Eindhoven University of Technology
MASTER
Boxtel 2040 towards an energy neutral municipality : internal research about organizational capabilities to facilitate policy transition
Turski, J.M.
Award date: 2011
Link to publication
Disclaimer This document contains a student thesis (bachelor's or master's), as authored by a student at Eindhoven University of Technology. Student theses are made available in the TU/e repository upon obtaining the required degree. The grade received is not published on the document as presented in the repository. The required complexity or quality of research of student theses may vary by program, and the required minimum study period may vary in duration.
General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.
• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain
Boxtel 2040: Towards an energy neutral municipality
Internal research about organizational capabilities to facilitate policy transition
Jakub Turski
September 2011
identity number 0577131
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Science in Innovation sciences
Supervisors: mr. W.J.H. Wenselaar TU/e, Innovation Sciences dr. A. Kastelein TU/e, Innovation Technology, Entrepreneurship & Marketing ir. J. Teunizen Brink Groep
Name: J.M. Turski Student id: 0577131 Master: Innovation Sciences Department: Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences University: Eindhoven University of Technology
2
“You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
Henry Ford (1863-1947)
3
4 Preface
Done, at last!
You are reading the final version of the report that I have written in order to complete the Master program Innovation Sciences at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). For approximately one year I have been doing research within a municipality in a quest for innovative capabilities that are necessary in order to execute and implement prospective policies over many years. Working for Brink Groep and being stationed at the municipality of Boxtel created an interesting learning environment. Being part of these two organizations gave me insight in the activities conducted in a public-private collaboration.
I would like to extend a special word of thanks to my supervisors Wim Wenselaar, Allard Kastelein and, for the last period, Fred Lambert for their time during my research. Their knowledge, enthusiasm, patience and support were indispensable in order to finish my study successfully.
Furthermore I would like to thank Matthijs Schriek, Jim Teunizen and Peter Korst from Brink Groep for the opportunity to let me participate in the interesting pilot project and the feedback and support during the whole period. On the other side I would like to thank the employees of the municipality of Boxtel, especially all the persons of the department of Living & Environment, who made my stay at the municipality very pleasant and provided the necessary input for my research.
Even if I wanted to, I cannot ignore the collaboration with Niels Ondersteijn who carried out research for the other part of the project. “They are hand and glove,” they would say. It was joyful and amusing. Thanks for that my friend!
Last but not least I want to thank my family, friends and especially my mom and dad for giving me the opportunity to become what I am.
Eindhoven, September 22 nd 2011
Jakub ‘Qp’ Turski
5
6 Executive summary
Energy efficiency and the use of fossil fuels are subjects of many discussions in our modern society en held for many decades. The most important policy plans in the Netherlands that deal with the environmental problems are described in the Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan (NMP). It serves as a strategic policy plan which sets a framework for the decisions that have to be made by the government in the four years that follow. With the Forth NMP (NMP4) the Dutch government adopted a new approach in environmental policy in 2001. In this plan, transition became a key term and the manner of strategy making, vision development and goal setting were different than the previous plans. This new approach is characterized by looking forward for a time of 30 years instead of focusing on short term goals. This approach reflected the formulation of ambitions which could be reached by required transitions and fundamental changes in the social environment and was aiming at system innovation.
Programs that recently have implemented on national level in the Netherlands concerning energy policy, try to convert the international goals into policy ambitions which, eventually, have to be adopted by local governments. At local level, municipalities converted the national ambitions and agreements into local policy plans in accordance with the general trend to involve sustainability into every decision.
Several municipalities in the Netherlands have set ambitions in the field of sustainable development by setting targets to become CO 2-, energy- or even climate neutral in a certain goal year. The majority of these ambitions cover a time span between 15 and 40 years. The concept of roadmaps was introduced in 2007 in order to assist municipalities in their wish to comply to their set ambitions in long term sustainable policies. However nowadays there is no uniform approach to realize the plans that will result in a CO 2 neutral, energy neutral or climate neutral municipality. Not only the goals and ambitions are different in municipalities, but there are different views on the used techniques.
After the implantation of the initial set of roadmaps and evaluation of the achieved targets municipalities discovered a structural problem with the current kind of roadmaps. Within the formulation of these roadmaps there was a lack of attention for the organizational implications that roadmaps have on the agenda setting and organizational capabilities that are necessary to facilitate this energy transition. These developments endangered the effectiveness of roadmaps and resulted eventually in several adjustments in the desired achievements or redevelopment of roadmaps.
Current roadmaps do not anticipate on the way a municipality should operate or has to be organized to implement the technological innovations for the long run on the most effective way. This research tries to give insight in these organizational characteristics in a more general manner. With the focus on sustainable energy policy a defined research area is created and findings herein are used in order to formulate innovative capabilities that a municipality has to possess to execute prospective long term policies in general. The municipality of Boxtel is used in this research as a pilot municipality for
7 developing a new sort of roadmap and will function as a case study to determine these characteristics and eventually answer the question what the critical organizational capabilities in a municipality are that determine the effectiveness of innovative strategic policy implementations.
After desk research the theoretical innovative capabilities of organizations were formulated according the division of building block of the 7s model. In combination with the characteristics of a municipal organization, including characteristics of key actors and key processes, and lessons learned from other municipalities that already had experience with the implementation of roadmaps, an assessment method is presented with which the innovative capabilities of the municipality of Boxtel towards sustainable energy policy were being assessed. This resulted in a SWOT-analysis that was used as baseline measurement followed by a redesign proposition with measures that are critical in order to improve the organizational competencies in innovative strategic energy policy. The results have been generalized and the answer on the central question can be summarized as follows:
In order to guarantee that prospective long term policies are clear and usable throughout the whole organization it is important that the terms that are used and clear and undisputable to everyone. In addition, collective goal setting towards these themes, between personnel and the organization as well as between whole departments, are important as well. In combination with enough possibilities for flexibility in strategic methods to reach this ambitions these factors are critical.
Subsequently, activities in the management process need to be altered. All the department managers have to adopt the general policies (the roadmap in particular) in a uniform manner into their departmental plans with the accompanying consequences, implications and concrete activities for the concerning department. Furthermore the personal attitudes towards the development and execution policies have to be positive in order to propagate a desired message towards the employees of every department, even those that are less involved with the developments.
Awareness of the necessity of integral policies within the organization is the third critical aspect that could be deducted from the analysis. Before propagating the policy measures to its inhabitants the internal municipal organization should be unambiguous about the visions and attitudes it has towards long term policies. This applies to the individual person, departments, and political organs.
Knowledge management processes are considered as important in the developing and execution of prospective policies. The entire process of knowledge management including inventory, availability, transparency, storage and diffusion of knowledge that concerns long term innovative policies has to developed in a way that knowledge is up-to date, qualitative sufficient to execute the tasks now and in the future and available for all of the persons in the organization.
The last critical element of transition is the coordination of prospective policies. One implication is that the person that is responsible for the coordination has a set of suitable personal competences in order to execute the activities that are concerned with the function. Beside the personal characteristic the results can be reinforced by fundamental support of the management.
8
9
10 Table of Contents
Preface ...... 5
Executive summary ...... 7
List of figures ...... 14
List of tables ...... 14
1 Research assignment ...... 15
1.1 Introduction and motivation ...... 16
1.2 National vision on environmental policy ...... 16
1.3 National vision on energy policy ...... 17
1.4 Trias energetica ...... 19
1.5 Roadmaps ...... 20
1.6 Organizations & innovation ...... 23
2 Research approach ...... 25
2.1 Problem definition and analysis ...... 25
2.2 Research question ...... 26
2.3 Research aim and demarcation ...... 27
2.4 Definitions ...... 29
2.5 Method and strategy ...... 30
2.6 Relevance of the research ...... 31
2.7 Thesis outline ...... 32
3 Municipal organization ...... 33
3.1 Key actors ...... 33
3.2 Organizational models ...... 39
3.3 Key processes ...... 41
3.4 Conclusion ...... 44
4 Characteristics of an innovative organization ...... 45
4.1 Innovation and innovative capabilities ...... 45
4.2 Elements of an organization ...... 47
4.3 Characteristics that influence innovativeness ...... 50
11 4.3.1 Strategy ...... 50
4.3.2 Structure ...... 51
4.3.4 Skills ...... 55
4.3.5 Staff ...... 56
4.3.6 Style (of management) ...... 56
4.3.7 Shared values ...... 58
4.4 Conclusion ...... 60
5 Experiences of other municipalities ...... 63
5.1 Waalwijk: roadmap as a vision document ...... 63
5.2 Apeldoorn: roadmap as an integral program ...... 65
5.3 Conclusion ...... 67
6 Assessment method ...... 69
7 Case: municipality of Boxtel ...... 73
7.1 General description ...... 73
7.2 Organizational characteristics ...... 75
7.3 Sustainable development ...... 76
7.4 Assessment ...... 78
7.4.1 Strengths ...... 80
7.4.2 Weaknesses ...... 82
7.4.3 Opportunities ...... 84
7.4.4 Threats ...... 85
7.5 Redesign ...... 87
7.5.1 Strategy ...... 87
7.5.2 Management ...... 88
7.5.3 Awareness ...... 89
7.5.4 Knowledge ...... 90
7.5.5 Coordination ...... 91
7.6 Validation ...... 92
7.7 Conclusion ...... 96
8 Conclusions ...... 99
9 Discussion and recommendations ...... 105
12 References ...... 107
Appendices ...... 113
Appendix A: List of abbreviations ...... 113
Appendix B: Four municipal organization models ...... 114
Appendix C: Interview assessment Boxtel: population list ...... 116
Appendix D: Interview assessment Boxtel: questionaire ...... 117
Appendix E: List of external interviews ...... 121
Appendix F: Interview assessment Apeldoorn & Waalwijk: questionnaire ...... 122
13 List of figures Figure 1: Transition management (Loorbach & Kemp, 2003) ...... 17 Figure 2: Trias energetica approach (ECN, 2009) ...... 19 Figure 4: Graphical representation of the project "The energy neutral city" (Brink Groep, 2010) ...... 28 Figure 5: Traditional model of representative democracy (Denters S. , 2005) ...... 34 Figure 6: Appointment of organs in a municipality ...... 35 Figure 7: Functional relations within a municipal organization ...... 35 Figure 8: Four variations of relations between the executive board and administrative machinery ...... 42 Figure 9: Different types of Innovation according to Markides & Geroski (2005) ...... 46 Figure 10: Scott's element of organization (Jaffee, 2001) ...... 48 Figure 11: Representation of the 7s model ...... 49 Figure 12: The decision-making process, with inputs, outputs, enabling factors and tools (Janszen, 2000) .... 53 Figure 13: The municipality of Boxtel subdivided in districts...... 73 Figure 14: Organogram municipality of Boxtel 2010 ...... 75 Figure 15: Distribution of subjects of the Aldermen in Boxtel ...... 76 Figure 16: Simplified representation of the Secretary model ...... 114 Figure 17: Simplified representation of the Sector model (Concern-service model) ...... 114 Figure 18: Simplified representation of the ‘Burger logica’ model ...... 114 Figure 19: Simplified representation of the Department model ...... 115
List of tables Table 1: Overview of roadmaps including ambitions and goal years. (Ondersteijn, 2011) ...... 22 Table 2: Ranking of municipalities according to the 'Lokale Duurzaamheidsmeter' 1999-2008 ...... 23 Table 3: Levels of innovation within a municipality (Hiemstra et al., 2005) ...... 24 Table 4: The 2002 municipal reforms: most important measures (Groot & et al., 2007) ...... 34 Table 5: Different representation opinions and their possible implications for objective framing and control (Denters, de Groot, & Klok, 2008) ...... 36 Table 6: Overview of characteristics of the different municipal organization models ...... 40 Table 7: Advantages and disadvantages of the different variants of executive-administrative collaboration 43 Table 8: Structure-innovation relationships in theories of organizational innovation (Damanpour & Gopalakrishnan, 1998) ...... 52 Table 9: Summary of empirical findings on the connection between leader behaviors and innovative work behaviour (De Jong, 2007) ...... 58 Table 11: Examples of sustainable initiatives conducted by the municipality of Boxtel ...... 78 Table 12: Interview population within the municipality of Boxtel...... 79 Table 13: SWOT-analysis municipality of Boxtel ...... 79
14 1 Research assignment
This research is conducted on behalf of Brink Groep and in cooperation with the municipality of Boxtel in order to eventually improve the effectiveness of long term innovative policies by analyzing the internal organizational capabilities that have to facilitate this. Sustainable energy policy will play a central role in this research as it is used to define the outline of this research. The result of the analysis that will be presented in the conclusion will be generalized for common use.
This section will provide an introduction to the topic that is covered in the research. In the next paragraphs there will be an elaboration of the visions on sustainability and energy policies that are carried out on international as well as national levels. The term ‘Trias energetica’ will be explained hereafter since it is an important point of departure for most of these policies. The next step is the introduction of so called roadmaps that municipalities use in their own local agenda setting in order to face the challenge of formulating local policies. In the last paragraph there will be an elaboration on the necessity of internal research when such a roadmap is introduced within a municipal organization and which problems arise when this is not being done.
15 1.1 Introduction and motivation
Energy efficiency and the use of fossil fuels are subjects in many discussions in our modern society and held for many decades. The report ‘Our common future’, also known as the Brundtland Report, is the most important and influential vision on sustainability with the general public. Despite of the critics on the research methodology and the scientific foundations, this vision can be seen as a mile stone in the history of sustainable thinking and it is a trend setter in the field of sustainable development. Nowadays many decision making processes are still influenced by it.
The base of the Brundtland report, and sustainable development in general, is that the world we are living in needs to transform from a resource wasting world economy into a world that has great respect for all resources and the levels in which they are available for use now and in the future. This aspect including the future use of resources is the base of the definition of sustainable development in the report:
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts:
- the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and - the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs .” (Development World Commissien on Environment and, 1987)
The second aspect is the base of this report. Reduction of the usage of fossil fuels and generation of renewable energy are central themes. This subjects are strongly characterized by policies of all kinds and as generally known, several goals have been set on international level (Kyoto, UNFCCC etc.). These goals have been adopted and executed in national policy programs. In the Netherlands, public policy regarding energy savings and stimulation of usage of renewable energy became an important and recurring point on the agenda.
1.2 National vision on environmental policy
The most important policy plans in the Netherlands that deal with the environmental problems are described in the Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan (Nationaal Milieubeleidsplan (NMP)). This document is obliged to be formulated every four years and is published by the central government (ministers of Infrastructure & Environment and Economic Affairs, Agriculture & Innovation). It serves as a strategic policy plan which sets a framework for the decisions that have to be made by the government in the four years that follow.
16 The first Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan was created in 1989 and formulated for the first time the status of the whole national environmental policy as well as a strategic framework for the period of 1990-2010 in the field of sustainable development. The second (1993), and third (1998) policy plans continued the adopted approach and the direction that were set in NMP1.
With the Forth Dutch National Environmental Policy Plan (NMP4) the Dutch government adopted a new approach in environmental policy in 2001. In this plan, transition became a key term and the manner of strategy making, vision development and goal setting was different than the previous plans. This new approach is characterized by looking forward for a time of 30 years instead of focusing on short term goals that are set in for example governing periods of four years. This approach reflected the formulation of ambitions which could be reached by required transitions and fundamental changes in the social environment and was aiming at system innovation. (Kern & Smith, 2008).
Figure 1 shows the schematic view of transition management. The model is a form of process management and contains short term as well as long term goals that are based on societal goals and the vision of sustainability. The model differs from its predecessors because the old plan-and- implement models that were aimed at achieving particular outcomes are being substituted by an process-oriented approach. The visions on sustainability are explored using small steps wherein the short-term goals are informed by the long-term goals and embrace learning goals (Kemp, Parto, & Gibson, 2005).
Figure 1: Transition management (Loorbach & Kemp, 2003)
1.3 National vision on energy policy
Programs that recently have implemented on national level in the Netherlands concerning energy policy, try to convert the international goals into policy ambitions which, eventually, have to be adopted by local governments. An example is the program “Schoon en Zuinig” (VROM, 2007), in which the following goals for the year 2020 are formulated:
17 - A reduction of the emission of greenhouse gasses (CO 2) by 30% compared to 1990 - Increase the pace of energy saving from 1% to 2% on yearly basis - increase the share of sustainable energy from 2% to 20% of the total national energy consumption
This transformation of policy levels, from international into national levels, can have influence on other policy fields as well. Except for the vertical integrated ambition level mentioned above, national ambition can have a more regulatory character. An example is the tightening of the energy performance coefficient (EPC) from 0,8 in 2010, via 0,4 in 2015 to 0,0 in 2020 in the housing industry as stated in article 5.12 of the Building Regulations (VROM, 2009).
On the other side, national policy tries to come up with attitude-changing intended solutions to steer the general public into the desirable direction. With several subsidy programs, the government wants to influence public opinion(s) regarding energy use. Financial and economic barriers have to be lowered in order to stimulate end users to embrace high end sustainable technologies. In this context the government set up the program “Meer met minder” which contains a temporary measures bundle that encourages house owners, housing corporations and building contractors to use energy saving technologies in existing houses and new housing development.
A collaboration between national and local governments is set up as well and is formulated in a covenant called “ Klimaatakkoord Gemeenten en RIjk 2007 -2011” (VROM, 2007). This covenant is being made in order to create a mutual dependence for the creation of a climate durable and sustainable Netherlands whereas they both have the same ambitions. The roles that both the governmental organs have, can contribute together to acceleration in the development and implementation of the necessary measures to comply with those ambitions.
At local level, municipalities converted the national ambitions and agreements into local policy plans in accordance with the general trend to involve sustainability into every decision. (Gemeente Boxtel, 2008) Were short term actions are build up with concrete, well-ordered and mostly manageable frameworks, bottlenecks rise within the long-term agenda setting. The most important causes of these problems are the uncertainties about the efficiency of sustainable energy sources, demographical development, implementation and adaptation of national policy, and the changing of the investment climate. This results in a delay of the design, development and implementation of sustainable policy.
18 1.4 Trias energetica
In recent years several private parties developed methodological frameworks, so called road maps, which are used by municipalities as a guideline and supporting document in the subsequent development of sustainable policy. Municipalities such as Tilburg, Apeldoorn and Groningen already have developed a strategy on sustainability based on the existing and widely accepted ‘Trias energetica’ model. This model inspires many policy developers with the formulation and execution of municipal energy policy. (Duijvestein, 1997) ‘Trias energetica consists of three basic elements:
- Reduction of energy demand - Increasing the generation of renewable energy - Increasing the efficiency of not renewable energy sources
Figure 2 shows the graphical representation of this concept used by the Energy research Center of the Netherlands (ECN).
Figure 2: Trias energetica approach (ECN, 2009)
Figure 3 displays the basis of prospective energy policies and the accompanying energy transition. The aim of these prospective policies has to serve two goals.
Energy transition
Use
Energy Generation
2010Year 2040
Figure 3: Representation of the energy transition
19 First of all the energy consumption in the future has to be covered with energy sources generated in a sustainable manner within the municipal borders. Furthermore this means that, on short term measures need to be taken within several municipal policy areas to comply with the goals set for the reduction of energy use.
The second stage is different on some aspects described above. The reduction of energy consumption can have a practical and concrete character in the execution on short terms, while the creation of the atmosphere wherein sustainable energy is used and generated more and more, does need another set of measures. Two major processes can be distinguished in a multi stage concept. In the first place this representation suggests to set the replacement of not renewable energy as a central theme. Moreover it is important to take measures that function as a catalyst in order to comply with the goals in the future. (VROM, 2007)
Eventually the goal of public policy is to create an environment where in the energy use is minimized and the generation of renewable energy will play an important role and is optimized in the end. The term ‘neutral’ implies that the benefits of generation are equal to the losses of consumption. The third aspect of ‘Trias energetica’ covers the use of fossil fuels that are nowadays inevitably needed. However, the principle of the approach is that these fossil fuels, when they are indispensable, are used on the most efficient way and in a best case scenario are not used at all.
These three steps can be used as a point of departure in creating integral methods for formulating visions and plans that public organizations can use in order to answer the next question:
“How can our sustainable ambitions be executed to eventually become a net zero energy municipality?”
In order to answer this question and to offer municipalities a guideline with actions that are necessary to comply with the ambitions so called roadmaps were introduced.
1.5 Roadmaps
A roadmap can be developed for many policy levels but this affects the complexity of the content of the roadmap. Frameworks on European level for example contain a higher conceptual level in ambitions and objectives than local policies that focus on practical utilization on micro level. An interesting point is the transformation of the goals set by higher public organs, as the European Union, towards goals, programs and policies formulated by lower governments. An example is for instance “Schoon en Zuinig” (VROM, 2007) and the subsequent adaptation of local sustainable development and consciousness in municipal policies.
20 Many Dutch municipalities altered their range of thought about the transformation of energy use in the near future. The trend of this energy transition is also visible in the execution of policies in several municipalities whereby the majority of these municipalities have set certain ambitions in order to reach a form of ‘neutrality’ in sustainable policy matters. The three main trends, which will be elaborated in section 2.4 are:
- CO 2 neutral - Energy neutral - Climate neutral
Nowadays there is no uniform approach to realize the plans that will result in a CO 2 neutral, energy neutral or climate neutral municipality. Not only the goals and ambitions are different in every municipality, but there are different views on the used period and techniques.
There is however an uniform point of departure, namely an analysis of the total energy use within municipal boarders. This analysis is the base of concrete steps that are formulated in the road maps to, for example, contribute to reduction of gas use in the own building stock, stimulation of insulation measures by house owners or increasing the consciousness of the inhabitants to think about the sustainability problem. (Braber et al., 2007)
Subsequently the manner whereupon the internal organization is integrated into the roadmap varies on the base of the method that is used by the party that formulates the roadmap. Table XX depicts an overview of known roadmaps that municipalities use in order to comply with their ambitions to become a climate, CO 2, or energy neutral municipality. The most important and common method, the method of BuildDesk, which is part of the motivation to carry out this research, and some other less common roadmap methods have different approaches on this field. First, the reports of BuildDesk are build up from measures that are divided into three categories: organizational/institutional, instrumental and technical. However the organizational aspects seem to be included, the measures are concentrated on activities wherein the municipal organization is involved, mostly external oriented towards other actors.
Secondly, the other roadmaps that can be seen in table 1 have other approaches concerning the internal organization. For example the municipality of Groningen mentions organizational measures mostly as activities wherein the municipality pursues the function of facilitator for instance towards other governmental organs or inhabitants whereas the municipality of
The municipalities of Vlissingen and Amstelland & Meerlanden however, try to go further than the previous roadmaps in formulating the organizational measures. Unfortunately they do not mention concrete and detailed activities that can be coupled to distinct competences that the municipalities have to develop. A positive aspect of the roadmap of the municipality of Amstelland & Meerlanden is that it uses a quick scan “Organisatorische borging van het klimaatbeleid” made by SenterNovem (Schoolderman, KIliaan, & Lastdrager - Van der Woude, 2009) which ‘measures’ the municipal organization on the following aspects:
21 - Leadership, steering and management; - Implementation in other policies; - External collaboration relations and coalition creation; - Budget and finance structure; - Internal communication; - External communication; - Knowledge development and guarantee; - Monitoring and evaluation.
However these aspects were mentioned as subject of investigation, apart from a summarized paragraph of foundlings it is unclear how this assessment is further implemented in the roadmap.
