptly, "lash" the traditional resilient approaches of public institutions by asking all actors to define multiple, multifaceted and adaptive governance and management trajectories. These are significant but exciting challenges for those who study public institutions with an economic and business approach to decision-making in order to question themselves, find confirmations and reposition some models."
 

The afternoon's work, which was opened by the institutional greetings of Roberto Brambilla, Director of Postgraduate Training and Research partnership of Università Cattolica, the director of ALTIS, Matteo Pedrini and the testimonies of some Alumni, ended with the awarding of diplomas and the official start of lessons for the new editions of MIPA and MIPAC.