Digital and organisational transformation of a symphony orchestra

Francesco Raphael Frieri and Aldo Sisillo

Tradition is not veneration of ashes, but preservation of fire.

Gustav Mahler

Summary

In 2008, the first symphonic music streaming platform in history was realised. The Sino-American conductor and composer Tan Dun, together with another conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, select an orchestra called the Youtube Symphony Orchestra within a few weeks, thanks to the videos of applications uploaded on the social network of the same name. To launch the initiative, Tan Dun composed a five-minute piece called Eroica, performed by splicing together pre-recorded tracks. "A symphony for youtube" performed for the first time by the London Symphony Orchestra by 90 musicians selected online from thousands of applicants from all over the world, gave rise to a new orchestra. The Youtube Symphony Orchestra will perform for the first time in April 2009 at Carnegie Hall in New York, thanks to the sponsorship of Google, owner of Youtube.

This article aims to demonstrate how this case is essentially the first Digital Transformation (TD) of a complex orchestral organisation in history, a transformation that created extensive relationships across the planet, greatly shortened selection times, significantly reduced costs, and brought a vast young audience closer to classical music. What then happened to the great orchestras of today, even during the pandemic, can be interpreted in the light of that innovation.

Keywords

Digital transformation, symphony orchestra, conductor, social network management, cultural platforms, classical music, youtube, Tan Dun

Abstract

In 2008, the first symphonic music streaming platform in history was created. The Chinese-American conductor and composer Tan Dun, together with another conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, formed an orchestra called Youtube Symphony Orchestra in a few weeks, thanks to the videos of the applications uploaded on the homonymous social network. To launch the initiative, Tan Dun composed a five-minute piece called Eroica, the brevity of which was due to the connection speed at the time. "A symphony for youtube' was performed for the first time by the London Symphony Orchestra, which supported the selection of thousands of musicians from around the world, and that gave life to the new orchestra. The Youtube Symphony Orchestra performed for the first time in April 2009 at the Carnegie Hall in New York, thanks to the sponsorship of Google, owner of Youtube.

This article aims to demonstrate how this case is substantially the first Digital Transformation of a complex orchestral organisation in history, a transformation that created relationships across the planet, brought classical music closer to a vast young audience, greatly shortened selection times and significantly reduced costs. What is happening to today's great orchestras, even during the pandemic, can be interpreted in the light of that innovation.

Keywords

Digital transformation, symphony orchestra, conductor, culture management, social networks, cultural platforms, classical music, youtube, Tan Dun

The case

In December 2008, the financial crisis that would forever change the economic balance between East and West had just begun. The first mobile phones were on the market, but they were basically analogue machines with little memory. At the same time, personal computers were the means by which people produced written texts and spreadsheets, they had a computing capacity in the order of Mega Hertz, a memory of a few tens of mega bytes, but, above all, connections travelled at around 20 or 30 Mega bytes per second (Mbps).

In December 2008, a Sino-American orchestra composer named Tan Dun launched a selection in the popular You-Tube channel already acquired two years earlier by Google, and second only to the latter in terms of web visits. The selection would first lead to the performance of a five-minute piece called 'A Symphony for You-Tube', 'Eroica' performed by splicing together pre-recorded tracks and overlaying them. Tan Dun had posted a preview on the you tube channel when the initiative was launched. The brevity of the work was due to the low connection speed at the time. Subsequently, the first performance of the You-Tube Symphony Orchestra took place on 15 April 2009 at New York's Canergie Hall, under the baton of conductor Michael Tilson Thomas.

Within a few weeks, a hundred or so musicians had been recruited from thousands of applications, who were given a masterclass by the members of the London Symphony Orchestra, and then gave birth to a new orchestra made up of young orchestral players from all over the world: the You-Tube Symphony Orchestra, evidently not on a permanent basis. All this at a very low cost and time and, above all, by giving birth to the streaming of classical music on the web, making the same content available as often as one wants to the ears and sight of any corner of the world. A new stateless musical experience, close to young audiences, globalised, realising a DT of the complex organisation of a symphony orchestra. An organisational transformation based on the digital that today has interpenetrated and integrated the organisational models of contemporary orchestras and platforms.

This article aims to analyse that historical moment in the light of an original insight and interview conducted with Maestro Tan Dun.