Table 1: Overview of roadmaps including ambitions and goal years. (Ondersteijn, 2011)
Municipality or region Publication date Ambition Goal year Developer
Groningen October 2007 Energy neutrality 2025 Environmental department
Apeldoorn November 2007 CO 2 neutrality 2034 BuildDesk
Heerhugowaard November 2007 CO 2 neutrality 2026 BuildDesk
Tilburg November 2007 CO 2 neutrality 2041 BuildDesk Waalwijk March 2009 Climate neutrality 2042 BuildDesk Amstelland & Meerlanden May 2009 Energy neutrality 2040 Twynstra Gudde
Goirle June 2009 CO 2 neutrality 2036 BuildDesk Eindhoven July 2009 Energy neutrality 2045 BuildDesk Zut ph en November 2009 Energy neutrality 2047 BuildDesk Apeldoorn October 2010 Energy neutrality 2020 Ecofys Vlissingen April 2011 Energy neutrality 2050 DHUET Region of Amsterdam June 2011 Energy neutrality 2040 CE Delft
Apart of the correctness of the quantitative analyses these approaches lack to include an in-depth internal view on the organization. In first place this means that besides the common baseline measurement concerning the energy use within the municipal boarders it is also inevitable to create an departure point wherein the internal organization is assessed in order to create an organization that can cope with long term prospective energy policies . In the next paragraph there will be an elaboration on the importance of this addition in prospective roadmaps.
22 1.6 Organizations & innovation
In the search for a municipality that could serve as a pilot, the municipality of Boxtel was one of the best candidates in the vicinity of Eindhoven because of its progressive philosophy and policies regarding sustainable development. The municipality is considered as one of the most sustainable municipalities in the Netherlands. Besides ecology, sustainable energy policy is another important main point of the vision of the policy makers and therefore Boxtel emerges on several lists of rankings regarding sustainable development as for example ’De Duurzaamheidsmeter ’ (COS Nederland, 2009). Table 2 shows the top ten rankings of the ‘ Lokale Duurzaamheidsmeter ’ from 1999 till 2008.
Table 2: Ranking of municipalities according to the 'Lokale Duurzaamheidsmeter' 1999-2008
‘99 ‘00 1 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04-‘05 ’06-‘07 2 ‘08 3
1 Rotterdam Breda Breda Breda Breda Tilburg Tilburg Tilburg 2 Nijmegen Den Haag Boxtel Zoetermeer Delft Delft Alkmaar Alkmaar 3 Breda Almere Amersfoort Boxtel Eindhoven Alkmaar Leeuwarden Leeuwarden 4 Groningen Amersfoort Wageningen Leiden Boxtel Breda Breda Breda 5 Leeuwarden Nijmegen Oosterhout Haarlem Haarlem Dordrecht Oss Oss 6 Boxtel Rotterdam Zut ph en Ridderkerk Tilburg Apeldoorn Dordrecht Dordrecht 7 Tilburg Apeldoorn Nieuwegein Tilburg Groningen Eindhoven Ede Ede 8 Amsterdam Nieuwegein Leiden Nieuwegein Oosterhout Boxtel Groningen Groningen 9 Amstelveen Tilburg Heerhugowaard Bernheze Leiden Hengelo Zutphen Nijmegen 10 Wageningen Leiden Leidschendam Amersfoort Renkum Leeuwarden Amstelveen Zutphen
Because of the different approaches in this field of study it is interesting to investigate why some municipalities are executing more policies regarding sustainable energy development than others and which organizational characteristics belong to more prospective municipalities. To differentiate the types the adoption theory of Rogers (2003) can be used wherein different adopter categories are elaborated in relation to the innovativeness which than can be reflected on the types of organizations. Rogers’ categories (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards) have various characteristics in the adoption process and are triggered in different manners before they adopt innovations.
One of these characteristics is organizational size for example. While this correlation between innovativeness and size is true for private organizations (Bulte, 2000), this does not have to have an effect on public organizations. Smaller municipalities could have organizational benefits (Utterback, 1974) over big municipalities because of the less hierarchal structure and shorter communication lines between key actors or departments which results in decision process being positively influenced (Goes & Park, 1997).
1 Boxtel was ranked 15 th 2 Boxtel was ranked 37 th 3 Boxtel was ranked 32 nd
23 Hiemstra et al (2005) describes three levels of innovation within a municipal organization. Table 3 shows these levels with the accompanying relevant questions that could be asked regarding innovations. In this research the second level ‘Innovation of the organization and management ‘is relevant regarding the construction of the organization and the execution of tasks. Central question herein is how the municipality should be organized and managed in order to reach a high level of innovativeness.
Table 3: Levels of innovation within a municipality (Hiemstra et al., 2005)
Level of innovation Problem Relevant questions
Strategic innovation Strategic questions 1) Which position does the municipality choose in the chain? 2) In which fields it is better to cooperate with other governments? Innovation of the Structure and 3) Should we perform these tasks by ourselves or should we organization and management questions outsource? management 4) How can we organize and manage the municipality in the best way? Operational Process questions 5) How can we organize and execute our processes in the innovation most efficient way? 6) How can we minimize our effort and maximize our results?
24 2 Research approach
2.1 Problem definition and analysis
Municipalities are complex organizational forms and have been changing in the last three decades (Aardema & Korsten, 2009). Besides that they are buildup of several layers that all participate in the decision-making process, other actors do also play a significant role in formulating policies. The way of communication can vary as well since the communication lines can go parallel or criss-cross and the different departments have various responsibilities, tasks and competences.
Together with the situation described in the previous section there arises a problem on municipal level. The wishes of municipalities to implement energy reduction and stimulate the generation of renewable energy within municipal boarders can be seen in many strategic and operational visions. With these documents municipalities formalize their ambitions. To translate these documents into concrete actions many municipalities use roadmaps, that serve as an advice report, which describe the pathway that is necessary to become energy neutral.
This can be the main cause of the problem described above. The roadmaps have an advisory character and do not prescribe the solutions that a municipality must take. These results, up to now, in formal reports that are only used as visionary documents in formulating new policy direction instead of the integral use of these reports in further policy development. Moreover municipalities discovered that with the formulation of these roadmaps there was a lack of attention for the organizational implications that roadmaps have on the agenda setting and organizational change that is necessary to facilitate this energy transition.
Concrete elaborations of plans are endangered with these developments and this is noticeable in municipalities that have already implemented roadmaps. The municipality of Groningen, for example, had to postpone its goals with ten years to become an energy neutral municipality and the municipality of Apeldoorn developed another roadmap with a different approach to be able to comply with the targets. These developments can jeopardize the effectiveness that an initial roadmap can have on long term and therefore its practical usefulness is endangered.
Builddesk, an engineering agency specialized in policy studies and advice for governments and building corporations, is one of the first private parties that developed such roadmaps for municipalities. Meanwhile Builddesk provided over 25 Dutch municipalities with their concept of the roadmap to climate, carbon or energy neutrality and in an interview with writers of those reports it became clear that the shortcomings that are mentioned above are recognized and it was confirmed that a change in approach in formulating the roadmaps is necessary (Fens, 2010). First, a sufficient level of detail in the technical mathematical model is required in order to produce a more realistic and reliable energy use component. Furthermore not enough attention is paid to which implications a roadmap can have for the organizational characteristics. Current roadmaps do not anticipate on
25 the way a municipal organization should operate to implement the technological innovations on the most effective manner. Builddesk realizes that their reports lack power because of the absence of specific organizational characteristics that should have identification and better output as outcome.
This research tries to give insight in these organizational characteristics in a more general manner. The findings of this thesis will contribute to the development of a new roadmap towards energy neutrality for the municipality of Boxtel that is made by the Brink Groep. The exact place of this research in this project and an elaboration on Brink Groep will be presented in section 2.3. With the focus on sustainable energy policy a defined research area is created and findings herein can be used in order to formulate innovative capabilities that a municipality has to possess to execute prospective long term policies in general.
2.2 Research question
Research question:
What are the critical organizational capabilities in a municipality that determine the effectiveness of innovative strategic policy implementations?
Sub questions:
- How is a municipality organized? o Which organizational models do exist? o What are the key actors and key processes within a municipal organization? - What are the characteristics of an innovative organization? o What are suitable building blocks of an organization to use in an assessment? o Which characteristics positively influence innovativeness? - What can we learn from other municipalities that implemented innovative strategic policies? - How should an assessment method be formulated in order to evaluate these characteristics within a municipality? - Which transitions within a municipality are necessary to increase innovativeness? o Which processes have to be influenced? o Which measures are useful to create an innovative municipality?
26 2.3 Research aim and demarcation
This master thesis is a part of a project called `The energy neutral city` conducted by Brink Groep. Brink Groep is specialized in management and consultancy in different areas such as area development, property consultancy, project management, building consultancy, accommodation, maintenance and cost-quality consultancy. The firms core business is formulated as “ Management, consultancy and IT services for the construction, housing and property industry” (Brink Groep) and is settled in Leidschendam, Eindhoven, Tiel and Oestgeest with a total of 275 employees. The role of Brink Groep in this project can be summarized in the following project aims:
- To create a roadmap for the municipality of Boxtel focused on the financial prioritizing of measures for the short term (up to 2020) with respect to the incorporation of existing policy in order to reach energy neutrality in 2040 . - Acquiring, sharing and distributing of knowledge by means of creation of a sustainability library wherein technical solutions as well as financial-economic, legal, strategic and social measures are documented. - Start initiatives within the roadmap that support the municipality of Boxtel in the realization of energy neutrality within municipal boarders in 2040. - Offer research opportunities for graduation students of Eindhoven University of Eindhoven and (possibly) other research organizations.
The higher purpose of this project is to create an integral practical roadmap for middle sized municipalities in order realize the ambitions of becoming an energy neutral municipality according to the local structural or strategic visions. This master thesis has to give insight into organizational activities within a municipality concerning policies which already are implemented, the policies designed for the future and the vision municipalities have regarding achieving the goals that have been set or have to be set.
Figure 4 shows the complete design of the project which consists of four parts. First ‘internal’ and ‘external’ research will be conducted for the current situation. The ‘internal’ part refers to the outcome of this research regarding organizational characteristics and can be seen in the frame that is depicted in figure 4. The ‘external’ part refers to research about a new arithmetic method of energy use within a municipality and research about technological measures that can be taken regarding energy reduction and generation. These two researches are the base for the roadmap that will be created eventually. The sustainability library that is subsequently drawn up consist of measures that a municipality can apply in the process to become energy neutral.
After this a scenario study will be carried out with which it has to become clear which aims, with respect to sustainable policy, have to be formulated. Realism and practical feasibility are the most important decisive factors. This scenario study will provide a desired prospective aim which the municipality of Boxtel has to reach eventually.
27 The third part of the project consists of the actual development of the roadmap divided in two periods. The first period of the roadmap contains specific measures up to 2020 and the second period contains a more hypothetical vision of the strategy that has to be followed. The measures that are formulated in the sustainability library will be projected at the municipality of Boxtel and prioritized according to the current strategy and prospective policies. Due to this prioritizing and the use of other indicators a basis of measures will be established that will form the base of the roadmap. These measures are set up with an accompanying financial investment and exploitation program which should increase the feasibility of the roadmap because in this situation the selection of measures takes place in accordance with the investment capabilities and sustainability profile of Boxtel.
INTERN EXTERN
Input municipality of Analysis current Analysis current Input extern parties Boxtel situation situation
Current municipal policy Usage: … PJ / year Benchmark with comparable Strengths/weaknesses Renewable:… % municipalities (SWOT) Analysis and data collection (TU/e and Brink Groep) Library with sustainability measures
Policy measures Technical measures Cultural change …
Growth/shrinkage population, mobility and Measures Measures industry over the period: for Boxtel for Boxtel - 2010 through 2020 - 2020 through 2040
Determine priorities Determine priorities
Prioritizing and Investment budget financial aspects Determine investment and exploitation program Ambition/pace (Brink Groep) Development energy price Policy measures Technical measures Cultural change …
Roadmap
Figure 4: Graphical representation of the project "The energy neutral city" (Brink Groep, 2010)
28 Because the results of this research are used as the base for the design of policy problem the roadmap it is of great importance that the implications are formulated in a well-ordered manner. For this, there has to be a demarcation of the boarders of the municipality. The most obvious way to do this is to consider the amount of inhabitants, municipal turnover or the size of the organization.
The goal of this research is to deliver input to Brink Groep with which the ‘internal’ side of the roadmap, which contains the organizational characteristics, can be drawn up. This results in better and more realistic roadmaps that increases the feasibility of the roadmap of this sort of long term policy plans by describing the general organizational characteristics of the municipality and the capabilities that can positively influence the drawing up and execution of prospective innovative energy policy.
The goal in this research is to create an analysis tool with which can be investigated how a municipality should be organized in order to be an innovative organization and ultimately be able to implement the measures to become an energy neutral municipality in 2040. Concretely, this analysis tool will be developed and applied to the municipality of Boxtel. This will result in recommendations for the organizational characteristics and the accompanying change that is necessary to comply with the theory.
2.4 Definitions
A common problem within the field of roadmaps is that there are no uniform definitions of the concepts climate neutrality, energy neutrality and carbon neutrality. Due to the variety of organizations the diversity of definitions is high as well just as the mix up of them in papers, reports, journals and other media resulting in a no conform use of the terms.
In this master thesis municipal energy policy is a central theme and therefore several terms have to be defined. First, a definition of energy neutrality has to be given. This definition is derived from the report “ Stevige ambities, klare taal: Definiëring van doelstellingen en middelen, bij energieneutrale,
CO 2-neutrale of klimaatneutrale projecten de gebouwde omgeving ” (Platform energietransitie Gebouwde Omgeving, 2009) and states:
“A project is energy neutral if, on a yearly base, no net import of fossil or nuclear fuels are necessary from outside the system boarder in order to construct, use and break down a building. This means that the energy use within the project boarder equals the amount of sustainable energy that is generated within the project boarder or because of external measures can be accounted to the project. The energy use that is necessary to construct and break down of the building will be converted into a yearly based contribution on the
29 basis of de expected lifespan of the building” (Platform energietransitie Gebouwde Omgeving, 2009) 4
The definition above is derived from the field of the build environment. Because this master thesis is concentrated on a municipal organization it is necessary to transform the definition above into one which is subjected to a definition limited to a municipality:
“A municipality is energy neutral if, on a yearly base, no net imported of fossil or nuclear fuels are necessary from outside the system boarder in order to suffice in al the energy consumption. This implies that the energy use within the project boarder equals the quantity of renewable energy generated within the project boarder or, on basis of extern measures, can be attributed to the municipality.” (Platform energietransitie Gebouwde Omgeving, 2009)
Now that the definition of an energy neutral municipality is clear the municipal organization needs to be elaborated. To come to a conclusive definition several concepts need to be combined. First, Lammer, Mijs and van Noort (1997) describe an organization as: “relations of cooperation with more or less hierarchal character that function on a basis of a formal rational design with regard to functioning, coordination and finalization.” (Lammers, Mijs, & van Noort, 1997)
In this thesis the actors and the relations between the actors within a municipal organization form the basis of the research and therefore there is chosen for the following definition of a municipal organization: “the formal network of the relations between actors which are involved in governing a municipality.” (Hiemstra, 1999)
2.5 Method and strategy
The first question will be answered with desk research and interviews with employees of the municipality of Boxtel and will provide the information about the different organizational models, the different actors within a municipality and the accompanying relations and duties. The interviews will be carried out within the top of the municipal administration, department managers and other persons in the organization who are involved with sustainable policy.
4 Free translated from: Een project is energieneutraal als er op jaarbasis geen netto import van fossiele of nucleaire brandstof van buiten de systeemgrens nodig is om het gebouw op te richten, te gebruiken en af te breken. Dit betekent dat het energiegebruik binnen de projectgrens gelijk is aan de hoeveelheid duurzame energie die binnen de projectgrens wordt opgewekt of die op basis van externe maatregelen aan het project mag worden toegerekend5. Het energieverbruik dat voortkomt uit de oprichting en sloop van het gebouw zullen naar een jaarlijkse bijdrage worden verrekend op basis van de verwachte levensduur van het gebouw. (Platform energietransitie Gebouwde Omgeving, 2009)
30 The second question will be answered through desk research and will result in a set of characteristics that reflect an innovative organization and to what extend these can contribute to the realization of future policy outcomes. Interviews with members of showcase municipalities which have already successfully implemented roadmaps will provide empirical information for benchmarking as well as a list of critical success factors.
The third question will be answered by interviewing policy employees of several other municipalities that already have implemented roadmaps to neutrality. This information will provide experiences from these municipalities that can be used as lessons learned in all the stages of development and implementation of new roadmaps.
Subsequently, as an answer for the fourth question a diagnosis model will be presented with which the internal organization of municipalities may be assessed with regard to the ability to implement and execute new innovative policies. The model is applied to the theme energy neutrality and the municipality of Boxtel serves as a case study for this model.
Finally, as an answer to the fifth question the case will present measures that need to be taken in order to improve the capabilities of the municipality. Validation is carried out with an expert panel of members of the municipality of Boxtel.
2.6 Relevance of the research
The scientific relevance is the interdisciplinary contribution to the development of empirically- validated knowledge in the field of organizational and innovation science, with a focus on medium- sized municipalities, whereas these fields previously have mostly been studied separately. Regarding strategic niche management developments this research will contribute by bundling different lessons learned from individual local initiatives and as a result this research aims to set up a limited list of measures that ensure effective implementation of innovative sustainability policies from the level of city council downwards to the level of administrative employees, including characteristics of strategy, knowledge management, culture and leadership.
The Innovation Sciences relevance of this thesis is the multidisciplinary approach within the analysis and the location where this is being done. As mentioned above organizational science as well as innovation science will be combined within a public sector organization, which will result in recommendations with respect to process innovation strategies in relation to social and economic aspects.
31 2.7 Thesis outline
The next section will provide information about the activities within a municipal organization in the Netherlands. The section will elaborate on the construction of a municipality and the key activities that are performed and an elaboration on the different actors including their activities. Section four will first give a quick insight in innovation sciences with important concepts and distinctions in this field. Furthermore there will be an elaboration on how to divide an organization into units that are suitable for further research. Subsequently section four will also provide elaborations on the capabilities that organization have to possess in order to reach a high extent of innovativeness. Section five will present experiences from two municipalities that already have implemented roadmap to energy neutrality and will provide lessons learned.
Section six will eventually present an assessment method that can be used as a questionnaire in assessing the capabilities to become a energy neutral municipality. Subsequently section seven will apply the assessment method to the municipality of Boxtel which will result in a base line measurement and followed by suggested improvements. Finally, in the conclusion the answers on the research question will be provided according the findings from the assessment and they will be generalized for common use.
32 3 Municipal organization
This section will describe several fundamental aspects of the municipal organization. In the first paragraph there will be elaborated on the historical development of municipalities in the Netherlands and their legal foundations. Furthermore a graphical representation will be presented with which has to become clear how various organs within the municipality function and how their relations can be visualized. After this, there will be an elaboration on the characteristics and tasks that these organs have.
The second part of this section describes the organizational models of Dutch municipalities that have been common in the last three decades. These changes in organizational structure and operational beliefs are described as well as the path the organizational models have followed.
The last part of this section will describe several key processes that take place within a municipality. There will be an elaboration on the process of common decision making and treatment of city council proposals and the relation between the executive board and the administrative machinery.
3.1 Key actors
The structure of and activities in the organization of the different municipalities in the Netherlands is based on several legal frameworks that are applicable on all Dutch municipalities. The basis of all the municipal developments can be found in the constitution of 1848 and the local government act (Gemeentewet) of 1851 where all the organs, functions and responsibilities are described. Through time, the frameworks changed. The first major revision dates from 1983 where the constitution was reassessed and, from the municipal point of view, the content was modernized by adding and enhancing the definitions of functional relations. Section 7 of the constitution describes the basis of the positions of governmental bodies and states foundations for municipalities that can also be found in the local government act. This act was revised in 1994 and elaborates on the regulations of the new constitution however it still contains the principles set in 1848 (Hiemstra, 1999):
- The power of municipalities to regulate and administer their own internal affairs shall be delegated to their administrative organs. - The governing organ is the representation of the local population that consists of a council, executive board and a mayor. - Council meetings are freely accessible.
33 In 2002 the local government act was reassessed once again and the new format called “Wet dualisering van het gemeentebestuur” is considered as the most radical administrative model revision of the municipality since the local government act of 1851 (Denters, de Groot, & Klok, 2008). The most important aspect of this new model is the redistribution of responsibilities between the executive board and city council that had to result in a stronger position of the council in practice. Figure 5 shows the traditional model of representative democracy.
Figure 5: Traditional model of representative democracy (Denters S. , 2005)
The division of roles is visible in the separation of positions, functions and responsibilities and results in smaller but denser set of activities that can be executed in more detail. In this new situation the city council can focus on representation tasks, framing objectives and control while on the other hand, the executive board can focus on management tasks within the organization. Table 4 displays the most important measures of the reforms since 2002.
Table 4: The 2002 municipal reforms: most important measures (Groot & et al., 2007)
Type of measure Short description
Position Strengthening independence by abolition of the double role of the Aldermen
Aldermen no longer chair council committees
Formal powers councilors Obligation for Mayor and BMA to inform council actively on all that may be deemed relevant for the council to perform its duties Rights of control for councilors (initiative; amendment)
Information rights (parliamentary questions; interpellation; parliamentary inquiry) New budgetary instruments for the council
Support functions Introduction of Council Clerk
Introduction of local Court of Audit
Right of administrative support and advice
34 Figure 6 shows the process in which all the organs of a municipal organization are appointed as stated by the local government act. On a regular basis of four years the local population can elect representatives which will form the city council. Apart from the mayor, who is appointed by the crown, the city council has to designate the aldermen for the executive board, a clerk and a court of audit. If it is desirable or required, the city council can form committees that are specialized in specific subjects. Subsequently the executive board has to appoint a municipal secretary.Figure 7 shows the situation after the full appointment and the functioning of the different bodies within the organization in relation to each other. This will be further elaborated in the next paragraphs.
Citizens Crown Citizens Crown
Court of Audit Court of Audit
Checks Reports
Executive board Executive board City City Controls Council Council Aldermen Mayor Aldermen Mayor
Support Support City Council City CityCouncil Supports CityCity Supports Supports Supports committeesCity committees councilcouncil councilcouncil
Clerk Secretary Clerk Secretary
City Council clerk Administrative machinery City Council clerk Administrative machinery
Figure 6: Appointment of organs in a municipality Figure 7: Functional relations within a municipal organization
City Council
The city council is formally the highest governing organ of a municipal organization and is considered as a fundamental base for local democracy as stated in article 139 of the constitution of 1848 (Denters, de Groot, & Klok, 2008). The most important function of the council is to be a representative for the beliefs and wishes of the general public and the accompanying decision- making process concerning developing and control of policies including the control of the budgetary means. Denters, de Groot and Klok (2008) described the different manners how this representation can take place. In Table 5 these representations are elaborated according to their basic principles and implementations for objective framing and control.
35 Table 5: Different representation opinions and their possible implications for objective framing and control (Denters, de Groot, & Klok, 2008)
Opinion about Basic principle Implications for objective representation framing and control Representative political party Electoral mandate on the basis of Contribution on the basis of party (responsible party model) the principles en program of the opinions and decision-making by party means of majority Trustee Personal authority and trust on the Contribution on the basis of personal basis of expertise, experience and opinion about the general interest power of judgment in order to look and decision-making by means of after the interests of the general rational argument exchange in the public city council Individual and group aimed Openness and responsiveness Contribution on the basis of service towards individual citizen or complaints, concerns and opinions of towards social organizations civilians, social organizations and attend to individual and collective interests in decision-making and execution
The city council is supported by several other bodies in the municipality. First, the court of audit carries out assessments in order to determine the efficacy, efficiency and legitimacy of the municipal policy. As an independent organ, the court of audit assesses the plans and policies of the executive board and reports its results to the city council.
