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FAMP PROFIROIU Constantin Marius and SORRENTINO Daniela
CCASP BENCHMARKING IN ROMANIAN AND ITALIAN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS: A TOOL FOR SCORING
OR LEARNING?

for detecting those elements of the different styles that favored the development of a certain kind of

benchmarking approach, with reference to its role as a learning or evaluating managerial tool.

In line with previous studies (Bowerman et al., 2002), we maintain that a thorough understanding of the
benchmarking nature in the public sector is fundamental for assessing whether and how such a

managerial tool may be fruitful for public entities in achieving the hoped successful changes.

2. THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT

Contemporaneously to their diffusion all over the world, public sector changes of the last decades have

been widely addressed by the literature, analyzing the related issues from different perspectives
(Fernandez and Rainey, 2006). Nevertheless, most of the contributions on organizational changes are

not specifically concerned with the public sectors ones (Kickert, 2010).

In a well-known literature review on organizational change by Pettigrew et al. (2001), the authors
emphasized a number of interconnected issues concerning the existent research, which claimed for

further investigation. Among the others (e.g., examination of multiple contexts, investigation of
international and cross-cultural comparisons), they highlighted the space for studies linking the PROCEEDINGS OF THE 11 TH ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ”Strategic Management for Local Communities” 30 th – 31 st October 2015 Bucharest
performance of organizations with the change processes, as well as the need to account for variables

such as the context, time, and history.

More than ten years later, Kuipers et al. (2014), when critically reviewing the literature on public sector
change management, not only restated the lack of studies analyzing the outcome of change processes

in the public sector (see also Vann, 2004), but they also built a framework for research on these change
processes that accounts for historical and contextual factors. Such a framework is composed by five
factors deemed relevant for studying public sector changes, namely the context, content, process,

outcomes, and leadership.

This study wishes to contribute and being framed in the context section, i.e., “the background of the
empirical data or [as] a framework for the conceptual elaboration of change management in the public

sector” (ibidem, p. 6). Particularly, the contextual element we want to acknowledge in this study is the
institutional background of the LGs under investigation, with this meaning their organizational and
administrative culture, historical background and legal structural features (Pina et al., 2009)

The powerful contribution of comparative studies on this topic has been to evidence the role of peculiar
contingency elements in shaping the paths and paces of reforms in different countries, eventually
leading to classify countries according to their traditional administrative styles (Dunleavy and Hood,

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