Second, the city council is supported by city council committees. On behalf of the city council members of the council can be appointed to form a committee concerning certain specific areas of policy where the council requires assistance on. In advance, the city council decides on their powers and terms of reference. On regular basis the committees organize meetings (more frequent than the city council) wherein preparatory work is done for discussion in the city council. Besides of so-called city council committee’s wherein only a delegation of councilors is represented, committees can also consist of members of the public as well. Local residents and interest group can participate in the discussions at an early stage of policy making in order to express their vision.
Finally, the city council clerk office consists of civil servants that work in favor of the city council. The task of the office is to support the council in all its executive activities concerning administrative proceedings and advisory. The composition can vary due to municipal size but is always lead by the city council clerk which is appointed by the city council.
36 Mayor
In contrast to the election of the city council, the mayor is not elected by the citizens of the municipality but is officially appointed by the crown. This is a pure political process with no influence from the community. After the nomination by the minister of the Interior and Kingdom Relations a candidate will be assessed on criteria set by the city council and based on the results a short list will be presented followed by a definitive appointment by Royal Decree (Article 61, local government act).
The mayor is represented in the city council as well as in the executive board were he occupies the position of chairman. Besides those formal functions the mayor possesses powers and responsibilities that are given to him in the local government act. For example the responsibility for managing public relations and maintaining public order and safety within the municipality. Apart from this the mayor is responsible for overseeing the work of the municipality, its policies and relations with other government bodies. Summarized the mayors tasks are described as follows (Korsten A. , 2010):
- The function of ambassador: representation of interests of the executive board and local community - The development of strategic orientation for the executive board - A function within the framework of political management: mobilize support in the city council for plans of the executive board - Internal management: stimulate effective and efficient execution of programs - Quality control of the decision-making process: in terms of democracy as well as legislatively
Executive board
The municipal executive board consists of the mayor and the aldermen and, in contrast to the mayor, the aldermen are chosen by the city council in the formation period. The formal task of the executive board is the day-to-day administration of the municipality consisting of implementation of national legislation, being responsible for the financial affairs and personnel policies of the municipality.
Until the “Wet dualisering gemeentebestuur” the aldermen were chosen from the city council population and were able to conduct the functions in the two organs simultaneously because the membership of the council could be retained. In order to prevent entanglement the law of 2002 reassessed the position of the alderman and no longer approved that aldermen could maintain their position in the city council. To become an alderman it is not required to be a councilor. Residents (even outside the municipality) can directly put themselves at the disposal to become that function as well.
37 Every member of the executive board is responsible for a definite portfolio of subjects. The distribution is performed at the beginning of the governing period and is subjected to appointment by the city council. Decisions and the use of statuary powers have to be taken by the full executive, which means that results are taken by majority vote. In case of a tie the vote of the mayor counts double. Since the city council is the highest organ in the municipality it has the right to call the executive to account for its policies but nevertheless, it has no authority to revoke any decisions taken by the executive. In certain circumstances it can recommend reconsideration and in extreme scenarios, or as an ultimate sanction, the city council has the power to relieve aldermen from their duties.
Secretary
The municipal secretary is seen as the highest person, and thus the head, in the administrative machinery. As can be seen in figure 7 this is a key position that connects the political body which is concerned with the development of policies, and the body that subsequently has to execute this policies. The secretary serves as a communication channel between these bodies. Korsten and Notten (2004) describe the tasks that a secretary has to fulfill furthermore as:
- Connector between the administrative and executive domain - Agent between requirements, wishes and realistic possibilities (supply versus demand) - Advisor of the executive board, embedded in the availability of information and capacity - Manager of the administrative machinery - Manager of the management team - Assessor of documents - Negotiator with regard to capacity and execution, participation matters, and extern relations
Managing directors
Besides the secretary, that is seen as head of the administrative machinery, the managing directors have a functional leading role in this organ. Entrusted with a particular scope of the municipal policy they have to manage the department in an orderly fashion. This means that they have several responsibilities in the organization. First of all they have to execute the determined policy in the area where they are responsible for in order to comply with the set ambitions. Second, they are responsible for the human resource management within the department with all the accompanying activities in order to fulfill the previous task. Furthermore, department managers can be entrusted to be jointly responsible for the development and formulation of the strategy with the position they occupy in the management team.
38 3.2 Organizational models
Municipal organizations were subjected to change in the last three decades regarding several organizational characteristics, for example the manner in which the functional relations were shaped, the framing of tasks and the positioning of services. Aardeman & Korsten (2009) describe three municipal organization models, and their characteristics, that succeeded each other in the last three decades. First of all, the majority of the municipalities were organized according to the secretary model until the 1980s that was followed up in the 1990s by the sector model (also referred to as service model). The last decade is characterized by municipalities that were organized according to the department model (also referred to as direction model). Hiemstra & Boelens (2002) have added the ‘burger logica’ model that shows a rising trend. The characteristics of the different models are being elaborated in the next paragraphs and the graphical representations can be seen in appendix B.
As mentioned above, the secretary model was the common organizational model in municipalities until the 1980s. In the structural representation the secretary is positioned directly beneath the executive board and forms the central administrative organization. The processes of the development of policy and the supervision are not divided since they are both positioned in the secretary department. In the majority of the municipalities the execution of this policy is mostly conducted in so called services and in smaller municipalities there is generally only one of such service. This service is called ‘dienst gemeentewerken’. In this model the services are positioned on the same level as the secretary and are thus also connected with the executive board.
According to Aardema & Korsten (2009) a frequently mentioned problem with the previous model is that there arises competition between the different services and the secretary. The situation is characterized as ‘advice-on-advice’ which means that advice formulated by the services, and are meant for the executive board, are provided with an additional advice of the secretary which can lead to a conflict situation.
In the 1990s an organizational structure arose which had to neutralize this problem and this was represented in the sector model. The alteration that stands out in this change is that in the sector model no division is being made between the organization of policy making and execution. The different policy domains, wherein this model is divided in, take care of these functions by themselves.
The idea that a municipality had to work more business oriented is derived from the period wherein this model was introduced and is a characteristic of the manner on which the internal organizations functioned (Aardema H. , 2002). Where the resource functions in the secretary model are centrally organized, this is decentralized later on. This showed fragmentation as a consequence since every sector has own resources at their disposal that can be used in the complete chain. The wish to work on a more integral way remains limited to negotiations about different (financial) resources to
39 comply with the targets on individual sector level because the manager is judged more business oriented on own plans and not on the functioning in the whole organization.
At the end of the 1990s there has been a second reorganization period with possible improvements for the product oriented service model that instead of an improved performance became more bureaucratic and the performance declined. (Vries & Derks, 2006).
First of all, the department model (also referred to as direction model) was introduced into municipal organizations wherein the services were divided into smaller organizational units. A direct consequence of this is that the mutual dependence would be increased and there was assumed that this would have a positive effect on the integration. In addition this had also a consequence for the management layers that existed in the organization and the pace in which decision-making was established. Because of the decrease in management layers, the organization becomes ‘flatter’ and this results in shorter communication lines
Further development could be noticed when the previous model got tilted. Until the 1980s the basic structure of a municipality was described as ‘functional’ whereas in the 1990s this changed into ‘product oriented’. This change had its effect on the organization of the models. In the end of the 1990s further alterations became noticeable and the basic structure and approaches were dominated by ‘market oriented’ visions. The municipality of Tilburg was the first municipality with this kind of structure (Vries & Derks, 2006).
Finally, according Hiemstra & Boelens (2002) the creation of the ‘burger logica’ model can be explained by the change in opinion about how a municipality should serve its inhabitants. Policy services were differentiated and organized according to the role inhabitants could play in relation with the municipal organization. Examples of these roles can be: citizen as client of services, citizen as district inhabitant and citizen as partner in urban development. Table 6 summarizes al the findings that were presented above.
Table 6: Overview of characteristics of the different municipal organization models
Period Relation policy- Role of the Types of resources Process making and municipal secretary characteristics execution Secretary model Till 1980s Separated Head of secretary and Central ‘Fight’ management team
Sector model 1990s United Primus inter pares Decentral Negotiate
Departement model From end 1990s Separated Head, assistant of the ‘Tilted’ central Collaborate adjuncts Burger logica model Begin 2000s Separated Primus inter pares Central Serve
40 3.3 Key processes
City council proposal: the policy making process
The key process in municipal policy is the decision making in the city council but before the voting has taken place a standardized route is followed in many cases. As described in the previous section, the various organs within a municipality have different tasks in the organization and they have different tasks in the decision-making process as well. According research about the manner in which proposals are being formed and distributed through the organization there is one common way of practice. (Rekenkamer West Twente, 2008)
In the first part of the process civil servants of the particular section or department perform preparation activities in order to gain sufficient knowledge about the subject and examine the additional conditions that possibly exist in other departments. Subsequently, the civil servants formulate a preliminary council proposal and send it to the department manager for a content check. Depending on the result, the proposal will be send back for adaptation or it will be forwarded to the next person in the hierarchal line. Besides the content, the proposal can be rejected because of the readability, the orderly structure or argumentation.
After eventual interference by a discussion in a management team or assessment by a policy coordinator, the proposal is send to the executive board if the proposal meets all the quality requirements. The executive board has the power to officially determine the proposal and refer it to the city council clerk office.
The official assessment starts with discussions about the proposal in the city council committees. Which committees will assess the proposal depends on the subject and the appointment of the city clerk. In this discussion it will become clear how the content of the proposal complies with the wishes or visions of the representation of the city council and its political background. This gives a reasonable prediction of the general opinion of the whole city council. In this stage the proposal can be send back in order to carry out alterations.
The result of the discussion in the city council committees is an advice and a concept resolution that supports the proposal in a city council meeting. Because of the elaboration in the committees the council does not extensively spend time for discussing the proposal. The advice and concept resolution of the committees are sufficient in most cases and subsequently the city council can come to a decision trough a voting.
41 Relation between the executive board and the administrative machinery
According to Hiemstra & Van Werven (2006) there exist four types of administrative-executive relations wherein the intensity of integration within these organs plays a central role. The difference of the extent of this integration intensity characterizes the collaboration forms between these organizational organs. These ratios are the so called ‘soft’ aspects of the relations between persons in a top structure. Informal contacts are important examples herein. Hiemstra & Van Werven (2006) distinguish four types of collaboration forms: the theme holder variant, the executive board variant, the secretery variant and the collegial variant. Figure 8 depicts these variants in relation with the mentioned variables.
machinery Administrative intensity integration Executive board integration intensity
Figure 8: Four variations of relations between the executive board and administrative machinery
In the theme holder variant (also referred to as alderman variant) the focus lies on the manner on which the steering is being organized of the members of the executive board. In this variant this occurs on individual level and the theme holder (alderman) primarily steers from the point of view of the content of his portfolio concerning policy making and execution. Because of this direct approach the role of the administrative top is limited to certain tasks towards coordination of business. An advantage of this variant is the high extent of individual executive distinctiveness and executive power of the members of the executive board.
The executive board variant possesses the same extent of administrative integration intensity but possesses a higher extent of executive board integration than the theme holder variant. This means that the executive board steers on a more collegial manner and takes the responsibility for the determination of the policy making and execution. As well as in the previous variant the administrative top plays a small role and is characterized by an nearly invisible management team and municipal secretary.
42 The third variant is characterized by a strong steering administrative top and an executive board that steers from a larger distance. In the secretary variant the responsibilities for the policy making, policy execution as well as for the coordination lie at the highest administrative civil servant or the management team.
The last model does possess a high intensity of integration in the executive board as well as in the administrative machinery. The collegial variant is characterized by a clear distinction of policy making and policy execution. Hereby the executive board is charged with the determination of the policies whereas the administrative top is responsible for the execution of them and the accompanying management and the coordination .
Table 7: Advadvantages and disadvantages of the different variants of executive-administrative collaboration
Variants Advantages Disadvantages
Theme holder Individual executive Separate orientated steering and distinctiveness and power limited attention for management Executive board Strong executive power of Overload of the executive board integration Comradely Strong overall integration and possibility for the executive board to orient externally Secretary High overall strength of execution No political executive steering
43 3.4 Conclusion
This section has given insight in the way a municipal organization is set up, which actors are present and which key processes can be distinguished. Due to the change in the local government act of 2002 the relationship between the city council and the executive board changed and the city council gained a more important role. The distinction between policy decisions and policy implementation is more clear.
The democratic process of policy making is characterized by various steps wherein several organs as well as persons are involved and where the city council has the most important and final influence. Because of this, the decision-making in the policy making process is subjected to many personal en political opinions. As a result, policy making is characterized by a large extent of compromising behavior to comply to everyone’s opinions and beliefs.
As well as in the policy-making process, the policy implementation process does possess the same characteristics with the difference that this happens on execution level. Herein the managing directors can have a decisive voice and thus have a lot of influence since they decide how and with which resources the activities are performed with which the goals will be met.
From the variants that were presented involving the relation between the executive board and the administrative machinery the variant is favorable wherein both the integrations of the executive board and that of the administrative machinery are high. In this variant the executive board focuses only on the determination of policy while the administrative top arranges the coordination and execution which reflects the natural balance.
From the different organizational models that were presented previously, only the departmental and ‘Burger logica’-model are being used nowadays. Although the trend is that more and more municipalities shift slowly to the ‘burger logica’-model, no value judgment can be made on which model is in favor with regard to policy making or policy implementation.
44 4 Characteristics of an innovative organization
In this section there will be elaborated which characteristics an organization has to possess in order to become innovation oriented and have the capabilities to do so which also has to result in achieving the long term goals. In the first part there will be an introduction into the field of innovation science with an elaboration on the definition of innovation and the developments in history.
Hereafter there will be an elaboration on the building blocks that an organization consists of and which subdivisions are distinguished in the literature. The next section will clarify which characteristics an organization has to develop in order to be innovative.
4.1 Innovation and innovative capabilities
Modern-day research about innovation is started in the early 20 th century when Joseph Schumpeter introduced the concept and defined the common used manner to describe innovation in five forms: (1) new products unfamiliar to consumers, (2) new methods of production or new ways to handle commodities (processes), (3) opening up new markets not entered into previously, (4) new sources of supply of raw materials or half-manufactured goods, and (5) new organization of the competitive structure of an industry (Schumpeter, 1938). Other definitions that are used are deducted from the definition of Schumpeter and focus on detailed definite subjects such as the view of the customer on innovation. Porter and Stern describe innovation from the customer perspective as:
“the transformation of knowledge into new products, processes, and services – involves more than just science and technology. It involves discerning and meeting the needs of the costumers.” (Porter & Stern, 1999)
A more suitable definition of innovation for this thesis is formulated by Damanpour which defines innovation from an organizational perspective. Innovation is considered as:
“the adoption of an idea or behavior, whether a system, policy, program, device, process, product or service that is new to the adopting organization. (Damanpour F. , 1991)
As well as the variety of definitions the view of what constitutes innovation was discussion of debate through the years as well. Rothwell (1994) describes the evolution of innovation along five generations of behavior:
The first generation (1950s-1965s) is characterized by the technology push principle. Innovation came with products that were considered as new and technologically advanced and with means of production. These products were pushed into the market. The second generation of innovations (1965s-1970) shifted from the push principle into a customer oriented phenomenon where the
45 needs of the users initiated the response of the industry. The marketing divisions played a key role in generating new ideas. The third generation of innovations (1975s-1985s) linked the previous concept into a coupling model wherein the market and production technology, respectively marketing and R&D, were linked and redefined each other’s first need into a final product. The fourth generation of innovation (1980s-1995s) was characterized as an integrated model. The coupling of R&D and marketing continued where after the linkages with suppliers and leading customers were intensified. Finally, the fifth generation of innovations (1995s-now) builds on the integrated model by including strategic partnerships and customers, using expert systems, and having collaborative marketing and research arrangements.
Furthermore, organizational innovations can be categorized in various ways. Categories used in past research include technical versus administrative innovations, radical versus incremental innovations, and product versus process innovations. The first division into technical and administrative innovation is commonly made because it is useful as a typology wherein a clear distinction can be made between social and technical systems of an organization (Damanpour & Evan, 1984). Technical innovation can be described as the products, processes and technologies that are used to produce products or render services directly related to the core business of an organization (Daft, 1978). Administrative innovations on the other hand, are described by Gopalakrishnan & Damanpour (1994) as innovations that belong to organizational structure, administrative process and human resources, which are indirectly related to the basic work activity of an organization and more directly related to its management.
Another fundamental manner to distinct innovation is described by Abernathy & Clark and further elaborated by Markides & Geroski (2005). In figure 9 four types of innovations are identified on a two-dimensional matrix where the impact of innovation both for consumers and producers can be seen. The two extreme kinds (radical and incremental innovation) have opposite values concerning the habits and behavior of consumers and, at the same time, the capabilities and resources. The other two extremes vary in the extent on which innovation has effect on the habits and behavior or, on the capabilities and resources.
High Major innovation Radical innovation
Impact of innovation on Types of the habits and behavior innovation of consumers Incremental innovation Strategic innovation
Low
Low High
Impact of innovation on the capabilities and resources of established companies
Figure 9: Different types of Innovation according to Markides & Geroski (2005)
46 The central question in the formulation of the theory in the next section is which capabilities an organization has to possess in order to stimulate innovativeness. In general, there are several definitions that are used to define innovation capabilities. For this research the definitions of Samson & Lawson (2001) and Teece, Pisano and Shuen (1997) are used. Innovation capabilities are defined as:
“ability to continuously transform knowledge and ideas into new products, processes and systems for the benefit of the firm and its stakeholders.” (Lawson & Samson, 2001) and as:
“the firm’s ability to integrate, build an reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments” (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997)
With these two definitions a new more complete one can be formulated. In these definitions above innovation capability can be described as a combination of organizational factors, both internal and external oriented, which are linked to the ability of the organization to continuously innovate. Therefore it is perceived as a complex concept and it can be influenced by factors internal (leadership capabilities for example) and external to the organization (level of industry for example).
With this summarized introduction into innovation sciences a basis is laid for further formulation of innovative capabilities within an organization. Subsequently, the next section will provide an elaboration on how an organization can be subdivided into building blocks, belonging to the internal analysis that follows in the section thereafter wherein the internal factors that influence innovativeness are being elaborated into greater detail. Internal factors (competencies) enable firms and other institutions to introduce new products, processes and organizational devices, thus are key drivers of innovation, and also interpret and utilize knowledge located outside their own boundaries (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990).
4.2 Elements of an organization
In order to be able to elaborate on the innovative capabilities that will be described in the next section it is of importance to determine into more detail what an organization is build up from and how organizations can be analyzed. In section 2.4 organization was defined as:
“relations of cooperation with more or less hierarchal character that function on a basis of a formal rational design with regard to functioning, coordination and finalization.” (Lammers, Mijs, & van Noort, 1997)
47 In figure 10 Scott represents his vision on the elements of an organization. Rather than give a single definition, Scott outlines five central elements of an organization: social structure, participants, goals, technology and the environment. (Jaffee, 2001)
Social structure consists of activities, patterns of interaction and relations that occur at regular base. These actions can be divided into two categories: formal social structure and informal social structure. Formal social structure refers to the activities that are described in job descriptions and organizational charts for example and are formally specified in order to accomplish a particular organizational task. Informal social structure on the other hand is not formalized and describes activities but emerge naturally between members in the organization.
Subsequently, the participants of an organization
are the members where the organization depends Social on. Since most organizations count on the human structure factor of production, which can be human labor power in physical and mental manners, this is considered as one of the most important element. Environment Participants
Organization Third, goals can be described as the desired achievements that an organization wants to reach. However, since an organization formally cannot set goals on itself, because organizations do not have Technology Goals an intent, organizational goals are better described as human goals of those who own or control the organization. (Jaffee, 2001) Figure 10 : Scott's element of organization (Jaffee, 2001)
Technology is the next element of Scott’s outline of an organization and described as the transformation of raw materials into some finite products. These materials can be physical, informational or human and transformed through techniques such as methods, machines hardware, software or computers. Technology described as above as element of an organization is important because it has a great influence on how labor processes, social structures and relations between participants are being shaped. (Jaffee, 2001)
Finally, all things outside of the boundaries of the organization Scott refers to as the environment. This environment can be shaped by the organization or rather influence it. Interactions with networks of suppliers and customers or regulations by policies and law as well as the competition with other organizations are examples of such environmental factors.
Although Scott’s model of the elements of an organization covers a lot of factors, this model is not usable for this thesis because it focuses on the internal as well as external factors of the organization. Pascale, Peters & Waterman developed an analytical framework to assess the effectiveness of an organization and divided the organization into seven parts which reinforced each other.
48 Figure 11 depicts the representation of the 7s-model and contains strategy, structure, systems, skills, staff, style and shared values. In this model the elements are all interconnected with each other what states that all the factors are dependent and have influence on each other. In case of alternation the content of one element can have consequences on other elements.
The model can be divided into two parts. Strategy, structure and systems are seen as ‘hard’ elements Structure of an organization, while staff, style, skills and shared values are defined as ‘soft’ elements of an organization. The reason for this separation is the Strategy Systems organizational nature of these elements and can be described as follows. Shared values The hard elements of an organization are tangible, can be described in a formal document or put in a Skills Style scheme (Doelen & Weber, 2006) and thus easier for the management to identify and influence. Staff Strategies are documented in a strategic vision for example and are considered ‘hard’ as a result of the agreements that are set in the document. Figure 11 : Representation of the 7s model Mostly these agreements with the desired goals are formulated according to the SMART-concept: Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound. Subsequently, the structure can be visualized in an organogram for example where in one glace it becomes clear how an organization is build up, horizontally and vertically, which departments it has and how the functional relations are connected. The systems are per definition hard because they are objectively visible: operating procedures, schemes, blueprints and automated processes of data (Doelen & Weber, 2006).
On the contrary, the remainder of the elements is non-tangible and not always easy to identify or influence. A significant part of these elements is shaped by the organizational culture and reflects the human side of the organization. Style reflects for example the manners with which managers execute their leadership tasks and the effectiveness of the delegation of labor. Coherent with this element are the skills and competences of the organization as well as of the employees, and how these are assessed, monitored and improved. Staff represents the total human resource management and the demarcation of functions and positions. Last but not least shared values reflect the core values of the company which can be found in the corporate culture encompassed by many human elements such as atmosphere when collaborating in teams, fundamental values, and general work ethic.
49 According to Ahmed (1998), this division into hard and soft elements of an organization can have a significant contribution into understanding the key factors of innovation excellence. Ahmed concludes that his research seems to indicate that innovation requires excelling along two key dimensions:
“Hard innovation: which has primarily to do with the company putting inplace structures for innovation, such as innovation stage-gate methodologies, suggestion schemes, reward schemes, quantitative goals, organisational systems and procedures for interaction, physical infrastructures and resources to enhance co-operation and collaboration.
Soft innovation: which involves proper and effective management of the hard aspects of innovation. The soft aspects include managing the culture and climate of the organisation to create an innovation orientation and positive behaviours. The soft side of innovation requires careful management through sensitive leadership which sets the agenda for innovation and then reinforces the agenda in the behaviours of its people by signalling and reinforcing these behaviours by symbolic as well “hard” resource allocations.” (Ahmed, 1998)
Finding the balance between the hard and soft elements in an organization is of great importance in order to accrue long term benefits. Ahmed concludes that too often the focus is stressed on the hard aspects and the soft side is being neglected however these aspects ‘provide the underlying dynamic and impetus towards innovation ’. In the next paragraph the 7s-model will be used to elaborate on capabilities that an organization has to possess in order to increase innovativeness in the long term.
4.3 Characteristics that influence innovativeness
In this part of the section there will be an elaboration on the different views on innovativeness in organizations. The division of the building blocks as applied in the 7s-model is used in order to categorize the elements that influence innovative competences. These building blocks will be the subject of literature research that eventually will be used to formulate a framework for the assessment method.
4.3.1 Strategy
The first aspect which will be elaborated is the strategy building block. Naranjo-Gil (2009) defines the term strategy in a combination of the definitions of Mintzberg and Miles & Snow:
“Strategy can be defined as a pattern of decisions about the organization’s future, which take on meaning when it is implemented through the organization’s structure and processes.” (Naranjo-Gil, 2009)
50 In his research Naranjo-Gil examined the organizational and environmental factors that may explain the adoption of innovation in public sector organizations and how administrative and technical innovations affect firm performance. Herein Naranjo-Gil focuses on two types of opposite strategies: prospectors and defenders.
Prospectors are characterized as organizations that continuously search market opportunities and seek manners to alter their services or add new services on a frequent base. Prospectors monitor the market as well and respond quickly to signals and market needs in order to attempt to be at the forefront of new service developments. On the contrary, defenders focus on a particular segment of the population and have a narrow product-market domain. Therefore they have a relatively stable set of services. Doing the job right is the best vision rather than shifting to new developments.
In general, the results of research about the relationship innovation - strategy suggest that proactive strategies, such as those of prospectors, are more likely to adopt innovations founded on the reason that this category makes day-to-day decisions on the bases of a broader scope of information provided by advanced techniques and systems.
4.3.2 Structure
The second unit of analysis is the structure of the organization. Just as in the previous part about strategy a definition of this part concerning organizational structure needs to be given. Wheelen & Hunger (2002) define an organization’s structure as:
“the formal setup of a business corporation’s value chain components in terms of work flow, communication channels and hierarchy”
Organizational size is considered to be one of the most important characteristics of organizations that can predict the adoption of innovations (Damanpour F. , 1992). As techniques, such as sophisticated information and control systems, are more frequent present in larger organizations, they provide the organization with a greater functional and organizational structure coordination that can be used in better and effective managerial decision making (Chenhall, 2003). On the other hand smaller organizations face difficult tradeoffs in their investment choices since the resources that smaller organizations have are less sufficient in order to execute innovative activities concerning expensive technologies (Damanpour & Gopalakrishnan, 2001).
In their research about structure and innovation adoption Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan (1998) have stressed that structural variables of organizational innovations can be divided into two constructs: organizational complexity and bureaucratic control. Organizational complexity consists of specialization, functional differentiation and professionalism while bureaucratic control refers to formalization, centralization and vertical differentiation. (Damanpour & Gopalakrishnan, 1998).
51 These structural variables can be seen in table 8 where they are elaborated with respect to three organization innovation theories.
Dual-core theory refers to the distinction of technical and administrative innovations already mentioned in section 4.1, where technical innovations were described as the products, processes and technologies that are used to produce products or render services directly related to the core business of an organization, and administrative innovations are referred to as innovations that belong to organizational structure, administrative process and human resources, which are indirectly related to the basic work activity of an organization and more directly related to its management. As can be seen in the table, the two innovation types have the opposite configuration of structural variables. Where organizational complexity has to be low and bureaucratic control has to be high for administrative innovations, the opposite is true for technical innovations.
Table 8: Structure-innovation relationships in theories of organizational innovation (Damanpour & Gopalakrishnan, 1998)
Structural Organizational Dual -core theory Radicalness theory Ambidextrous theory variables 5 innovation Administrative Technical Incremental Radical Initiation of Implementation innovation innovation innovation innovation innovation of innovation
Organizational complexity Specialization + Low High Low High High Low Functional differeantiation + Low High Low High High Low Proffesionalism + Low High Low High High Low
Bureaucratic control Formalization - High Low High Low Low High Centralization - High Low High Low Low High Vertical differentiation - High Low High Low Low High
The second theory comprehends incremental and radical innovation. The two concepts were described in relation to the extent they had influence on the behavior and habits of consumers and , on the other hand, on capabilities and resources. As for incremental innovations, the organizational complexity has to be low and the bureaucratic control has to be high, the opposite situation is applicable for radical innovations.
The last theory focuses on the adoption process of innovations. Pre-adoption activities that lead to a decision as well as the activities that facilitate implementation and continued use of the innovation are included in this theory. The ambidextrous theory identifies two stages in this process: the
5 Specialization represents different specialties found in an organization. Functional differentiation is the extent to which an organization is divided into different units. Professionalism reflects professional knowledge of organizational members, which requires both education and experience. Formalization reflects the emphasis on following rules and procedures in conducting organizational activities. Centralization is the extent to which decision-making autonomy is dispersed or concentrated in an organization. Vertical differentiation represents the number of levels in an organization’s hierarchy
52 initiation stage and the implementation stage (Duncan, 1976). The relation between the stages and the structural variables is as follows: high complexity and low bureaucratic control facilitate the initiation stage of innovations while low complexity and high bureaucratic control have positive effects on the implantation of innovation.
Ahmed (1998) discusses in his research that the levels of an organization have an effect on the innovativeness of a firm as well. Innovation is positively related to more flatter reporting structures with limitations to the scale of levels within the hierarchal structure. This has effect on the communication lines that stay short and clear which results in that case in effective communication and decision making.
3.2.6 Systems
The most important system in an organization is the decision making process. The process contains all activities that are necessary for the organization to make a decision and consists of an input and an output stage. Janszen (2000) visualized the decision-making process in figure 12.
Knowledge Decision support tools
Uncertainties Options
Decision-making Goals process Requirements
Resources Plans, schedules and allocated resourses
Team Values and norms, interdependencies legislation
Figure 12 : The decision -making process, wi th inputs, outputs, en abling factors and tools (Janszen, 2000)
Figure 12 shows the input of the decision-making process as being goals, the options and available resources (skills and financial resources). In the decision process itself enablers are used to form an opinion towards the available options. These enabling factors are knowledge, dependencies under the members, decision support tools, legislation and the shared values an that are present in the organization. As a result, plans of the activities and requirements have to be formulated in order to
53 reach the goals as well as the documentation of the use of resources, skills, finance and time. Together with the inventory of the uncertainties and the possible lack of knowledge that can jeopardize the results, this forms the result of de decision-making process. Knowledge is seen as one of the most important production factor in the industry (Janszen, 2000) and is an interesting internal factor to analyze in order to facilitate innovativeness. As it is clear that that innovation is positively linked to technical (technical resources and technical potential) and professional (education and experience) knowledge of the people in the organization it is important to analyze the organizational implications of this element (Damanpour F. , 1991). As the value of knowledge is influenced by many factors, for example the type of knowledge, the uniqueness and the way an organization uses its knowledge, the management of knowledge is one of the most important system in an organization.
Knowledge management (KM) encompasses processes and practices concerned with the creation, acquisition, capture, sharing, and use of knowledge, skills and expertise and has a significant influence on the organizational performance and innovation through an increase of innovation capability (López-Nicolás & Meroño-Cerdán, 2011). For an organization it is thus of great importance to know what knowledge is in house, how the knowledge is used in all the activities and how the knowledge (tacit and codified) spreads through the organization. According to Janszen (2000), critical aspects of knowledge management are the classification, inventory, codification, storage and accessibility for the relevant people. Story & Kelly (2002) define creation, transfer and storage as follows:
- Knowledge creation consists of a learning culture, an entrepreneurial climate, organizational creativity and a shared vision. - Knowledge transfer is characterized by collaborative working, rich communication, empowerment and shared knowledge. - Knowledge storage comprises knowledge systems, decision systems and documentation. A strong relationship between knowledge management and the success and innovativeness of a new service development programme is demonstrated.
López-Nicolás & Meroño-Cerdán (2011) conclude that “firms know that with a clear KM strategy they can be more innovative, achieve better financial results, improve processes and develop human resources’ capabilities. And, in turn, those benefits foster the link innovation-performance.”
In addition, communication is another organizational system that has been found positively related to innovation. Within this element there is a distinction between internal and external communication. External communication comprehends the exchange of information with the environment, the interaction with customers and suppliers, and the involvement of members of the organization in external professional activities and networks (Terziovski, 2007). Internal
54 communication is the internal communication system that is managed by the organization and encompasses the employees as stakeholders.
According to Angle (1989), communication can enhance innovation in two dimensions. First, horizontal communication (across functions) has a positive effect on leveraging innovation capabilities. It can, for example, initiate knowledge transfer of executable information between members of an organization at a similar level. Subsequently vertical communication (across managerial levels) has a positive effect as a result of the spreading and sharing of information between the layers of the organization. With these two levels of communication all the information can be shared with all stakeholders in the innovation process.
For individual organizations, social innovation is increasingly important. For many, it will play a key role in long-term organizational success (Paine, 2002). In dynamic environments, a key factor in developing and sustaining competitive advantage is therefore the organization’s capacity to learn and innovate (Teece, Pisano, & Shuen, 1997). This reinforces how important the knowledge management system is within organizations and that creation, diffusion and storage are important factors in creating innovativeness.
4.3.4 Skills
This element of the 7s-model can be divided into two different aspects. First, skills can refer to organizational skills which reflect the capabilities with which the organization outperforms other similar organizations in the market. In line with this, core competences of an organization in combination with the available knowledge can be a starting point for research. The result of this research has to show which strengths on strategic level characterizes the organization as a whole.
Second, skills can refer to the competences and capabilities of the members of an organization and the manner with which they use their skills to reach results set by the organization. These skills mostly are called competences and reflect the available technical and process knowledge, awareness of available tools that can be used by members of the organization.
Besides the competences that are necessary to carry out ones duties in a decent manner, there is one skill that is of great influence on the innovative capability of a whole organization and therefore mentioned on large scale in existing literature. Human creativity (producing new and useful ideas into any domain) is seen as a great catalyst for organizational innovation creation and therefore a skill that needs encouragement. Angle (1989) however nuanced this skill saying that creativity does not equal innovation, meaning that “innovation effectiveness will be positively related to the extent to which the organization is able to integrate creative personalities into the organizational mainstream ” (Angle, 1989).
55 Cohen and Levinthal (1990) described a skill that can be applied on employees as well as on the entire organization and has a significant effect on innovativeness. This skill is the ability to recognize the value of new, mostly information from outside the organization, to assimilate it and eventually apply it to commercial ends. This absorptive capacity is necessary in order to keep the information up to date regarding new technologies, new practices and new trends that can be applied by or within the organization. Research suggests that firms can increase their organizational learning and innovation by leveraging on their knowledge base (Cohen & Levinthal 1990).
4.3.5 Staff
This element is as well as the previous one closely associated to the characteristics of the members of the organization. This part covers several themes that are related to the human resource management of an organization and is divided into for example: the distribution of personnel across the organization, the role of the personnel, the distribution of tasks and responsibilities of the members and the available experience and knowledge of the members.
All these aspects can be analyzed in two ways. The first question is if these elements are represented in a sufficient quantity across the whole organization. Obviously this is dependent on factors such as the accessibility, reliability or usefulness of the elements. From this, the second question can be formulated and encompasses the quality of the characteristics. It is of great importance to assess the available characteristics on both the questions and compare it to the required set of features.
With regard to the sort of tasks that employees have to execute Arundel et al. (2006) state that organizations which offer their employees varied work and involve them into the problem-solving process are more innovative than Tayloristic organizations. These are organizations that impose employees with monotone tasks and little possibilities for readjustment. According to Dorenbosch, Van Engen and Verhagen (2005), who carried out research within a local government, there is a positive coherence between multifunctional functions (different tasks) and innovative behavior. This coherence intensified even more when the employees felt more responsible and careful for the certain tasks. (Dorenbosch, van Engen, & Verhangen, 2005).
4.3.6 Style (of management)
Leaders and managers have a great influence on the activities in organizations as they determine for a large extent what has to be done and usually also the manner of execution of these operations. That this element is one of the most important factor in an organization that can trigger innovation is formulated by Damanpour (1991) who states that the prediction of innovation is related to the extent with which managers (or members of the dominant coalition) are tolerant to the willingness to change and thus, the leadership of managers can contribute significantly to the total innovativeness of an organization.
56 According to Davilla, Epstein and Shelton (2007) organizational leadership is the most important tool in promoting social innovation and the leaders that operate in the organization are mostly heavily an personally committed to pursuing the organizational mission. As a result of the very restrictive resources with which social organizations have to deal with, leaders have to be flexible and innovative to meet normal business demands. David, Epstein and Sheldon (2007) also stress out that effective leadership for innovation requires the recognition that staying at the forefront of management practice requires continual innovation as well as considerable knowledge of best practices in the tool of general management.
In his research De Jong (2007) divides management style into two characteristic leadership styles which have different effects on the manner with which a manager works with his employees: transformational and participative leadership. On one hand transformational leadership reflects that the manager presents himself with vision and also stimulates intellectual activities of his personnel in order to discover and develop new ways of doing things. In addition, a manager can encourage innovative behavior by being a role model for his employees. In line with this, Janssen (2005) states that employees undertake innovative activities more often if they perceive that their executive supports innovative behavior.
On the other hand participative leadership encompasses delegating to and consulting of employees that are involved in the execution of the activities which has to result in decision-making processes wherein the ultimate decision of the managers can be influenced by the employees and therefore can stimulate creative and innovative behavior. These processes can take various forms such as: consultation, joint decision making and delegation. The benefits of this sort of leadership can be seen in higher decision quality, higher decision acceptance, more satisfaction with the decision-making process and more development of decision making skills (Jong, 2007). Table 9 depicts the findings of De Jong (2007) with respect to the relation between managerial actions and innovative working behavior of the employees.
57
Table 9: Summary of empirical findings on the connection between leader behaviors and innovative work behaviour (De Jong, 2007)
Leader behaviors Direct Interactions with dimensions of innovative climate: connection connection with IWB is… with IWB
Innovative role -modeling None Positive when work group support for innovation is low. Intellectual stimulation None Positive when fellowship in the work group is low; Positive when work group support for innovation is low. Stimulating knowledge diffusion None None Providing vision None Positive when work group support for innovation is low. Consulting Positive More positive when minority acceptance is low; More positive when work group support for innovation is low. Delegating Positive More positive when work group support for innovation is low. Support for innovation Positive More positive when work group support for innovation is low. Organizing feedback None None Recognizing Positive More positive when work group support for innovation is low. Rewarding None None Providing resources Positive More positive when work group support for innovation is low. Monitoring Negative More negative when work group support for innovation is high. Task assignment Positive More positive when striving for excellence is low. Control variables: Innovation climate None External work contacts
4.3.7 Shared values
Baer and Frese (2003) use the concept ‘climate for initiative’ to describe a climate wherein a mindset can be created in order to facilitate adoption and implementation of innovations. In their research Bear and Frese examined the relation between process innovations, climates for initiative and psychological safety, and firm performance. They describe organizational climate as
‘a broad class of organizational, rather than psychological, variables that describe the organizational context for individuals’ actions’ (Glick, 1985).
which mostly refer to formal and informal activities in terms of meanings, interpersonal practices and policies. Culture however, is often used to describe shared values as well. Schein (1985) refers to culture as a less conscious set of meanings that can be divided into three levels. The first (and deepest) level contains assumptions which are beliefs about reality and human nature followed by the second level which is constituted of values that have intrinsic worth. These can be social principles, goals and standards. The last level contains artifacts which are the visible and tangible actions that are the result of activities that are grounded in the lower levels and are embedded in values and assumptions.
58 But what is a culture wherein innovation can be initiated, developed, and adopted in? Jassawalla and Sashittal (2002) define innovation-supportive culture as a firm’s ‘‘social and cognitive environment, the shared view of reality, and the collective belief and value systems reflected in a consistent pattern of behaviors among participants’’ (Jassawalla & Sashittal, 2002) .
Baer and Frese (2003) state that “ climate can be conceptualized as a manifestation of culture and that culture can most accurately be understood as existing at a higher level of abstraction than climate.” (Baer & Frese, 2003). One of the conclusions of their research was that there was a positive relation between climate for initiative and firm performance, the firm’s ability to achieve goals and process innovation. Van de Voorde, Dorenbosch and Kroon (2007) reinforce this finding and contribute to this element stating that climate, or as they call it ‘empowered workplace’ is positively related to the creation of innovative capabilities and entails charismatic leadership, learning capability, autonomy in work, participation and variance in work. This confirms the necessity of an encouraging climate (and culture as a higher abstract level) within organizations. Terziovski (2007) summarizes a culture that is positively linked to innovation as a climate of creativity, willing to change, risk and failure tolerant and democratic.
Montalvo (2006) elaborates on the question what triggers change and innovation in organizations and focuses on the willingness to change of an organization in terms of behavior of its members. One of the conclusions of Montalvo contained a positive relation between willingness to change (engage innovation) and the attitudes towards innovation, social pressure and the perceived control on the innovation process. This conclusion emphasizes the importance of personal interests and beliefs of members in an organization and the chance of successful innovative behavior. In line with this finding it is thus of importance to create compatibility between beliefs, attitudes and actions of employees and the strategy, processes, visions and culture of the organization.
59 4.4 Conclusion
This section provided general information about innovation sciences and innovative capabilities divided into organizational building blocks. Within this research the term administrative innovation suites the scope of the content and can be seen as starting point of the search for organizational aspects with which the organizations ability to execute and implement prospective innovative policies can be improved.
Since the focus of this research is the internal organization, the 7s-model of Pascal, Peters & Waterman is suitable as a reference model for the subdivision of an organization into building blocks, namely: strategy, structure, systems, staff, style, skills and shared values. Within this model there is a distinction made between hard elements (strategy, systems and structure) and soft elements (staff, style, skills and shared values). The hard elements of an organization are tangible, can be described in a formal document or put in a scheme whereas the soft elements are less tangible and more difficult to change.
The first element of the model is strategy. A prospective strategy is assumed to have a positive influence on the innovativeness of the organization. This means that the organization continuously searches market opportunities and seeks manners to alter its services or adds services on a frequent base. This can be realized when the day-to-day decisions are made on the bases of a broad scope of information and by advanced techniques and systems.
Subsequently the structure can have great influence on the innovative capabilities of an organization. First, size has effect on this process. Large organizations have several scale advantages towards investment measures that smaller organizations do not possess because they face difficult tradeoffs with resources. Furthermore, the structural variables of organizational innovation can be divided into two constructs: organizational complexity and bureaucratic control. For administrative innovations, that involve for example change in goals, policies, strategies, structure, control systems and personnel, a mechanic structure is needed. This is reflected in low organizational complexity and high bureaucratic control.
The last element of the model that is considered as hard in the model is the system element. Knowledge management plays an important role in this element and is considered as the main focus point to analyze in order to facilitate innovativeness. A clear knowledge management system encompasses critical aspects as classification, inventorization, codification, storage and accessibility. Furthermore in this element, communication is seen as another important aspect that has influence on innovativeness. Horizontal (across functions) communication has a positive effect on the leveraging of innovation capabilities as vertical (across managerial levels) communication has a positive effect on the spreading and sharing of information between layers of the organization.
Skills can be divided into two different categories. First of all, skills with which the organization as a whole outperforms the rest of the similar organizations are important to stress out. Furthermore the
60 competences and capabilities of the individual members of the organization have effect on the innovativeness. Available technical and procedural knowledge, and awareness of available tools are key elements of this aspect. In addition, human creativity is seen as a great catalyst for organizational innovation creation and needs encouragement from the top of the organization. In combination with the absorptive capacity, which encompasses the recognition and application of new information into the organization, these two elements have a positive on innovativeness.
Closely associated, characteristics of the staff play a role in the innovativeness of an organization. First of all, the distribution of personnel has to be in balance throughout the whole organization in order to carry out all the necessary activities. Besides of this quantitative element it is important as well to guarantee the quality of the employees. Furthermore the way the organization offers tasks to its employees has an effect on the method of execution as well. Varied work, involvement and multifunctional functions have a positive effect on innovative behavior.
Prediction of innovation is related to the extent with which the managers are tolerant to the willingness to change in combination with organizational leadership throughout the whole organization. Two types of management styles that have a positive effect on organizational innovativeness are transformational and participative leadership. Transformational leadership encompasses a visionary manager that stimulates intellectual activities and is a role model for his employees. Participative leadership on the other hand implies delegating to and consulting of employees which hereafter can have influence on the decision-making process of the manager.
Within the element of shared values the focus lies on an innovation-supportive climate wherein a shared view on reality and collective beliefs have effect on the activities that employees perform. Furthermore, elements that reinforce this climate are charismatic leadership, learning capability, participation, stimulation of creativity, tolerance for risk and failure. The bottom line of this element can be summarized that it is of great importance to create compatibility between beliefs, attitudes and actions of employees and the strategy, processes, visions and culture of the organization.
61
62 5 Experiences of other municipalities
In this section there will be an elaboration on roadmaps that are used within two municipalities: Waalwijk and Apeldoorn. These roadmaps have two different angles of incidence and are produced by two different advisory companies. The aim of this section is to gain insight in the experiences these municipalities have had with the development and execution of the roadmaps and to discover how the approaches can be used according to the lessons learned.
5.1 Waalwijk: roadmap as a vision document
The municipality of Waalwijk commissioned BuildDesk in 2008 to develop a roadmap for becoming climate neutral. This part will elaborate (on basis of an interview with a policy employee of the municipality of Waalwijk) on the motives the municipality had for engaging an investigation by BuildDesk and the adoption of this policy advise into its own strategic policy planning. Subsequently some experiences are presented which the municipality ran into in the pre and post development stages of the roadmap concerning problems, processes and general visions of this roadmap. For closure, this part will present several points of interest which are mentioned by the municipality and are additions to the of roadmap BuildDesk to enhance the method of the roadmap.
The municipality of Waalwijk has a rich history concerning sustainable development and engaging in the development of a roadmap was a logic next step in the policy of Waalwijk. On general terms, the municipality has always had a positive mindset regarding sustainable development although the terms sustainability and sustainable energy development were mixed up regularly. Examples of themes that are carried out by the municipality are sustainable housing, generation of electricity at the garbage dump, using hillsides for electricity generation by PV-panels and wind energy. The trend is that the municipality wants to facilitate sustainable developments by the market with manpower from the municipality. For this, there is a certain labor capacity that is available at the city hall.
At governing level the affinity with sustainable development is visible in for example the granting of the BANS-status to the municipality and formulation of the sustainability balance by Telos. Although there is no formal cooperation with other municipalities in the region, there is an indirect link between surrounding municipalities in order to learn from each other and there exists informal collaboration with the municipality of Tilburg that serves as a model for the municipality of Waalwijk.
The direct motive to adopt the roadmap was an invitation by the municipality of Tilburg were the roadmap was presented and the format of the policy document became clear. After this presentation the municipality of Waalwijk decided to apply for an offer at BuildDesk. The main reason for adopting this particular roadmap was the enthusiasm that the municipality of Tilburg showed and the consideration that this roadmap could be a standard way of dealing with the environmental problem.
63 Speaking the same language as their model municipality, that is a leader in the region, was thus a pragmatic decisive reason considering that collaboration in field of development of energy policy is seen as crucial.
In the end the roadmap of BuilDesk was classified as superficial and the quick shallow calculation method characterized the total concept. The utility of the roadmap can be summarized eventually by the statement that the strategic vision of the roadmap was more important than the practical feasibility with which the roadmap could be carried out. In this way the roadmap can be used as a steering document with which a direction was established and the future decision-making processes can be influenced by it.
The feasibility failed as a result of the absence of several elements. First the calculation method lacked foundations of future development of technology and the accompanying consequences whereas they were mentioned in the roadmap for a period of three decades. Second, the organizational cooperation in favor of the roadmap was not a success. Internal workshops were not effective and the internal organization was not a subject of investigation with the result that the municipal identity was missing in the roadmap. And third, the implications for the immense behavioral change of the society that the roadmap had to initiate, were not being well-considered. The main reason for these shortcomings is considered to be the timeframe in which the roadmap had to be developed by BuildDesk.
One of the missing aspects of the roadmap was a planned review of the roadmap with an evaluation on the reached goals and chosen processes, and a possible alternation of the strategy concerning adjustments of the steps that had to be taken. Without this sort of evaluation mechanism it is difficult to monitor the achievements and see possible bottlenecks in a structured manner. A main question is if, at that time, the persons and organs (executive board and city council) in question did realize what consequences this type of policy document could have on the municipality regarding labor capacity and financial investment. For example, no shift was noticeable in the priorities the city council aimed for after the introduction of the roadmap.
For improvement, the municipality suggests several aspects that have to change within the organization or where should be reckoned with in the development of a new roadmap. First of all, a realistic assessment needs to be carried out about the capacity that is necessary to support the implementation of the roadmap over the total timeframe. A shortcoming on this aspect will result in an imbalance between organizational capacity and the professional relevancy concerning the content. This can be the responsibility of the coordinator that is entrusted with the theme sustainability in the municipality and has to contain both the regulation (organizational aspects) and content development of the roadmap. For this, the coordinator needs to have a well-defined task spectrum with the accompanying responsibilities, resources and authority to effectuate an efficient implementation of the roadmap.
64 Second, the integral approach between departments and the board is mentioned as one of the most important focus points in translating visions and desires into future policy. To tackle the problem that sustainable development is coordinated from one location (coordinator) and is not incorporated into the whole municipal organization it is important to use a decentralized approach. This has to result in a feeling of ownership by the employees and the drive to embrace the problem at every level and in every department. In fact, an alderman has to be interested in contributing to the problem in the same way as a civil servant so together they can cooperate with each other and be complementary on different levels. A key role is put aside for the department managers that have to integrate these levels vertically as well as horizontally.
5.2 Apeldoorn: roadmap as an integral program
The municipality of Apeldoorn was one of the first municipalities that implemented the roadmap that was developed by Builddesk. In 2007 the municipalities of Apeldoorn, Heerhugowaard and
Tilburg got delivered their roadmap to CO 2-neutrality based on the same concept and context. In 2010 however, the municipality of Apeldoorn decided to reassess this roadmap and on the basis of the findings of this study a new improved roadmap was created. Experiences with the old roadmap, creating a new approach and success factors in development and execution were discussed in an interview with the program manager that is responsible for the new roadmap. The findings of this interview are reflected below.
After the completion of the roadmap in 2007 it lasted three years before the roadmap was reassessed. As a result of the change of the city council and the appointment of a program manager concerned with energy neutrality the municipality found it necessary to evaluate the roadmap in order to inventory the achieved results with respect to the goals that were set during the development of the roadmap. The roadmap was considered to be too static in several ways. First, the approach of the roadmap, where a list of projects and measures was presented, was not flexible enough. From this list the municipality had to choose the desired track with the prescribed projects and measures to achieve (sub) goals without the possibility to vary this track in case of possible change of condition in the internal as well as external environment. Secondly, the integrality of the roadmap failed to a certain extent. This happened as a result of the lack of cooperation between the departments after the completion of the roadmap. Initially, the communication between the departments about the roadmap was initiated but a structural continuation failed. Subsequently, due to technological progress also this part had to be reassessed in order to continue with the latest sustainable technological possibilities and implications that they bring along. And finally, the municipality wanted to shift the role of itself from controlling and regulating into directing and facilitating.
The reassessment and development of the new roadmap was carried out in 2010 and was based on another method from another company. This was done by Ecofys and the focus was shifted from
65 CO 2-neutrality into energy neutrality. With this shift a clear distinction and a new direction in environmental policy making were made. Formally, the municipality worked with the term sustainable development in which all the themes that are associated with it were bundled. However, to make a well-defined roadmap for energy neutrality it is of great importance to set up the terminology in a clear manner in order for the employees to know where to find which theme of sustainable development. The new roadmap is formalized in a program and is led by an externaly hired program manager.
The new roadmap is positioned within the department of policy & program from where all programs of the section spatial development are carried out. The roadmap contains three central issues: build environment, firms and traffic & transport. Each of these contains main points (officially called spear points) with concrete projects on the shortlist and potential projects on a long list that are identified on bases of a recurrent decision-making process. An important characteristic of the program approach of this roadmap is that the framework wherein the work is being done and the goals that have to be met are formalized, while the manner how the goals can be reached is completely open. This leaves open the possibilities and space for initiatives from partners and tries to make connections, create synergy and coherence.
Coordination within the roadmap is a crucial point for a high success factor. The whole program is led by an overall program manager who has both the function of organizer and content developer in order to translate the roadmap into concrete projects. As well as the central issues, the responsibilities are divided into main points as well. The sub managers are responsible over these spear points and have to coordinate the execution of the measures in an efficient way in order to achieve the goals set in the program and have to justify themselves to the general program manager. In this way the coordination of the spear points and the synergy between them as well as the synergy between whole departments is secured which has a positive effect on the organizational incorporation of the central energy policy.
Besides this complete program approach the municipality suggests several aspects in order to improve the developments and execution of a roadmap. First, within this format it is important to appoint a suitable program manager that has the capability to organize on one side and the knowledge, experience and network in the business on the other side to keep up with the technological development. Practically this can be a program manager from outside the municipal organization that can bring along an objective view about the organizational capabilities and improvements that used elsewhere. Secondly, and coherent to the previous one, external knowledge is one of the most important elements in the field of sustainable development due to the rapid pace of technological improvements. However, the current national trend within governmental organizations contradicts this development as a result of budgetary cuts that every municipality has to carry through.
66 5.3 Conclusion
From the experiences of the municipalities of Waalwijk and Apeldoorn several conclusions can be deducted. First, the assumptions and findings about the initial roadmaps of BuildDesk as mentioned in the introduction of this master thesis were confirmed in the municipality of Waalwijk that commissioned BuildDesk to develop a roadmap in 2008. The first conclusion after completion of the roadmap was that the calculation method was shallow and that it characterized the rest of the roadmap that was classified as superficial. Therefore the roadmap eventually was only suitable as a strategic document whereby the practical feasibility was less important. Furthermore the collaboration during the development of the roadmap had a negative influence on the final product because of the lack of attention for the organizational implications and badly executed workshops.
Important points for improvement for the development of a next roadmap are summarized as follows. First, there needs to be a realistic assessment carried out about the capacity that is necessary to support the implementation of the roadmap over the whole timeframe. Furthermore an integral approach between departments and the board is essential for translating visions and desires into future policy. In this problem the managing directors can occupy an important key role.
The roadmap of Apeldoorn was one of the first of its kind made by BuildDesk. After three years this roadmap has been reassessed and replaced by a roadmap that was made by Ecofys. The old roadmap was considered not to be flexible enough what resulted in not sufficient possibilities to change the strategy in case of alterations of important internal or external conditions. In addition, the intended integrality of the roadmap failed due to an absent structural continuation of a suitable communication program between departments. And finally, the roadmap did not fit anymore into the altered vision of the municipality of Apeldoorn that shifted from controlling and regulating into directing and facilitating.
As well as the municipality of Waalwijk, the municipality of Apeldoorn brought up focus points that are considered important for the development of prospective roadmaps. First, the new roadmap is organized within a program structure that is led by an externally hired program manager and divided into three clear defined central issues that are subsequently led by sub program managers. This provides a clear structure of responsibilities. An important feature of program based roadmaps is that the goals are set but the manner to reach them are flexible and less hard defined which results in more flexibility. Another point of attention that is coherent with the previous is that external knowledge is an crucial element in the field of sustainable development because of its rapid changing character.
67
68 6 Assessment method
In this section there will be an elaboration on the method that will be used for the assessment of innovativeness in a municipal organization. After the elaboration on the municipal models, key actors and key processes, the division of organizational building blocks and the characteristics of innovative organizations classified in the 7s-model, the following method combines all the concepts together in an questionnaire that is usable for assessing a municipality.
The questionnaire is adapted for the situation in the municipality of Boxtel that concerns the development and implementation of the new roadmap. Therefore the questions in the following questionnaire are specified for the subject of energy neutrality.
Strategy
Subjects strategy : strategy forming, policy forming, agenda setting, strategic objectives
– What is the strategy of the municipality towards sustainable development and energy neutrality and in which way does this reflect on your function or department? – In what way is this strategy established and which individuals had influence on it? – Are there possibilities to adjust this strategy? – In what way are the main objectives of the strategic policy translated into sub objectives, which are applied in departments? – In what way local energy policy is being made and how can the decision-making process be described? – Are policy ambitions towards energy neutrality translated into multiple year plans within your field of interest? – For which subjects towards energy neutrality there is attention within your function or department? Are these subjects embedded in policy and strategy? – Does the current municipal budget contain sufficient financial space for execution of your subjects towards the strategy?
Structure
Subjects structure: structure of the municipality, organogram, functional relationships, departments & actors and (de)centralization
– What is the relationship between the mayor, aldermen, secretary, department managers and committee members towards sustainable (energy) development? – Can you give insight in the relations within the city council towards this subject? – Does the city council have a policy forming or controlling role? – Which advantages and disadvantages do exist in a flat organization structure? What results does this have on energy policy? – Which role does the executive board have and what are the effects on the departments? Does this also apply on policy towards the reduction of energy use and the generation of sustainable energy? (steering vs controlling) – To what extent do committees have influence on policy making (and in which process step / department)?
69 – Which conference structures do exist between departments in order to develop an integral execution of policy? – What influence does formal and informal contact have on the decision-making process of the actors? – Which advantages and disadvantages does (de)centralization have on the decision-making process towards energy policy? (powers, tasks and responsibilities) – Which organizational improvements are crucial in the future to realize the municipal policy regarding energy neutrality? – How can this realization being guaranteed from civil servant up to the executive board?
Systems
Subjects systems: development of knowledge, the spread of knowledge and knowledge management
– In which way does the municipality develop knowledge in the field of sustainability and energy neutrality in particular? – Which possibilities does the municipality offer its employees to develop knowledge in the field of energy neutrality? – Is knowledge development an obligatory of facultative activity for civil servants? – How does the knowledge spread itself within the municipality, in general terms and in terms of energy neutrality? – Is the reliability of spread knowledge being controlled? – What is the distribution of knowledge across departments? – How are certain actual subjects concerning sustainability and energy neutrality selected? – In which way does the municipality uses external knowledge? For example trainees or graduates and other knowledge institutions – To what extent does the municipality hire services, on project basis for example? – In what way does the municipality cooperate in knowledge networks?
Staff
Subjects staff: Demarcation fte’s towards fields of interest, roles, responsibilities
– How many employees within the municipality are engaged in the theme sustainability and energy neutrality in particular? – Which roles do they play in the municipality? – Who in the municipality feels responsible for these themes on governing level? – Who has the end responsibility? – Is there a particular synergy being created between departments by bundling the available knowledge?
70 Skills
Subjects skills: available and required knowledge, competences, attitude en behavior
– Is there sufficient knowledge present with you and other employees within the municipality in order to execute the municipal policy regarding energy neutrality? – Which technical knowledge is present at the departments in order to execute activities regarding sustainability? – Is there being experimented with technological developments within project of the municipality? – Do the employees have sufficient competences to execute this policy? – Is there enough space for the employee’s to bring up creative possibilities regarding energy neutrality? – Does the municipality serve as a model for its employees regarding sustainability and energy neutrality? – Which attitude do the employees have regarding energy neutrality?
Style (of management)
Subjects style: way of managing the organization, culture and resistance.
– In which way the administrative apparatus is being led by the hierarchal top (delegation). – In which way are the department managers being steered by their superiors? (instructions, evaluations, requests)How does this is being experienced (strong/weak points) – In which way do the department managers steer their departments and are there opinions that this has to be adjusted? – In which ways the style of managing can contribute to the stimulation of the execution of municipal policies towards energy neutrality?
Shared values
Subjects shared values: intrinsic values of the organization
– In which way shared values are being adopted in the structural/policy visions of the municipality? – Subsequently, how do the employees execute these values? – In which way can the municipal culture being described? – Which influence has this culture on the execution of the municipal policies? – To what extent the municipality plays a role model with the implementation of energy neutrality?
71
72 7 Case: municipality of Boxtel
This section will present the case that is carried out at the municipality of Boxtel where the results of the assessment will be used in the development of the roadmap to energy neutrality. First, a description of the municipality will be presented with general information that characterizes the municipality as a whole. Hereafter particular elements of the internal organization will be elaborated such as the formal organizational structure, the political distribution and sustainable ambitions that are translated into local policies. Subsequently, the results of the assessment will be presented by means of a SWOT-analysis and followed by measures that have to be taken in order to redesign the organization. The section will be concluded by a validation and an conclusion.
7.1 General description
The municipality of Boxtel is a middle sized municipality located in the province of Noord-Brabant and is situated between three major urban regions: Eindhoven, Tilburg and ‘s Hertogenbosch. Because of its central position between these cities, the municipality of Boxtel became a major traffic interchange. According to the Central Statistical Bureau the municipality accommodates nearly 30.300 inhabitants build up from 12.620 households.
Figure 13 depicts the subdivision of the municipality of Boxtel. The central main districts are Boxtel, Lennisheuvel and Liempde which surrounded by country sides where the industriousness and build environment is less concentrated.
In the field of sustainability the municipality is considered as a pioneer and in the past several projects, policies and initiatives within the municipality gained national attention and interest.
Figure 13 : The municipality of Boxtel subdivided in districts.
73 As mentioned before, the municipality of Boxtel is situated within the triangle Eindhoven, ‘s Hertogenbosch and Tilburg which, in the field of sustainable development, is called ‘Het Groene Woud’. This area is characterized by a concentration in nature reserves and agricultural scenery which form the green hart of the province. From this perspective the municipality of Boxtel has a rich history with sustainable development in general and the main focus point for the development of policies is finding the balance between economic, social and environmental aspects. This is formalized in the principle of the three P’s wherein all decisions that have to be made on political level need to assess elements of People (social aspects), Planet (environmental aspects) and Profit (economic aspects).
A particular project that is characteristic for the municipality of Boxtel is the center of knowledge called ‘De Kleine Aarde’ that was initiated in 1972 in order to investigate the possibilities to use local sustainable techniques in order to relieve the environment. The center developed projects that were related to energy reduction, food production, waste disposal and saving resources. Later on, the centre started to offer courses for the general public in the same domains to raise the consciousness of the general public. In the neighborhood of the center another characteristic project was started in 2004 called ‘In Goede Aarde’ wherein more than 400 houses were build according to high-end sustainable technology and contemporarily building methods. This project is characteristic for the municipality of Boxtel and considered frequently as a pioneer sustainable project because of the considerations and compromises that are made in the People, Planet and Profit approach to create such new housing development in such a natural environment. Some other sustainable practices are mentioned in the next section.
74 7.2 Organizational characteristics
In this section specific information will be given about several organizational characteristics of the municipality of Boxtel. First, a description will be given about the formal structure of the municipality and how the functions relate to each other. Then, there will be an elaboration on how the municipality formulates her ambition within the sustainable development and how this is reflected in formal plans. The figure below depicts a part of the organizational structure of the municipality of Boxtel. In section 3.2 there was an elaboration on the sorts of models that could be seen within municipal organizations. The municipality of Boxtel has the department model which consists of the departments: Spatial development, Living and environment, Public services, Central support, Civil affairs and welfare, and Social affairs. At the head of this administrative machinery is the municipal secretary. These are depicted in figure 14.
Figure 14: Organogram municipality of Boxtel 2010
The representatives of the population of the municipality of Boxtel are distributed over 23 seats within the council. Table 10 shows the seat distribution per political party for the governing period 2010-2014. These persons are responsible for the determination of the visions and policies that the municipal has to execute. Herein they have the task to control the executive board and to determine the frameworks for prospective policies.
Table 10: Seat distribution city council
Party Seats Balans 5 Combinatie 95 4 PvdA/GroenLinks 3 Democratische partij Boxtel/Liempde 3 CDA 2
SP 2 D66 2
Boxtels Belang 1
75 The daily government of the municipality is done by the mayor and the aldermen. Together they are called the executive board and are held responsible for the preparation for and the execution of the decisions that are being made in the city council.
Within the executive board there exists a distribution of the fields of interest and portfolio where the aldermen and the mayor focus their attention on. Figure 15 shows this distribution for the four aldermen within the municipality of Boxtel. Hereby has to be mentioned that the mayor has fields of interest as well. In Boxtel the mayor is responsible for: general government, public order and safety, and legal matters.
City council
Mayor
Mayor and executive board Alderman Alderman Alderman Spatial Environment, Welfare, Social Alderman Finance development & Sustainability& affairs& Labor & Public spaces Traffic Public housing market policy
Figure 15: Distribution of subjects of the Aldermen in Boxtel
It is clearly visible that the theme sustainability is so important for the municipality of Boxtel that it has made sustainability a separate focus point in policy development, and made an alderman responsible to cover this theme in his daily work. This is not an obvious choice that every municipality makes and therefore justifies that the municipality of Boxtel aims at development and execution of sustainable development in a leading manner.
7.3 Sustainable development
On policy level there are several documents with which a municipality can formalize its mission, strategy, ambitions and plans for the future and can propagate it to the public. The characteristics of these formal pieces depend on the level on which they are being made and the purpose that they serve. The time span of the documents and the level of detail are examples of these characteristics.
First, on the highest level the mission of a municipality over a long period is described in a structural vision. The municipality of Boxtel has formulated a structural vision in 2009 with the name: “Boxtel 2020, duurzaam en dynamisch centrum in het Groene Woud .” (KplusV, 2009). In this document main lines and focus points are described on an abstract level and it contains thus the direction of the municipal development until 2020. This direction is phrased by means of six ambitions:
76 - Boxtel stays ahead with sustainability - Boxtel develops tourism and recreation to a full branch of industry; - Boxtel strengthens its position as an employment municipality; - Boxtel works on a strong center; - Boxtel is also in 2020 a fine municipality to live in; - Boxtel has a modern government.
Beside this structural vision there exists a policy plan which is formulated every time the city council is being elected. The content of this policy plan is applicable for the time of four years and is dependent on the parties that are represented in the council. The fact that the structural vision is base for policies reflects the content of a policy plan of the council that has to come to the execution of this vision. This can also be seen in the focus points of such a policy plan and returns as a base for the executive board.
With regard to the theme sustainability the municipality of Boxtel has formulated a policy plan which is a part of the central decision-making process of the current organization. The so called ‘Note Duurzame Ontwikkeling’ has the “People-Planet-Profit” principle that was already mentioned earlier to guarantee a balance between economic, social and environmental aspects. A part of the goal formulation of this policy plan is formulated as follows:
“Met deze nota wil het College van Burgemeester en Wethouders van Boxtel, als gemeente een bijdrage leveren aan een wereld waarin de mens in voldoende mate kan voorzien in zijn eigen levensonderhoud met respect voor anderen en zijn natuurlijke leefomgeving. De bijdrage die Boxtel wil leveren betreft dus een wezenlijke verbetering in leefomgeving, in begrip en in balans tussen verschillende mensengroepen onderling, mens en natuur, mens en bedrijf én bedrijf en natuur. Boxtel is zoekende naar het maximale wat ze binnen haar eigen mogelijkheden kan doen en wil dit ook realiseren .” (Gemeente Boxtel, 2008)
It is clear that the goals of this policy plans have a strong link with the principles of the Brundtland report. By means of this document, the municipality declares the ambition to ensure the development of sustainability in the municipality in this current time as well as in the future. In table 11 several examples with regard to the actual policies are showed such as covenants, governmental initiatives, projects and subsidies.
The key document regarding the ambitions that are mentioned in the structural vision is the ‘ Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling ’ in which the ambitions regarding sustainability are translated into concrete plans. The document is also known as the 100-steps plan in which all the themes of sustainability are covered with 100 actions and the content thus varies to a large extent. The subjects of the actions are divided in for example sustainable build environment, natural environment and organizational sustainability.
77 Table 11: Examples of sustainable initiatives conducted by the municipality of Boxtel
Covenants Governmental initiatives
- Intention declaration ‘ Duurzame - ‘Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling ’ Driehoek ’ - Regional biomass power plant “Timber- - Covenant ‘ Energiebesparing bestaande project ” bouw ’ - PV-panels City Hall - Governing coventant North East Brabant - Using rest warmth Rabobank - Covenant St. Joseph - New mobility plan - ‘Het Groene Woud’ - Public lighting (dimmed lighting)
Example projects Subsidies
- In Goede Aarde (300 houses) - Energy saving lower incomes ‘ Tender ’ - Princenlant (220 houses) - Stimulation local climate initiatives - Sparrenlaene (70 houses) - ‘Vlagheidefonds ’ - ‘Brabant Bespaart ’ - Governmental subsidy
In order to execute the actions that are specified in the document, each action is coupled to the department that is responsible for executing it together with the desired time span and the determined financial resources in order to implement it. The whole ‘ Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling ’ is formulated in cooperation with all the departments and is therefore applicable for the municipality as a whole. How the actions are further implemented in departmental plans is the responsibility of the department manager.
7.4 Assessment
In this section the assessment of the presented model of section 6 will be elaborated as a case study for the municipality of Boxtel. In particular, this model is used to investigate the organizational implications of the prospective roadmap as described in the first part of this thesis. The following paragraphs will contain a short process description as well as the elaboration of the found results of the assessment.
In order to collect data from the municipality as a whole it was important to invite employees from all the levels in the organization for the assessment. Table 12 depicts the participating population of the internal interviews and shows the distribution between the different levels. This distribution is made between a governing level, the managerial level, the level of advisory committees and the level of execution. Due to refusals and lack of responses the list below does not match the proposed participation list which contained three more participants.
78
Table 12: Interview population within the municipality of Boxtel.
Executive Board Department managers Committee members Civil servants F. van Beers ( Mayor) F. Fastenau W. van Erp J. van der Last W. van der Zanden A. Langenhoff F. de Man R. Wirtz P. van de Wiel G. Schönfeld A. van den Einden J. Fraanje (Secretary) A. van Aert M. Snellen W. van de Langeberg
This group of participants was subjected to an interview with the questions that can be seen in appendix C. These conversations were the main input for the analysis of the current organizational characteristics with respect to sustainable development and policy regarding energy neutrality in particular. Subsequently, this input was used to formulate recommendations regarding the practices in the municipality in several dimensions as can be seen in the next section.
Before the presentation of the redesign in section 7.5, there will be a short elaboration on the most important findings of the assessment below.
Table 13: SWOT-analysis municipality of Boxtel
Strenghts Weaknesses
- Strategic vision as starting point for - No concrete integral implementation of ambitions the NDO in department plans - ‘Nota duurzame ontwikkeling’ - Knowledge management within the - Performance of council and board organization - Flat organizational structure - Synergy between departments - Open culture - Role and authority of sustainability coordinator
Opportunities Threats
- External corporation - Law of the handicap of a head start ‘Het nieuwe werken’ Economic measures - - - Four yearly change of council
Table 13 shows a SWOT-analysis of the findings that were considered as most important during the interviews with the participants. In this table the results of the conversations are translated into strong elements, weak elements, opportunities and threats that are applicable for the municipality. Each of these elements will be covered in short below.
79
7.4.1 Strengths
One of the most important strong points of the municipality that was mentioned almost in every interview was the history of sustainable development of the municipality. Especially the last two governing periods showed a high level of sustainable development due to an inspiring and motivated alderman that put a high priority on sustainability. Besides this personal achievement the municipality developed a rich history by formalizing sustainable development in several policy plans wherein the theme maintains a high priority through the years. Concretely this means that sustainability returns as an important decision-making element at political level in for example the strategic visions, structural visions, the four-yearly policy plans and budget plans. Therefore it is considered as a point of departure in formulating all of the ambitions that the municipality has set, sets and will set in the future. The example of the structural vision that is elaborated in section 7.3 shows how the theme is assimilated into a formal policy plan and shows as well that sustainability hold a high position in the priorities of the ambitions.
A concrete example of a policy plan that characterizes the interest in sustainable development by the municipality of Boxtel and shows the broad interest that the municipality has according to its ‘People, Planet and profit principle’ is the ‘Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling’ , as mentioned in section 7.3 . This plan is widely known, not only by employees of the City Hall but by inhabitants of the municipality as well. This plan, which contains one hundred actions in a broad pallet of subjects, is therefore seen as the most important formal plan within the municipality that has to translate the ambitions set in the structural and strategic vision into concrete steps in order to contribute to the desired transition. This observation is applicable to all the different levels in which the interviews have been taken. On political level this document is used as justification for the direction of the prospective policies and the sustainable range of thoughts that the municipality propagates. Besides the alderman that has the responsibility for this field of subject, the other members of the executive board regard this document as the core document wherein the demarcation of projects and resources is formulated and that will be executed by the administrative machinery. On managerial level this document is leading in combination with the strategic vision and the city council policy plan which have consequences on the formulation of the departmental plans. In general, the plan is considered as a broad set up and designed initiative which has been formulated with a big consensus of the whole municipal organization.
As mentioned above, the executive board considers sustainable development as one of the main points that has characterized the municipality for at least the last two governing periods. This is confirmed by other levels in the organization and together with the vision on the priority-setting of the city council these two organs have a positive influence on the political development regarding sustainable energy policy according to the interviews. Concrete this means that on governing level the aldermen always keep in mind the consideration they have to make between the three P’s of the
80 People-Planet-Profit concept and act in line of this principle together with the realistic goals and the expected available resources. This process is also reflected in the way the city council operates. Of course it is of importance which party is represented in the coalition and which perspectives these parties aim for. In the municipality of Boxtel the coalition during this research consisted of Balans, Combinatie ’95, Democratische partij Boxtel-Liempde and PvdA/GroenLinks which possess 16 of the 23 seats in the city council and form together the coalition of the municipality. From all the parties PvdA/GroenLinks and SP are considered as parties where this theme is placed high on the agenda setting even though the city council agreed on the policy plan as described above, thus the intention of the city council as a whole is in favor of sustainable development, although not yet on sustainable energy policy in particular.
The following point that returned in many conversations is the open culture that is present at the municipality of Boxtel. In every level of the organization this point is mentioned as one that is in favor of the decision-making process and thus a specific aspect of the organization to keep in mind. The open culture is being mentioned in several ways. First, the open culture is characterized by the high level of informal contact that is present in the municipal organization. This informal contact is of high value to all the participants of the interviews because it shows that the culture in the municipal organization stimulates the exchange of information in a barrier free manner. Coherent with this, the communication between the official layers in the organization is considered as positive as well. Where in bigger municipalities it is common and desirable that the communication is characterized as ‘line communication’ whereby hierarchy has to be obeyed, a smaller municipality as Boxtel is not per se bound to this principle. The fact that civil servants easily can have access to the involved alderman and, in opposite direction, aldermen can directly ask the opinion of civil servants for example is considered as a positive element that contributes to the open culture of the municipality. Besides these internal aspects of an open culture, the municipality of Boxtel reserves opportunities for the inhabitants to participate in the decision-making process. So called ‘Policy meetings’, where the executive board is involved, and ‘Talk with the city council’, where inhabitants can share their opinion in city council meetings, are examples of possibilities in which the municipality gives inhabitants the opportunity to involve themselves in the decision-making process. A concept that is used in the municipality of Boxtel is the so called participation ladder. This ladder contains forms of participation that offered to the inhabitants and consists of the following steps:
- Co-knowing - Co-thinking - Co-talking - Co-working - Co-deciding
In relation with the open culture another characteristic of the organization is frequently being mentioned as a strength of the municipality. The municipal organization consists of 220 fulltime- equivalent (fte) and is considered as a middle sized municipality. An advantage of these sorts of municipalities is that the hierarchal system is often build up in a flat way what means that there are
81 relatively a few layers to manage in comparison with bigger municipalities. In the municipality of Boxtel this characteristic reflects several advantages such as short communication lines between political levels and executive levels. For example, civil servants of the administrative machinery can easily make contact with the persons of the executive board and vice versa. Together with the high level of informal contact this has a positive effect on the decision-making process.
7.4.2 Weaknesses
Besides the strengths of the municipality, the interviews revealed negative points of the organization as well. In the next paragraphs the most important weaknesses of the organization will be elaborated as they appeared during the conversations.
Notwithstanding that the ‘Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling ’ is considered as a very important policy plan in the municipality, there is a major issue that comes up in the research and is a serious point that has to be kept in mind during further development and execution of the policy plan. A general finding in this is the way in which the ‘Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling’ is set up, formulated and executed. There is no consensus about the integral approach with which the policy plan was intentionally designed for. For so far the persons in question were involved in the early stages of the plan, they criticized on several aspects of the plan that subvert the integrality of the plan. The most important fact is that the projects of the plan are not translated into the plans of all departments although the ‘Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling’ contains activities that have effect on all of them. The only departments that have integrated the projects of the policy plan in their departmental plan are Public services and Living & environment. The reason for this development is given by the personal opinions that the policy plan was not designed in cooperation with the concerned department in a sufficient way in order to comply with everybody’s wishes.
Coherent to the previous point, the synergy between the departments is absent in order to qualify the organization as a whole with respect to sustainable development and sustainable energy policy in particular. Because there is a difference about the beliefs of sustainable development in several aspects, within and outside of the municipal organization, and there seems not to be sufficient awareness about operational proceedings between departments the so called synergy between departments is considered to be missing, or at least insufficiently present, within theme of sustainable development and energy policy in particular. One reason for this weakness is that the opinion exists that not every department has to be involved to the same extent in activities that are related to sustainable development. Therefore it is assumed that the departments of Living & Environment, Public services and Spatial development have a higher cut in the activities of sustainable development and energy issues than for example Civil affairs & Welfare and Social affairs although all the departments together can contribute to a high extent in this matter, both technically and socially.
82 The aspect of knowledge that is mentioned here above is another element that is considered as a weakness of the organization. The main point here is that there lies a lot of responsibility with the involved civil servants themselves. This concerns knowledge accumulation, distribution and usage in order to execute the activities that belong to the involved function. In general, the management plays a passive role in this and thrusts on the responsibility and professional attitude of the employees. The employees themselves carry out activities in order to keep their knowledge on a sufficient level and have the initiative for further spreading of this newly accumulated information through the rest of the organization. A disadvantage of this large decentralized responsibility is that there is a lack of overview of the performed activities and the actual knowledge with all the actors in the organization. This is also a major conclusion of the research that can be used for further improvements. On personal level this can enhance the consciousness of the knowledge that is available amongst colleagues within a department. On departmental level this can improve the balance and quality of accumulation and spreading of the knowledge that can be supervised by the department manager. And finally, inter-departmental exchange of knowledge is a point that has to be improved as well. On lower level the consciousness about activities related to sustainable development is not spread sufficiently among the employees in different departments and a consequence is that possible cooperation in and coordination of projects cannot benefit from mutual sharing of available knowledge.
Finally, the function that belongs to the sustainability coordinator is, in general, categorized as a weakness of the municipal organization at the moment. The fact that in a municipality of this size a special function is created that is concerned with formulating, framing and executing activities that are related to sustainability show that the municipality is seriously involved in this field of interest. Nevertheless, research showed that on several elements the function of sustainability coordinator shows opportunities for improvement.
First, the distribution of capacity within the municipal organization of Boxtel is considered as insufficient with regard to the activities that the coordinator has to perform. Concretely, this means that in the whole organization one person is officially appointed to execute activities concerning, for example, the ‘Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling’ and other projects, activities that are related to sustainable development. This official coordinator is in service for half a week and this is equivalent to 0,5 fte. He is assisted by a civil servant on the same department which is allowed to support for the amount of eight hours per week, equal to 0,2 fte. Furthermore an external advisor is appointed to assist the activities from an outside perspective and is working on a basis of four hours a week which is equivalent to 0,1 fte. All together, the official distribution is thus 0,8 fte. In general, the opinion is that this distribution is not sufficient to cover the organizational aspects as well as the aspects concerning the content of sustainable development and sustainable energy policy in particular.
Besides the time factor, there is an additional element that needs attention in the future. The approach that is used by the sustainability coordinator is considered as not the most effective one in
83 order to manage the activities in the best way. First of all this is a result of the distribution of time that is described above. Because of this, the activities of the coordinator are more organizational instead of content relevant which is considered as a development that needs consideration because of the lack of time that the coordinator has to get deeper into the content relevant activities.
The last element related to the coordinator is the role that he plays in the whole organization. The formal place of the sustainability coordinator is deployed within the department of Living & environment. However this function does exist for a long time within the municipal organization, nowadays there raise questions about the approach and the functional possibilities with which the activities are being done. As a result for example, when the association is being made between sustainable development and the place in the organization that the coordinator possesses, other departments seem to think that the emphasis of sustainable development has to lie within Living & environment which results in a decrease in attention for this them within the own department.
7.4.3 Opportunities
Besides the strengths and weaknesses that are mentioned above, there are opportunities for and threats towards the municipal organization of Boxtel as well. These kinds of characteristics are more external oriented but will be described interconnected to the internal municipal organization.
The first opportunity for the municipality of Boxtel is the increase of external collaboration in general. The current connections of the municipality with external participants is present to a sufficient extent however there are many opportunities available for the municipality to create new connections or to invest in broader or heavier collaborations with existing partners.
As can be seen in table 11 (section 7.3) the ‘Duurzame driehoek’ is an example of an agreement wherein the municipality of Boxtel participates in and is seen as an opportunity for the municipality to use this network in favor of several aspects. This format consists of a collaboration of sixteen municipalities within the triangle Eindhoven-Tilburg-‘s Hertogenbosch, two water boards and the province of North-Brabant with the aim to increase the sustainable development in the region and to raise awareness and commitment herein with governors, civil servants, aldermen, citizens, organizations and firms in the region. If this collaboration method is used in a sophisticated manner the actors in the network can benefit from each other in several ways. Advantages can for example arise by means of scale opportunities wherein investments can be spread between all, or only several, municipalities. With the argument that the largest barrier to initiate most sustainable programs are the initial efforts (financial as well as labor) that have to be made, the collaboration can reduce this and increase the success rate as well.
On the other, hand such collaboration can not only be interesting when financial or manpower have to be shared, but it is a convenient way of sharing information as well. With an active and broad
84 network this development can be stimulated in several fields, from technical information to information about specific proceedings, procedures and policy implications.
Coherent with this, the municipality of Boxtel can make use of other organizations that are not a part of the “Duurzame driehoek” but can contribute to the development of knowledge in the municipality. For example, collaboration with external advisement agencies can bring significant benefits resulting in a more efficient and effective approach concerning concrete innovative technological solutions or assisting in legal and procedural activities. Besides this collaboration with private firms there are other possibilities to work together with public organizations, for example knowledge institutes such as universities or academies. A structural approach throughout the whole municipal organization towards the appointment and implementation of such collaborations can secure relative cheap labor and research combined with state of the art knowledge and opinions.
A new phenomenon that set in within organizational perspectives, both in private and public organizations, is called “Het Nieuwe Werken”. This concept is based on new forms of performing the daily duties combined with the possibilities that new forms of technology have to offer. This together, has to stimulate flexibility of the employees and, in the end, raise the productivity of the organization as well as the positive experience that the employees gain from what these changes take along. In general, “Het Nieuwe Werken” entails breaking through and replacing or radically altering establishments and can be used to implement methods, operating procedures and processes which, under the old culture, had a low success rate if introduced on a stand-alone basis. With the new concept it appears to be possible to implement a package of renewing routines, working methods, procedures, processes as well as less hard technical aspects such as organizational culture, beliefs and habits. In relation with sustainable energy policy this can be used as a natural moment in the implementation stage in order to change the preceding elements in favor of the development of sustainable energy policy.
7.4.4 Threats
One of the most recurring opinions about the approach that the municipality of Boxtel has within the field of sustainability is that the attitude it has now can threaten the prospective developments. The current situation of the municipality, compared to the efforts and results of other equal municipalities, is often characterized as a phenomenon that is called “The law of the handicap of a head start” (Wet van de remmende voorsprong). This means that leadership on a certain field eventually can cause fewer stimuli to keep searching for new improvements and progress opportunities in order to hold that lead. As a result, other actors that did not had the lead but invested in the development can surpass the position at a certain time and take over leadership.
In the case of the municipality of Boxtel this means that there is a threat regarding the approach the municipality has towards sustainable development and the way it will approach it in the future. With
85 the efforts it has made in the past, the municipality gained a lot of positive attention and credit that since then is being used as reference material. However the strategy and beliefs aren’t altered that much from past and formal policy plans show a high priority for sustainable development, several other municipalities caught up and eventually did better than Boxtel. Table 2 in section 1.6 stresses out this process which is depicts as a decline in the rankings of the so called “Lokale Duurzaamheidsmeter”.
Another development that can have effect is the package of economic measures that have to be carried out through all public organs of the government. From the national government down the line to municipalities, every governmental organ has an own target of economic cuts that have to be realized. With these facts, the municipalities are responsible for their own execution of the economic cuts and determine by themselves how they will reach their targets. As mentioned before in section 7.3, the municipality of Boxtel uses the ‘Triple P’-concept in all their decision-making processes. Inevitably there has to be noticed that, assuming this concept, there can arise a pitfall. Since there has to be a balance between People, Planet and Profit (or social, environmental and economic aspects) and cuts have to be made in the economic segments, this can mean that priorities can shift in order to preserve the balance, but with less investment this can jeopardize sustainable development.
A consequence of the Dutch democratic political system is that the representatives of the people are being elected on a regular basis. In a municipality this means that the configuration of the city council as well as the executive board (with the exception of the secretary and mayor) are subjected to change every four years. With the different agendas that the political parties have and the coalition creation after the elections, it can be unsure which themes will be considered as important in the prospective political term. As a result, and in a worst case scenario, developments in certain domains can be jeopardized when the political opinions of two successive coalitions differ.
86 7.5 Redesign
After the description of the findings in the previous section, this section will present concrete recommendations for the municipality of Boxtel. After the analysis and during the formulation of the improvements it became clear that the recommendations could be categorized in five themes. The recurring distribution of the improvements mentioned in the interviews could be classified in the following themes: strategy, management, creating awareness, knowledge management and coordination. As a result, the recommendations that are mentioned below have the same subdivision. Each of the parts will start with a general description and will contain specific recommendations at the end.
7.5.1 Strategy
Within the organization of the municipality of Boxtel there is the need to recalibrate the term sustainability. As a result of the long lasting commitment of the previous alderman, that was responsible for the field of sustainability, this aspect turned up in a broad varied way within the decision-making process of the municipality. However, due to the determined attitude of that alderman the general opinion about the term and the application of the beliefs is being divided. The term became dusty and the charge which comes with it could have a hindering effect on persons and departments.
The term sustainability consists of numerous subjects that can be related to it. For the interest of the diversity and effectiveness it is important to make clear within the decision-making process which aspect of sustainability it will account for. Also, the focus needs to be shifted towards the development of active energy policy with definite and obvious projects and activities wherein it is clear how they contribute to the different elements of sustainable energy policy. Technical aspects as well as non-technical aspects have to be reckoned with to ensure the social conditions of these activities. This can stimulate the synergy between departments that do the technical implementations and the departments that are able to facilitate the activities on the social level.
By making formal agreements with respect to the format of policy documents, awareness can be raised and a constant attention for sustainability can be secured. For this a section “Sustainability” could be added to all formal policy plans as a starting point. A result of this implementation the feedback within the policy plan cycle (strategic vision, policy plan, budget plan, departmental plans) could be more coherent and therefor easier to work with.
87 Specific measures:
• Recalibrate the term “Sustainability” with respect to energy policy. As this is an emerging policy field, only a few people in the organization are concretely working with it. • Include a sustainability section in all formal documents. • Approach sustainable development as a program and formalize it in the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling”. • Discuss the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling” with all the departments after all and appoint concrete projects. • Review and adjust the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling” on a two year base. • The follow-up of the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling” needs to be developed more integral, but also need concrete formulated budgets, labor hours and responsibilities. • Phase the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling” and clearly formulate goals. Let those confirm by the city council. • Create clear linkages in formal documents involving sustainable development: coupling and tuning of strategic vision, city council policy plan, budget plan and departmental plans. • Formulate an unambiguous position by city council, executive board and management towards energy policy. • City council should be the leading organ in this. • Set up a taskforce sustainability with dedicated people in the organization • Involve council committees and advisory committees in an early stage of decision-making in order to create support • Decide to what extent ad hoc decisions are being executed (this has effect on the financial, time-framed and political consequences) • Leave possibilities open in order to adjust the plans when needed. • Create a clear cross-calculation of policy plans with respect to the financial elements and the eventual formulation in the budget plan. • Create constructions together with private parties in order to, for example, reduce pay-back time of technical installations for house owners which make investments more attractive. • Create structural financial reserves (in combination with for example a revolving fund)
7.5.2 Management
Since the management team is an important organ within an organization this is a suitable place to operate from. The management meeting as performed in the municipality of Boxtel needs to have a more important role in the coordination and tuning of energy policy within all departments. From here the policy set in for example the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling” can be diffused throughout the whole organization. Subsequently, the transition can be made in for example concrete knowledge management and relations between departments can be formulated involving sustainable energy policy.
88 Furthermore the department managers play an important role in the translation of political formulated ambitions and the eventual execution of concrete activities of the civil servants. The role the mangers have to fulfill is on the one hand human resource management but on the other hand a more steering in the direction of sustainable development. Besides only being a people manager, the department managers can have influence on the methods and procedures in their own departments and can take the initiative to initiate sustainable development in by their own workers in their own department. The attitude towards sustainable development of the involving department managers is decisive in this case.
Specific measures:
• Create linkages between departments and make clear that all the departments have to work together and are dependent of each other. • Management meetings need to have a more important role in the coordination and tuning of energy policy within all departments. • Search and appoint external knowledge if the capacity and/or knowledge level is not available in the municipal organization. • Stimulate persons under the laborers (as instigators) that have good contact with the executive board and management. • Translate the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling” in a concrete way in all of the departmental plans on such a way that the responsibilities are defined clear to everyone. • Let the “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling” sign by all departments as well as elaborate the implications that this has on the particular department. • The municipal secretary needs to take a supportive position about energy policy within his task as mediator between executive board and administrative machinery. • Use the collegial executive board as an unambiguous block that supports the implementation of sustainable energy both towards both the city council as towards the administrative machinery. • The department managers have to lay more responsibilities by civil servants themselves. This needs a clear feedback mechanism.
7.5.3 Awareness
One of the critical factors is the creation of awareness that is necessary in order to make people act. The municipality of Boxtel has to stimulate this awareness creation inside the organization as well as outside of the organization where the inhabitants of the municipality have to be reached. To realize this, an awareness program can be initiated whereby the municipality has to decide what it wants to propagate towards the public. Supported by a communication program, wherein the municipality clearly formulates what information it wants to send out, this can raise the awareness of the inhabitants of Boxtel.
89 Before this can be done it is important to reflect the internal view of the organization, which means that before the communication towards the general public is being carried out the internal awareness needs to be assessed. Subsequently, the message that the municipality wants to spread has to be generally accepted by the internal actors of the municipal organization which means that all of the employees have to support the opinion, values and strategy of the municipality towards sustainable energy policy and have to act in line with it.
Specific measures:
• Invest in awareness raising activities inside and outside the organization (create an awareness program). • Internally this could be a starting point for the development of a new “Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling”. Externally, a desk function could be one of the possibilities to start with. • Lay contacts (and stimulate) with actors that can contribute in large extent to the improvement of the existing building stock. • Giving self the right example (internally and externally). Little aspects (turning the lights off) are of equal importance as major projects (PV panels on the roof). • Recalibrate the term sustainability within the organization. • Create a communication plan: Internal adaptation and tuning in order to propagate an unambiguous message externally. Involve citizens in setting the priorities of projects that have impact on energy policy.
7.5.4 Knowledge
To execute the daily tasks it is obvious that the knowledge level of the employees needs to be on a sufficient level. From the managements perspective there is a lack of overview of the knowledge systems in the departments. In order to monitor and, in case of necessity, adjust the methods that are used now a central knowledge management system has to be formulated. With this system it has to become easier to follow all knowledge related flows throughout the departments and eventually throw-out the whole organization. By creating this system it also will become easier to share information between departments which will benefit the mutual relations between departments.
On the other hand the municipality hires knowledge from outside the municipal organization. This has advantages as well as disadvantages. For sustainable development external knowledge is essential because it is up to date since private parties, in general, appear to develop this knowledge on a higher pace then public organizations. For this reason it is reasonable to keep hiring external advisement bureaus. Yet, disadvantages of external knowledge are that they are expensive and the knowledge is, in general, not embedded in the organization. For this, the municipality of Boxtel needs to consider how it wants to use external knowledge and what role this plays in the whole organization.
90 Specific measures:
• Introduce a knowledge management program: inventory where, in which quantity and what precise knowledge is present within the field of (sustainable) energy. • Examine the central knowledge development and expend with concern wide supported themes involving energy • Complement knowledge of the daily duties on a decentral manner. • Fit the educational budget to the needs. • Consider the way extern knowledge is being hired compared to the possibilities to internally develop this knowledge. • Keep track of the development of knowledge and stimulate diffusion. • Formulate/tighten up function requirements for civil servants of key positions.
7.5.5 Coordination
In an ideal situation it should not be necessary to appoint one person that has the responsibility for the execution of sustainable policy. The municipality wants to propagate an united and unambiguous message to its employees and inhabitants. However from the point of stimulating, encouraging and control it is desirable to have a person within the organizational network with a strong position and the ability to initiate activities. Since the municipality of Boxtel has the possibility of reassessing this position, it is of importance that the decisions concerning the formal tasks, responsibilities and the authority of this person are well considered.
Specific measures:
• Formulation of activities and position of the coordinator sustainability. • Make a decision from where this person operates (in a department or from a facility position) • Formulate activities (hours included), responsibilities and authority with the appointment of the coordinator. Monitor the balance between content activities and organizational activities. • Create a clear feedback mechanism for the responsibilities that are given to different actors
91 7.6 Validation
This section will provide a validation on the prescribed measures which were presented in the previous section. The list of improvements is proposed to a panel of representatives in the municipality of Boxtel as can be seen in appendix C. This section will continue with the elaboration of the findings per category were general remarks are documented. The validation interviews were being held with three employees within the municipality of Boxtel: the municipal secretary, the manager of the department Living & environment, and a civil servant responsible for the themes within sustainable development. As a result of the small sample and the interview framework with open questions, which led to diverse answers, the next sections are summaries of important remarks that were mentioned during these conversations.
Strategy
The first general remark about the strategic approach in the future is the positive attitude towards a new method to develop and execute policy. Several aspects of the ‘program’ approach are considered as desirable in order to create and execute effective energy policy for the future and the goals that have to be met then. Therefore this approach has to be implemented in the methodology that the municipality uses however there is a restriction on the applicability because of the size of the municipality. The program approach is often used in larger scaled organizations and, if applied in smaller scaled organizations, only elements of the approach are usable because there is no possibility to implement the whole program structure.
The second strategic element that was supported during the discussion is the way prospective goals are being described and documented in policy plans and the accompanying execution plans. A concrete improvement in for example (a new) NDO is the description of a collective goal wherein everybody, every department and every other municipal organ can identify himself with which results in a better commitment of these actors. This resulting in more efficiency and effectiveness. A concrete proposition to reach this collective goal is collaboration between all the concerned actors in all stages of development. Particular it is important to involve all the actors in the initial stage of the creation of these sorts of policy plans or, if already in use, reconsider to reassess the current policy.
Furthermore the role of the city council raised up questions. The general opinion about the activities of the council is that in the initial stage the council has to be engaged in the setting of the general goals and framework from the strategic point of view. From then, the execution of those ambitions has to be laid down on a level as low as possible. Subsequently, the council has to adopt a controlling role after this wherein it monitors the progress of the achievement of goals.
92 Management
The first point that was undisputed and general accepted for improvement was the fact that long term policy on sustainable development and sustainable energy policy in particular, was not processed into departmental plans on a uniform manner. Although the NDO was set up with the thought that every department was affected with the measures that were formulated in it can be elaborated better. It is the task of the management to straighten out the methodologies throughout the departments and clarify what effect the measures have on the involved department.
As a result of the intended implementation of ‘ Het nieuwe werken’ the municipal organization is expecting some changes in the human resource management throughout the whole organization. As result of these changes there will be alterations in job descriptions which will get more general, in working methods that have to increase integrality and in approaches that have to stimulate working beyond the borders of the own department. All these changes will have effect in the new situation on the way the managers approach the employees and vice versa.
Furthermore, one of the interesting developments within the managerial field is the introduction of the personal work plans wherein several proposed improvements of the previous section can be implemented in. In this new method a manager can make more detailed arrangements with its employees and keep track of the made progress on a regular basis. This has also effect on the responsibilities that are given and the several other aspects that will be elaborated later on in this section.
Awareness
The initiative to initiate an awareness program is evaluated as a positive aspect of the proposed measures. In combination with a communication program this covers the intended measures of the previous section. During the conversations it became clear that it will be necessary to execute an awareness program in the internal organization before the external program can be executed. The reason is that it will be of great importance to construct one collective belief in the municipal organization with regard to the development and execution of sustainable energy policy before propagating it to its inhabitants.
A consequence of the previous point is that before an internal awareness program can be set up, the term sustainability has to be reassessed within the organization. Without this reassessment and the accompanying readjustment of the beliefs that employees have towards sustainable development and in particular the focus on sustainable energy, it has no use to develop an external program. Therefore, these two programs are considered to be successful on condition that the municipal organization, on political and executive level, first brings into focus how the separate theme’s within the whole field of sustainability are connected with each other and how they affect all the departments.
93 Subsequently the involvement of inhabitants is being seen as one of the important points with respect to external awareness. In order to raise awareness among the inhabitants, the best strategy is thus to let them participate in several decision making processes with the result that the commitment improves as well. A critical note in this involvement is that before the initial stage of participation, it has to be clear which role the external actors play and which concrete activities they are allowed to do, both to the municipal organization as well as to the external actors.
Knowledge
Improvements in the way the municipality handles its knowledge management are received with positive feedback. Although the municipality of Boxtel is characterized as a middle sized municipality with a flat organizational structure, improvements can be made in the field of availability of knowledge in general. For the persons that were interviewed it is clear were knowledge is situated in the near environment. Improvements herein can be made with respect to transparency throughout the whole municipality, crisscross departments and between all layers.
Furthermore it is evident that the final responsibility of knowledge accumulation is located at the employees themselves. This is considered not to be subject to any change. The employees themselves have to be able to evaluate their knowledge level and take responsibility to take the necessary measures. However, the municipal organization can improve the facilities towards this development.
Coordination
A first general remark in this part of the presented measures is made about the characteristics a coordinator, that is responsible for sustainable development, has to possess. It is generally accepted that the personal capabilities and competences have a large influence on the effectiveness of this person in the organization. It is considered as even a more important aspect than the formal position in the organization or the functional power the coordinator can exercise. In the selection process of a new coordinator these aspects need to be taken into account with high priority.
Coherent to the previous point, a supportive role of the management is considered as an important requirement for a successful execution of the task of the coordinator. Beside the personal characteristics, a back up from the management reinforces the position of the coordinator and can improve the effect he can have on all the people in the organization. From this point of view the cooperation between the coordinator and the management is crucial for the activities that have to be performed and therefore an important focus point for new measures.
94 A constrain that is applicable in all the improvement themes, but was mentioned to be important in this section, is the balance between the ambitions that are being set and the available capacity that is reserved for the execution of these ambitions. In order to create a manageable situation, not only for the coordinator but for the whole municipal organization, it is of great importance that these two aspects are being mutually tuned for the short as well as the long run.
95 7.7 Conclusion
The previous sections presented general characteristics of the municipality of Boxtel as well as the results of the assessment that is carried out using the method described in section 6. In the next paragraphs the most important conclusions of this assessment will be elaborated.
An important implication of the assessment can be seen in the framework that had to be developed in order to categorize the suggested improvement measures. This resulted in five categories: strategy, management, awareness, coordination and knowledge.
Within the strategic element it became clear that the most important measure that has to be implemented is the recalibration of the used terms regarding sustainable development. In order to guarantee that prospective long term policies regarding energy neutrality are clear and usable throughout the entire organization the general term sustainability does not suffice and has to shift into sustainable energy. In combination with a clear set up of collective goal setting between all departments this will have an expected positive effect on the integrality of prospective policies.
Subsequently, the management element showed that a key role is put aside for the department managers. First of all the departmental plans have to be altered and a uniform approach needs to be adopted wherein prospective policy plans are translated in. The responsibility for this lies at the department managers which have to adopt the general policy plans into concrete activities that are applicable for the certain department including the implications these entail. Furthermore, within the framework of leadership qualities every management director should realize which effect their working method and attitude towards the themes of sustainable energy policy have on the employees of that department. In addition, it is unclear how the new concepts of job descriptions and personal plans will contribute to the way the employees perform their activities.
To raise the awareness within the organization an awareness program seems to be the most suitable measure to ensure sufficient notion of the necessity to take energy policy into account in all working methods. Only when the awareness is sufficient in the internal organization a clear message to the inhabitants can be propagated. From then on, the organization is also able to bring into practice the participation of the inhabitants which, for that matter, needs clear distinction of roles and expectations.
With respect to the transparency and availability of knowledge the municipality has to improve its knowledge management system throughout the whole organization. With a decent inventory it becomes clear as well if the present knowledge is sufficient to execute the daily tasks that the employees have towards sustainable energy policy. Not only for the managers yet also for all the other persons in the organization it is important to know where certain knowledge is situated. With this information, founded decisions can be made about for example the budget, further knowledge development and the appointment of external parties for specialized support.
96 The last element concerning coordination brings up two points of importance. First of all, the coordination of sustainable development, sustainable energy in particular, needs to be carried out by a person with suitable personal characteristics. This means that the person needs to possess competencies with which he can reach and enthuse everyone in the organization to support and execute the prospective sustainable energy policies. For successful fulfillment of this task it is required that the coordinator can count on the support of the full management which results in a reinforced position of the coordinator and large coherence of the management itself.
97
98 8 Conclusions
As the concluding section of this thesis, this section will provide an answer on the central research question provided in section 2.2:
“What are the critical organizational capabilities in a municipality that determine the effectiveness of innovative strategic policy implementations?”
In order to answer the central research question this section will summarize the given sub conclusions of the previous sections.
Sub question 1:
“How is a municipality organized?”
This sub question provided answers on two interest areas namely the organizational models of municipalities and the key actors and processes that are present within a municipal organization. As presented in section 3.2, the trend of organizational change has ended with the appliance of two general models: the departmental model and ‘burger logica’ model. However the current trend is that the ‘burger logica’ model appears more often, no value judgment can be made which of these two models is in favor with regard to policy making or policy implementation.
Within a municipality, the policy making as well as the execution process is subjected to a large number of interventions by organs as well as persons that can influence the processes. This leads to the fact that the decision-making process is subjected to political as well as personal opinions.
Another critical characteristic is the relation between the executive board (policy determination) and the administrative machinery (policy execution). The variant wherein the integration is high for both the executive board as well as the administrative machinery is considered as the best variant, when the executive board focuses only on the determination of policy while the administrative top arranges the coordination and execution.
Sub question 2:
“What are the characteristics of an innovative organization?”
This sub question provided answers to two organizational aspects. First, the suitable division of an organization in order to use this division in an assessment and second, the characteristics of an organization according to this division. For the first aspect there is chosen for the 7s-model
99 developed by Pascal, Peters & Waterman. In comparison with the presented model of Scott, this model is more usable because the focus of this research and the internal focus of the 7s-model on the relations of an organization.
Subsequently, the characteristics of an innovative organization according to the 7s-model can be described as follows. The strategy of the organization has to be characterized as prospective and has features as flexibility, high ability to respond on altering situations, seize the passing opportunities and a broad scope of information. In addition, features of the structure element that positive influence innovativeness are size, low organizational complexity and high bureaucratic control. The last of the so-called hard elements of the 7s-model, system, has to posses a strong knowledge management characteristic in order to positively influence innovativeness. Sufficient present knowledge as well as the quality of knowledge, its availability for others and a clear diffusion system are critical factors herein. Besides the knowledge system the communication can contribute to innovativeness as well when horizontal and vertical communication lines are used in an optimal manner.
According to the 7s-model skills are the first of the four remaining building blocks. First of all organizational skills can contribute to innovativeness if they outperform the rest of the similar organization in the field. Absorptive capacity is in addition to the core competences an important organizational skill. Besides the organizational skills, competences and capabilities of single persons contribute to innovativeness as well. Herein it is important how the development of technical knowledge, procedural knowledge and human creativity is formalized. Closely related, characteristics corresponding with the staff such as a balance in the distribution (and quality) of personnel throughout the organization, execution of offered task and the involvement in processes have a positive influence. Furthermore, the management style in the organization is considered as one of the most important and influential element and has a positive effect on the innovative organization if the management complies with characteristics of the willingness to change and the leadership is transformational and participative. The focus of the last element of the 7s-model, shared values, lies in an innovation supportive climate wherein the beliefs, attitudes and actions of the employees are compatible with the strategy, processes, visions and culture of the organization.
Sub question 3: “What can we learn from other municipalities that implemented innovative strategic policies?”
This sub question provided answers on two aspects that are usable in this research. First of all it confirmed the shortcomings of the roadmaps that were developed and implemented, especially the trend setting roadmaps of BuildDesk. The calculation method of the roadmap of the municipality of Waalwijk is considered as being shallow and the overall superficial character of the roadmap caused that the document is only being used in order to remind the employees in the organization of the
100 ambitions that are being set without any reflection of the feasibility of the proposed measures. In addition, the roadmap that was implemented in the municipality of Apeldoorn presented the lack of flexibility which prevented the alteration of strategy in case of eventual relevant upcoming opportunities or the changed vision of the municipality. Furthermore the intended integrality of the roadmap is considered as insufficient as a result of weak developed communication program after the completion of the roadmap.
Subsequently, the municipalities proposed focus areas which are considered as critical elements in implementing prospective policies as described in roadmaps. For the whole timeframe a realistic and detailed assessment needs to be made about the necessary capacity that long term policies require in order to comply with the set ambitions. Managing directors have to play an important role in creating and preserving integrality between departments themselves and between the departments and the executive board. In addition, a program structure with clearly bounded issues increases the overview and sets clear responsibilities. In order to maintain flexibility the program approach needs to set clear goals but must not restrict the methods to reach them.
Sub question 4:
“How should an assessment method be formulated in order to evaluate these characteristics within a municipality?”
This sub question provided answers in the form of a questionnaire that can be used in order to evaluate innovative competencies of an organization. In this conclusion there will be elaborated on the conceptual framework of the questionnaire, where the complete assessment with concrete questions can be found in Appendix D. The assessment is constructed according to the division of the 7s model and consists of: strategy, structure, systems, skills, staff, (management) style and shared values.
Within the domain of strategy the questions that have to asked concern themes as the process of strategy forming, the process of policy making, agenda setting and processes that concern strategic objectives. Questions about structure contain subjects as the formal structure of the municipality with the functional relations between departments and actors, the division of roles and the influence on processes. With regard to the system element, questions that need to be formulated have to concern knowledge development, knowledge sharing, knowledge diffusion and knowledge management.
The analysis of the skills element can be carried out by asking questions about the present and available technical and procedural knowledge, relevant competencies to carry out tasks, behavior and attitude toward the working activities. Coherent with the skills, aspects that play a role in the staff element are the demarcation of labor towards certain subjects, the roles persons play and the
101 responsibilities they own. Information that has to be gathered concerning the management style comprehends the fashion of leadership, personal characteristics of the managers and the way this is experienced by others. The element of shared values concludes the analysis and contains questions about common values and the way they are compatible to those of the organization.
Sub question 5:
“Which transitions within a municipality are necessary to increase innovativeness?”
This sub question answered on two aspects of improving an organization in its innovativeness. First, according to the previous assessment method, important processes were identified that were considered critical in developing and implementing prospective policies. Subsequently, concrete measures were developed in each of the categories. Since this assessment is conducted in the municipality of Boxtel concerning the development of a new roadmap towards energy neutrality the elaboration below will contain the conclusion on that part.
The first category of transition is the element strategy. In order to guarantee that prospective long term policies regarding energy neutrality are clear and usable throughout the whole organization it is important that the terms that are used (sustainability in general, sustainable energy policy in particular) are clear and undisputable to everyone. In addition, collective goal setting towards this themes, between personnel and the organization, as well as between whole departments, are important as well. In combination with enough possibilities for flexibility in strategic methods to reach this ambitions these factors are critical.
Subsequently, activities in the management process regarding energy policy need to be altered. First of all the department managers have to adopt the general policies of sustainable energy development (and the roadmap in particular) in a uniform manner into their departmental plans with the accompanying consequences, implications and concrete activities for the concerning department. Furthermore the personal attitudes towards the development and execution of sustainable energy policy have to be positive in order to propagate a desired message towards the employees of every department, even those that are less involved with the developments.
Awareness of the necessity of integral sustainable energy policy within the organization is the third critical aspect that could be deducted from the analysis. Before propagating the policy measures to its inhabitants the internal municipal organization should be unambiguous about the visions and attitudes it has towards energy policy. This applies to the individual person, the departments, and the political organs.
Next, knowledge management processes are considered as important in the developing and execution of prospective sustainable energy policies. The entire process of knowledge management
102 including inventory, availability, transparency, storage and diffusion of knowledge that concerns energy policy has to developed in a way that knowledge is up-to date, qualitative sufficient to execute the tasks now and in the future and available for all of the persons in the organization.
The last critical element of transition is the coordination of prospective energy policy. One implication is that the person that is responsible for the coordination has a set of suitable personal competences in order to execute the activities that are concerned with the function. Beside the personal characteristic the results can be reinforced by fundamental support of the management.
103
104 9 Discussion and recommendations
This research had to contribute to the development of the ‘internal’ side of prospective roadmaps that have guide municipalities to energy neutrality in certain goal years. Concretely, this master thesis had to be used in a project for the municipality of Boxtel in order to improve organizational competencies and facilitate the accompanying change that is necessary to implement the roadmap. Below there will be an elaboration on the research as a whole with desired recommendations for further research.
First of all the results of the research conducted in general and in the assessment within the municipality of Boxtel have a high level of abstraction. This is the result of the many building blocks that had to be covered using the 7s-model of Pascal, Peters & Waterman. To create more realistic and detailed results this kind of research cannot be carried out as a master thesis in the dimensions presented in this document. As a result the improvements are presented as focusing points rather than practical activities that are ready to implement. Further research has to focus on working out the findings presented in this research per aspect of the 7s-model in more detail.
Furthermore, the assessment that is being used contributed to the abstraction level of this thesis as well. The design of the questionnaire is considered as being too general which resulted in questions that with a high abstraction level. One of the causes of this is that there is paid attention to factual information as well as on personal opinions. For the analysis and the subsequent redesign measures this raised barriers in the detail level that could be applied. Further research should focus on the elaboration of these two aspects in a separated manner. This will affect the way the assessment is carried out as well as the analysis and reporting method. A suitable questionnaire considering personal opinions can be designed in a standardized way using closed questions or theorems with for example a likart scale.
Due to the timeframe of the development of the two parts of the project it is unclear how the results of this master thesis will be used in the municipality of Boxtel in the matter of the roadmap (that is formalized in an executional plan) that already is presented. Since the two parts were developed separately and the focus of the project eventually laid on the calculation method as well as the technical measures, the part of organizational measures is not integrally used in the development of the execution plan. Further research and elaboration is needed in order to make a same sort of roadmap as with the technical measures but then applied to the organizational aspects presented in this thesis and take into account which implications the presented measures have on the organizational characteristics after the implementation.
105
106 References
Aardema, H. (2002). Doorwerking van BBI. Evaluatie van een veranderingsbeweging bij de Nederlands gemeenten. Leusden.
Aardema, H., & Korsten, A. (2009). Gemeentelijke organisatiemodellen. In A. Bekke, Naar een collegiaal en samenhangend overheidsbestuur. Den Haag: uitgave Raad voor het openbaar bestuur.
Ahmed, P. K. (1998). Benchmarking innovation best practice. Management & Technology , 45-58.
Angle, H. L. (1989). Psychology and organizational innovation. In H. Van de Ven, H. L. Angle, & M. S. Poole, Research on the management of innovation (pp. 135-170). New York: Ballinger/Harper & Row.
Arundel, A., Lorentz, E., Lundvall, B.-A., & Valeyre, A. (2006). The organization of work and innovative performance: a comparison of the EU-15. Aalborg: Danish research unit for industrial dynamics.
Baer, M., & Frese, M. (2003). Innovation is not enough: climates for initiative and psychological safety, process innovations, and firm performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior , 45– 68.
Braber et al., K. (2007). CO2-Neutraal Tilburg. Delft: BuidDesk Nederland B.V.
Brink Groep. (2010). Energieneutrale stad, Plan van aanpak. documentnummer 100003936.
Brink Groep. (sd). Wie zijn we . Opgeroepen op 09 06, 2011, van Brink Groep: http://www.brinkgroep.nl/url/management_advies_en_automatisering.php
Bulte, C. v. (2000). New product diffusion accelaration measurement and analysis. Marketing science , 366-380.
Chenhall, R. H. (2003). Managemen tcontro lsystem sdesign with in its organizational . Accounting, Organizations and Society , 12- 168.
Cohen, M. W., & Levinthal, D. (1990). Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly , 128-152.
COS Nederland. (2009). Lokale duurzaamheidsmeter: Stand van zaken November 2009. Alkmaar: COS Nederland.
Daft, R. L. (1978). A dual-core model of organizational innovation. Academy of Management Journal , 193-210.
107 Damanpour, F. (1991). Organizational innovation: An meta-analysis of effects of determinants and moderators. Academy of management journal , 555-590.
Damanpour, F. (1992). Organizational size and innovation. Organization Studies , 375-402.
Damanpour, F., & Evan, W. M. (1984). Organizational innovation and performance: The problem of organizational lag. Administrative science Quarterly , 392-409.
Damanpour, F., & Gopalakrishnan, S. (1998). Theories of organizational structure and innovation adoption: the role of environmental change. Journal of engineering and technology Management , 1-24.
Damanpour, F., & Gopalakrishnan, S. (2001). Dynamics of the adoption of product and process innovations in organizations. Journal of Management Studies , 45-65.
Denters, B., de Groot, M., & Klok, P. (2008). 'Een wezelijke vertegenwoordiging der burgerij'. Over de rollen van de gemeenteraad na de dualisering van het gemeentebestuur. Congresuitgave Staat van de dualisering , (pp. 59-73). Amersfoort.
Denters, S. (2005). Squandering away Thorbecke's legacy? Some considerations on recent teforms of Dutch local government. In H. Reynaert et al., Revolution or renovation? Reforming local polictics in Europe. (pp. 421-444). Brugge: Vanden Broele.
Denters, S., Klok, P., & Visser, M. (2001). De rollen herverdeeld? Dualisering in het gemeentebestuur en de relatie gemeenteraad - college van burgemeester en wethouders; Een tussenstand. Bestuurskunde, 10 (8), 336-348.
Development World Commissien on Environment and. (1987). Our common future. Geneva.
Doelen, A., & Weber, A. (2006). Organiseren & managen: Het 7s-model toegepast. Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.
Dorenbosch, L. W., van Engen, M. L., & Verhangen, M. (2005). On-the-job Innovation: The impact of job design and human resource manangement trough production ownership. Creativity and innovation management , 129-141.
Drijkoningen, T. (2011, April 26). Roadmap for a climate neutral Waalwijk. (J. Turski, Interviewer)
Dril, van, A. (2009). Verkenning Schoon en Zuinig, Effecten op energiebesparing, hernieuwbare energie en uitstoot van broeikasgassen. ECN.
Duchateau, N. (1994). De gemeente verkend. Stenfert Kroesse.
Duijvestein, C. (1997). Drie-Stappen-Strategie, . In E. H. D.W. Dicke, Praktijkhandboek Duurzaam Bouwen. Amsterdam: WEKA uitgeverij B.V.
108 Duncan, R. B. (1976). The ambidextrous organization: designing dual structures for innovation. In R. H. Kilmann, L. R. Pondy, & D. P. Slevin, The Management of Organization: Strategy and Implementation (pp. 167-188). New York: North-Holland.
Fens, J. (2010, November 1). Routekaart ontwikkeling bij BuildDesk. (J. Turski, & N. Ondersteijn, Interviewers)
Gemeente Boxtel. (2008). Nota duurzame ontwikkeling Boxtel 2009-2015. Boxtel.
Glick, W. H. (1985). Conceptualizing and measuring organizational and psychological climate: pitfall in multilevel research. Academy of Management Review , 601-616.
Goes, J. B., & Park, S. H. (1997). Interorganizational links and innovation. The academy of management journal , 673-696.
Gopalakrishnan, S., & Damanpour, F. (1994). Patterns of generation and adoption of innovation in organizations: Contingency models of innovation attributes. Journal of engineering and technology management , 95-116.
Groot, M., & et al. (2007). Recent European Reform: Strengthening the Councillor as a Representative and Scrutiniser. ESRC Seminar , (pp. 1-26). London, UK.
Hiemstra, J. (1999). Het besturen van grote gemeenten. Alphen aan de Rijn: Samson.
Hiemstra, J., & Boelens, J. (2002). Nieuwe organisatiestructuren in gemeenten. Openbaar bestuur , 11-15.
Hiemstra, J., & Van Werven, S. (2006). Meer overleg gewenst tussen ambtelijke en bestuurlijke top decentrale overheden. B & G , 14-18.
Hiemstra, J., Wesseling, H., van Hengel, K., Havekes, M., & Dijcks, P. (2005). Presteren vraagt om innoveren: Hoe en waarom gemeenten moeten vernieuwen. Den Haag: VNG uitgeverij.
Jaffee, D. (2001). Organization theory: tension and change. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co.
Janssen , O. (2005). The joint impact of perceived influence and supervisor supportiveness on employee innovative behaviour. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology , 573- 579.
Janszen, F. (2000). The age of innovation. Harlow: Pearson education limited.
Jassawalla, A. R., & Sashittal, H. C. (2002). Cultures that support product innovation processes. Academy of Management Executive , 42-53.
Jong, d. J. (2007). Individual innovation: The connection between leadership and employees' innovative work behavior. University of Amsterdam: Thesis.
109 Kemp, R., Parto, S., & Gibson, R. (2005). Governance for sustainable development: moving from theory to practice. International journal for sustainable development , 12-30.
Kern, F., & Smith, A. (2008). Restructuring energy systems for sustainability? Energy transition policy in the Netherlands. Energy policy , 4093-4103.
Korsten, A. (2010). Gedwongen vertrek van burgemeesters. Justiële verkenningen , 10-31.
Korsten, A., & Notten, J. (2004). De blijvende sleutelpositie van de gemeentesecretaris. In De secretaris en de gekozen burgemeester. VGS.
KplusV. (2009). Boxtel 2020, duurzaam een dynamisch centrum in het Groene Woud. Arnhem.
Lammers, C., Mijs, A., & van Noort, W. (1997). Organisaties vergelijkenderwijs; ontwikkeling en relevantie van het sociologisch denken over organisaties. Uitgeverij het Spectrum.
Lawson, B., & Samson, D. (2001). Developing innovation capability in organizations: A dynamic capabilities approach. International journal of innovation management , 377-400.
Loorbach, J., & Kemp, R. (2003). Governance for sustainability through transition management. paper presented at the international IHDP conference. Montreal.
López-Nicolás, C., & Meroño-Cerdán, A. L. (2011). Strategic knowledge management, innovation and performance. International Journal of Information Management , In Press.
Naranjo-Gil, D. (2009). The influence of environmental and organizational factors on innovation adoptions: Consequences for performance in public sector organizations. Technovation , 810- 818.
Nieuwenhuis, M. (2010). The art of management. Marcel Nieuwenhuis.
Ondersteijn, N. (2011). The perfect roadmap? Determining municipal energy consumption using object-specific properties for housing, industry, infrastructure and mobility. Eindhoven: Eindhoven University of Technology.
Paine, L. S. (2002). Value shift: Why companies must merge social and financial imperatives to achieve supeior performance. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Peters, T., & Waterman, R. (1982). In search of excellence. New York: Harper & Row.
Platform energietransitie Gebouwde Omgeving. (2009). Stevige ambitties, klare taal. Utrecht: EnergieTransitie.
Porter, M. E., & Stern, S. (1999). The new challenge to America's prosperity: FIndings from the innovation index. Washington: Council on competitiveness.
110 Reichers, A. E., & Schneider, B. (1990). Climate and culture: an evolution of constructs. In B. Schneider, Organizational climate and culture (pp. 5-39). San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Rekenkamer West Twente. (2008). Wat stelt het raadsvoorstel nou voor? Rijssen.
Rogers, E. (2003). Diffusion of innovations. New York: Free Press.
Rothwell, R. (1994). Towards fifth-generation process innovation. International marketing review , 7- 31.
Schein, E. H. (1985). Organizational culture and leadership. San Fransisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Schoolderman, R., KIliaan, F., & Lastdrager - Van der Woude, E. (2009). Routekaart Amstelland & Meerlanden 2040 Energieneutraal. Amstelveen: Twystra Gudde.
Schumpeter, J. (1938). The theory of economic development. Cambridge: Harvard University press.
Storey, C., & Kelly, D. (2002). Innovation in Services: The Need for Knowledge Management. Australasian Marketing Journal , 59-70.
Teece, D. J., Pisano, G. P., & Shuen, A. (1997). Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic management journal , 509-533.
Terziovski, M. (2007). Building innovation capability in organizations. London: Imperial College Press.
Utterback, J. (1974). Innovation in industry and the diffusion of technology. Science , 620-626.
Van de Voorde, K., Dorenbosch, L. W., & Kroon, B. (2007). A Multi-level Examination of Workplace- level Empowerment and Individual-level self-efficacy and personality on Innovative Work Behaviour. SHRM Workshop. Jerez de la Frontera, Spain.
Vries, J. d., & Derks, N. (2006). Ervaringen van gekantelde gemeentelijke organisaties. Overheids management , 54-58.
VROM. (2007). Klimaatakkoord gemeenten en Rijk 2007 - 2011. VROM.
VROM. (2007). Nieuwe energie voor het klimaat, Werkprogramma Schoon en Zuinig. 's Gravenhage: VROM.
VROM. (2009). Besluit van 1 januari 2009, houdende vaststelling van voorschriften met betrekking tot het bouwen van bouwwerken uit het oogpunt van veiligheid, gezondheid, bruikbaarheid, energiezuinigheid en milieu (Bouwbesluit). Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieubeheer.
111
112 Appendices
Appendix A: List of abbreviations
BMA Board of Mayor and Aldermen (Executive board)
CO 2 Carbon dioxide ECN Energy research Center of the Netherlands
EPC Energy performance coefficient fte fulltime -equivalent IWB Innovative work behavior KM Knowledge management NDO Nota Duurzame Ontwikkeling NMP Nationaal Milieubeleidsplan PV Photo voltaic PvdA Partij van de Arbeid (Labor party) SMART Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time -bound SWOT Strenghts, weaknesses, oppertunities and threaths VROM Ministerie van Volkshuisvesting, Ruimtelijke Ordening en Milieubeheer
113 Appendix B: Four municipal organization models
Bestuur
Technische Gemeente Eventuele andere diensten secretaris diensten
Figure 16: Simplified representation of the Secretary model
Bestuur
Secretaris
Concernstaf
Sector Sector Sector ruimte inwoners middelen
Afdeling Afdeling Afdeling Afdeling Afdeling Afdeling
Figure 17: Simplified representation of the Sector model (Concern-service model)
Bestuur
Secretaris
Concernstaf
Publieks- Facilitair en Wijkzaken Stadszaken dienstverlening uitvoerende zaken
Figure 18: Simplified representation of the ‘Burger logica’ model
114 Bestuur
Secretaris
Concernstaf
Burgerzaken en Middelen Strategie Onderwijs en cultuur Werk en inkomen Ruimtelijke ordening veiligheid
Figure 19: Simplified representation of the Department model
115 Appendix C: Interview assessment Boxtel: population list
Initial assessment:
– Burgermeester: F.H.J.M. van Beers (Frank) Aandachtsgebieden: algemeen bestuur, beleidscoordinatie en communicatie, EZ
– Secretaris: drs. J. Fraanje (Jan) Aandachtspunten: gemeentelijke organisatie
– Wethouder Ruimtelijke Ordening en Verkeer: W.C.F. van der Zanden (Wim) Aandachtsgebieden: RO, verkeer, infra, In Goede Aarde
– Wethouder Milieu, Duurzaamheid en Volkshuisvesting: P.M.B.M. van de Wiel (Peter) Aandachtsgebieden: duurzame driehoek
– Wethouder Welzijn, Sociale Zaken en Arbeidsmarktbeleid: A.G.T. van Aert (Anton) Aandachtspunten: onderwijs
– Wethouder Financiën en Openbare Ruimte: W.A.M van de Langenberg (Willie) Aandachtspunten: opbouw duurzaamheidsfinancieringen,
– Afdelingshoofd Openbare Werken: F. Fastenau (Frits) – Afdelingshoofd Ruimtelijke Ontwikkeling: A. Langenhoff (Annemiek) – Afdelingshoofd Sociale Zaken: G. Schönefeld (Gerard) – Afdelingshoofd Wonen en Milieu: M. Snellen (Maria)
– Commissievoorzitter Bestuurlijke Zaken: W.J. van Erp (Wim) – Commissievoorzitter Ruimtelijke Zaken: A.M.A. van den Einden (Anja) – Commissievoorzitter Adviesraad Duurzame Ontwikkeling: F. de Man (Frans)
- Expert duurzaam bouwen J. van der Last (Jacq) - Coördinator duurzaamheid R. Wirtz (Roel)
Validation meetings:
– Secretaris: drs. J. Fraanje (Jan) – Afdelingshoofd Wonen en Milieu: M. Snellen (Maria) – Beleidsmedewerker duurzaamheid: J. van den Biggelaar (Johan)
116 Appendix D: Interview assessment Boxtel: questionaire
Inleiding
Dit interview maakt deel uit van het project ‘De energieneutrale stad’ waarin Brink groep en de Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in samenwerking met de gemeente Boxtel een routekaart wil maken voor een energieneutraal Boxtel in 2040.
Een onderdeel van het project is een onderzoek naar de wijze waarop de gemeente Boxtel organisatorisch is opgebouwd en omgaat met het begrip duurzaamheid met een focus op energieneutraliteit. Voor dit onderzoek is een interview opgesteld aan de hand van het zogenoemde 7s-model van McKinsey waarmee de kwaliteit wordt gemeten van de prestaties die de organisatie levert.
Het doel van het interview is het inzicht verschaffen van de huidige verankering van duurzaam (energie)beleid in verschillende functies en afdelingen binnen de gemeentelijke organisatie. Het resultaat van dit interview is tweeledig. Enerzijds zal door middel van de verkregen resultaten een situatieschets worden gecreëerd met betrekking tot de wijze waarop duurzaam (energie)beleid nu verankerd is. Aan de andere kant zal het resultaat een basis zijn voor verder onderzoek naar de wijze waarop de gemeente Boxtel in de toekomst met deze ontwikkelingen om zal moeten gaan en hoe de organisatie de ambities die het nu heeft en die het in de toekomst moet uitvoeren, op een zo goed mogelijke wijze kan ondersteunen.
De vragenlijst is vrij uitgebreid. Er zullen wellicht ook vragen worden gesteld die niet direct kunnen worden beantwoord. In het kader van het onderzoek is het desondanks wel belangrijk dat deze vragen zo goed mogelijk, en naar eigen inzicht, worden beantwoord. Eigen meningen zijn in dit onderzoek ook erg waardevol.
Strategie
Onderwerpen strategie : strategievorming, beleidsvorming, agendering, strategische doelstellingen
– Wat is de strategie van gemeente Boxtel ten aanzien van duurzaamheid en energieneutraliteit en op welke wijze vertaalt dit zich naar uw functie c.q. afdeling? – Op welke wijze is deze strategie tot stand gekomen en welke personen hebben hierop invloed gehad? – Bestaan er nog mogelijkheden om deze strategie aan te passen? – Op welke wijze worden de hoofddoelstellingen van het strategisch beleid vertaald naar subdoelen, welke worden toegepast in afdelingen? – Hoe wordt lokaal energiebeleid gemaakt en hoe komen besluiten hieromtrent tot stand? (ambt apparaat Wethouder of afdelingshoofd wethouder of individueel initiatief (secretaris)) – Zijn beleidsambities ten aanzien van energieneutraliteit ook vertaald naar (meer)jarenplannen op uw aandachtsgebied? – Voor welke onderwerpen ten aanzien van het thema energieneutraliteit is er aandacht binnen uw vakgebied/afdeling? Zijn deze onderwerpen verankerd in beleid en strategie? – Wordt er in de huidige en toekomstige gemeentebegroting financiële ruimte gecreëerd om uw onderwerpen ten behoeve van de strategie uit te voeren?
117
Structuur
Onderwerpen structuur: structuur gemeente, organogram, functionele relaties afdelingen & actoren en (de)centralisatie
– Wat is de verhouding tussen burgemeester, wethouder(s), gemeentesecretaris, afdelingshoofd(en) en commissieleden met betrekking tot duurzame (energie)ontwikkeling? – Kunt u enig inzicht verschaffen in de verhoudingen binnen de Gemeenteraad op het gebied van dit onderwerp? – Heeft de gemeenteraad een beleidsvormende of een controlerende rol? – Welke voordelen en nadelen zijn er te benoemen van een platte organisatie? Welke uitwerking heeft dit op het energiebeleid? – Welke rol heeft het College van B&W op afdelingen? Geldt dit ook op beleid gericht op energiereductie en -opwekking? (sturend versus controlerend) – In welke mate zijn commissies van invloed op beleidsvorming (en in welk processtap/afdeling)? – Welke overlegstructuren zijn er binnen en tussen afdelingen om tot integrale uitvoering van beleid te komen? – Wat voor invloed heeft informeel/formeel contact op het besluitvormingsproces van de actoren? – Welke voor- en nadelen heeft (de)centralisatie op de besluitvorming en uitvoering van energiebeleid? (bevoegdheden, taken en verantwoordelijkheden) – Welke organisatorische verbeteringen zullen noodzakelijk zijn in de toekomst om het gemeentebeleid ten aanzien van energieneutraliteit te kunnen realiseren? – Hoe moet deze realisatie worden gewaarborgd van ambtenaar tot en met college?
Systemen
Onderwerpen systemen: kennisontwikkeling, -deling, -verspreiding en kennismanagement
– Op welke wijze ontwikkelt gemeente Boxtel kennis op het gebied van duurzaamheid en in het bijzonder energieneutraliteit? – Welke mogelijkheden biedt de gemeente aan ambtenaren om kennis op het gebied van energieneutraliteit te ontwikkelen? – Is kennisontwikkeling een verplichte of facultatieve activiteit voor gemeentelijke ambtenaren? – Hoe wordt kennis in zijn algemeenheid, maar ook specifiek voor energieneutraliteit, binnen de gemeente verspreid? – Vindt er controle plaats op de betrouwbaarheid van verspreide kennis? – Wat is de verdeling van de kennisactiviteiten over de afdelingen? – Hoe worden bepaalde, actuele onderwerpen op het gebied van duurzaamheid en energieneutraliteit geselecteerd? – Op welke wijze wordt er gebruik gemaakt van stagairs of afstudeerders van hoger beroepsonderwijs en universiteit(en) en van kennisinstellingen? – Op welke wijze wordt er gebruik gemaakt van externe inhuur, diensten op projectbasis? – Op welke wijze wordt er samengewerkt in kennisnetwerken? (actoren, relaties)
118 Medewerkers
Onderwerpen medewerkers: Demarcatie fte’s naar aandachtsgebieden, rollen, verantwoordelijkheden
– Hoeveel medewerkers binnen de gemeente houden zich bezig met duurzaamheid en meer in het bijzonder met energieneutraliteit? – Welke rol spelen deze medewerkers in de gemeente? – Wie voelt zich binnen de gemeente op bestuurlijk niveau verantwoordelijk voor deze thema’s? – En wie zijn eindverantwoordelijk? – Wordt er een bepaalde mate van synergie gecreëerd door kennis te bundelen tussen afdelingen?
Vaardigheden
Onderwerpen vaardigheden: aanwezige en benodigde kennis, vaardigheden, gedragingen en houding
– Is er voldoende kennis aanwezig bij u en uw collega’s binnen de gemeente om het gemeentelijk beleid op het gebied van energieneutraliteit te kunnen uitvoeren? – Welke technische kennis is aanwezig op de afdelingen om werkzaamheden met betrekking tot duurzaamheid goed te kunnen uitvoeren? – Wordt er geëxperimenteerd met technologische vernieuwingen binnen projecten van de gemeente? – Zijn de medewerkers voldoende vaardig om dit beleid uit te voeren? – Wordt er voldoende ruimte aan medewerkers geboden om creatieve oplossingen aan te dragen om meer energieneutraal te worden? – Toont de gemeente en haar medewerkers het juiste voorbeeldgedrag om duurzaamheid en energieneutraliteit uit te stralen? – Welke grondhouding hebben de medewerkers ten aanzien van energieneutraliteit?
Managementstijl
Onderwerpen managementstijl: wijze van leidinggeven aan gemeentelijke organisatie, cultuur en weerstand
– Op welke wijze wordt er sturing gegeven binnen het gemeentelijk apparaat vanuit de hogere geledingen (delegatie) op beleidsvoering/uitvoering – Op welke wijze worden de afdelingshoofden direct vanuit de leidinggevenden aangestuurd? (opdrachten, evaluaties, verzoeken) – Hoe wordt deze aanpak ervaren? (sterke/zwakke punten) – Op welke manier geven afdelingshoofden leiding en bestaat er de mening dat dit anders zou moeten gebeuren? – Op welke wijze kan de managementstijl bijdragen aan het stimuleren van het uitvoeren van het gemeentelijk beleid ten aanzien van energieneutraliteit?
119 Waarden & normen
Onderwerpen waarden en normen: intrinsiek gevoel van de organisatie
– Op welke wijze zijn waarden normen in de structuur-/beleidsvisie van de gemeente opgenomen? – Hoe wordt hier vervolgens door de medewerkers uitvoering aan gegeven? – Op welke wijze zou u de gemeentelijke cultuur willen omschrijven? – Welke invloed heeft deze cultuur op het uitvoeren van gemeentelijk beleid? – In welke mate speelt de gemeente een voorbeeldrol bij het implementeren van energieneutraliteit? (initiatieven, voorlichting, etc…)
120 Appendix E: List of external interviews
01-11-2010 Josje Fens Msc. BuildDesk, Delft
19-11-2010 Serge van den Berg, Het Energie Bureau, Eindhoven
26-04-2011 Titus Driekoningen, Gemeente Waalwijk
02-05-2011 Barbera van der Hoek, Gemeente Apeldoorn
121 Appendix F: Interview assessment Apeldoorn & Waalwijk: questionnaire
Inleiding
Dit interview maakt deel uit van het project ‘De energieneutrale stad’ waarin Brink groep en de Technische Universiteit Eindhoven in samenwerking met de gemeente Boxtel een routekaart wil maken voor een energieneutraal Boxtel in 2040.
Een onderdeel van het project is een onderzoek naar de wijze waarop een gemeente organisatorisch is opgebouwd en omgaat met het begrip duurzaamheid met een focus op energieneutraliteit. Voor dit onderzoek is een interview opgesteld aan de hand van het zogenoemde 7s-model van McKinsey waarmee de kwaliteit wordt gemeten van de prestaties die de organisatie levert.
Het doel van het interview is het inzicht verschaffen van de huidige verankering van duurzaam (energie)beleid in verschillende functies en afdelingen binnen de gemeentelijke organisatie en, met name, hoe deze (eventueel) zijn veranderd door het invoeren van de routekaart. Het resultaat van dit interview zal een basis zijn voor verder onderzoek naar de wijze waarop een gemeente in de toekomst met deze ontwikkelingen om zal moeten gaan en hoe de organisatie de ambities die het nu heeft en die het in de toekomst moet uitvoeren, op een zo goed mogelijke wijze kan ondersteunen.
De vragenlijst is vrij uitgebreid. Er zullen wellicht ook vragen worden gesteld die niet direct kunnen worden beantwoord. In het kader van het onderzoek is het desondanks wel belangrijk dat deze vragen zo goed mogelijk, en naar eigen inzicht, worden beantwoord. Eigen meningen zijn in dit onderzoek ook erg waardevol.
Strategie
Onderwerpen strategie : strategievorming, beleidsvorming, agendering, strategische doelstellingen
– Wat is de strategie van de gemeente ten aanzien van duurzaamheid en klimaatneutraliteit en op welke wijze vertaalt dit zich naar uw functie c.q. afdeling? – Op welke wijze is deze strategie tot stand gekomen en welke personen hebben hierop invloed gehad? – Op welke wijze worden de hoofddoelstellingen van het strategisch beleid vertaald naar subdoelen en meerjarenplannen, welke worden toegepast in afdelingen? – Wordt er in de huidige en toekomstige gemeentebegroting financiële ruimte gecreëerd om de onderwerpen ten behoeve van de strategie uit te voeren?
122 Structuur
Onderwerpen structuur: structuur gemeente, organogram, functionele relaties afdelingen & actoren en (de)centralisatie
– Wat is de verhouding tussen burgemeester, wethouder(s), gemeentesecretaris, afdelingshoofd(en) en commissieleden met betrekking tot duurzame (energie)ontwikkeling? – Kunt u enig inzicht verschaffen in de verhoudingen binnen de Gemeenteraad op het gebied van dit onderwerp? – Welke rol heeft het College van B&W op afdelingen? Geldt dit ook op beleid gericht op energiereductie en -opwekking? (sturend versus controlerend) – Welke overlegstructuren zijn er binnen en tussen afdelingen om tot integrale uitvoering van beleid te komen? – Wat voor invloed heeft informeel/formeel contact op het besluitvormingsproces van de actoren? – Welke organisatorische verbeteringen zullen noodzakelijk zijn in de toekomst om het gemeentebeleid ten aanzien van klimaatneutraliteit te kunnen realiseren?
Systemen
Onderwerpen systemen: kennisontwikkeling, -deling, -verspreiding en kennismanagement
– Op welke wijze ontwikkelt gemeente Waalwijk kennis op het gebied van duurzaamheid en in het bijzonder klimaatneutraliteit? – Hoe wordt kennis in zijn algemeenheid, maar ook specifiek voor klimaatneutraliteit, binnen de gemeente verspreid? – Wat is de verdeling van de kennisactiviteiten over de afdelingen? – Hoe worden bepaalde, actuele onderwerpen op het gebied van duurzaamheid en klimaatneutraliteit geselecteerd? – Op welke wijze wordt er gebruik gemaakt van externe kennis?
Medewerkers
Onderwerpen medewerkers: Demarcatie fte’s naar aandachtsgebieden, rollen, verantwoordelijkheden
– Hoeveel medewerkers binnen de gemeente houden zich bezig met duurzaamheid en meer in het bijzonder met klimaatneutraliteit? – Welke rol spelen deze medewerkers in de gemeente? – Wie voelt zich binnen de gemeente op bestuurlijk niveau verantwoordelijk voor deze thema’s? – Wordt er een bepaalde mate van synergie gecreëerd door kennis te bundelen tussen afdelingen?
123 Vaardigheden
Onderwerpen vaardigheden: aanwezige en benodigde kennis, vaardigheden, gedragingen en houding
– Is er voldoende kennis aanwezig bij u en uw collega’s binnen de gemeente om het gemeentelijk beleid op het gebied van klimaatneutraliteit te kunnen uitvoeren? – Zijn de medewerkers voldoende vaardig om dit beleid uit te voeren? – Wordt er voldoende ruimte aan medewerkers geboden om creatieve oplossingen aan te dragen om meer energieneutraal te worden? – Toont de gemeente en haar medewerkers het juiste voorbeeldgedrag om duurzaamheid en energieneutraliteit uit te stralen?
Managementstijl
Onderwerpen managementstijl: wijze van leidinggeven aan gemeentelijke organisatie, cultuur en weerstand
– Op welke wijze wordt er sturing gegeven binnen het gemeentelijk apparaat vanuit de hogere geledingen (delegatie) op beleidsvoering/uitvoering – Op welke wijze worden de afdelingshoofden vanuit het bestuur aangestuurd? – Hoe wordt deze aanpak ervaren? (sterke/zwakke punten) – Op welke manier geven afdelingshoofden leiding en bestaat er de mening dat dit anders zou moeten gebeuren? – Op welke wijze kan de managementstijl bijdragen aan het stimuleren van het uitvoeren van het gemeentelijk beleid ten aanzien van energieneutraliteit?
Waarden & normen
Onderwerpen waarden en normen: intrinsiek gevoel van de organisatie
– Op welke wijze zijn waarden normen in de structuur-/beleidsvisie van de gemeente opgenomen? – Hoe wordt hier vervolgens door de medewerkers uitvoering aan gegeven? – Welke grondhouding hebben de medewerkers ten aanzien van energieneutraliteit? – Welke invloed heeft deze cultuur op het uitvoeren van gemeentelijk beleid?
124
125