1. What happened with the Youtube Symphony Orchestra

Tracing the evolutionary line to the present day, Youtube would prove to be the largest social network even during the various Covid-19 pandemic waves. Currently, YouTube boasts as many as two billion logged-in users, making it the most popular application even within households. Well before the pandemic, audio and video recordings were observed to broadcast curricula of young musicians, as well as to share music lessons previously recorded in class. But during the various waves of the pandemic, there was a veritable explosion in the creation of dedicated channels on YouTube, rather than freely uploaded videos, by the world's major orchestras. The YouTube platform constitutes a veritable document management system for audio video content.In contrast, the Berliner Philharmonic Orchestra created its own. During the first wave of the pandemic, they granted its use free of charge to the internal world, increasing its popularity. A Digital Transformation led the Berliners to rename their famous concert hall the 'Digital Concert Hall', offering subscriptions and single ticket purchases from any device or system used. Already in 2013, the Berliner's platform contained more than 200 concerts for more than 500 musical pieces, as many as 165,000 devices had downloaded and installed the respective app, leading to 50 per cent of revenue generated by people living outside the EU (at the time, the UK was also in the EU).

The seminal case of the Youtube Symphony Orchestra, however, had been more radical: between December 2008 and March 2009, ninety musicians were selected from 3,000 video applications. The ages of the candidates ranged from 17 to 55, covering no less than 30 different countries worldwide. Google, the owner of the social network, commissioned the piece Internet Symphony No. 1 - Eroica from the Sino-American composer Tan Dun. The project involved the performance of this piece and its immediate upload to YouTube in December 2008, in order to launch the recruitment initiative, performance by the London Symphony Orchestra, which also played the role of technical assistance in the selection of participants, as in a typical masterclass. A total of 13 million hits were reached, creating an early crowdsourcing phenomenon. The videos of the semi-finalists were composed in a mashup that performed Tan Dun's Eroica, reproducing in a single performance a multi-dimensional matrix of variables: musicians, tempo and score. An artistic gesture that emerged from a "multi-track creativity" published in an open, free and timeless format.

A photo from The Guardian

The theme from Beethoven's Eroica explains the choice of name. The duration of just over five minutes, as well as the low resolution, was motivated by the connection speed at the time: no more than a hundred Kbps.

The selection process, the mashup, the web broadcast were a 'first work' that would influence the industry. On 15 April 2009, the first concert of the new symphony orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, was held at Canergie Hall, New York. Composer Tand Dun called the event 'the world's biggest stage'.

2. What we mean by digital transformation (DT)

We can propose several definitions of DT of a complex organisation, let us look at a few that are useful here:

- The use of technology in order to radically improve the performance or capability of an organisation;

- An evolutionary process that leverages digital capabilities and technologies to enhance the business model, operational processes and customer experience in order to create value;

- A process aimed at improving an organisation (entity) by triggering significant changes in the organisation's characteristics through a combination of information, computing, communication and connection technologies;

The first definition shines in effectiveness and aims straight at improving business performance, the second definition has the merit - and the shortcoming - of defining an evolutionary path, thus making a value judgement regarding the use of digital capabilities and technologies, as well as focusing on the customer experience.

Here we choose the third one, the most suitable for the case of a musical performance that we expose here, identifies a process, and not an evolution, indicating improvements (in terms of audience, perception of harmony, etc.) of characteristics, among which technology, composed of computing and connection, is only one of the components. The others mentioned, such as the way information is shared externally and the morphology of communication (internal and external), are classic variables in the study of business organisation.

First, understand that this is a process, not a landing place per se, and therefore a harbinger of new accelerations or brakings. In fact, the pandemic has accelerated the use of connection technologies, which, as mentioned above, grow exponentially faster than the process capacity of CPUs or device memory.

Secondly, DT must trigger significant changes in the organisation in order to increase the value of the final beneficiaries of the performance, i.e., in the present case, music listeners. Not only that, the customer experience is enhanced, in the memorability of an experience.

Finally, thirdly, DT addresses the core competencies and activities of an organisation, without decoupling the constituent elements of the organisation and self-promotion .

If we were to rely on these arguments, but assuming we live in 2008, we would project some of the aforementioned characteristics of DT to a particular organisation called a symphony orchestra by imagining that the skills of musicians, managers, technical support staff and, above all, the conductor, include strong digital skills as well as the necessary musical training. Not only that, since connection technologies are a fundamental factor, the project in terms of the data of the musical content performed, must take into account the speed of connection at that particular time, thus, in our case, 2008. But that is not enough: the added value must grow, so we need to be faster and play better in the square in front of everyone and with new content, better if it is short and capable of winning new audiences.

3 What is a symphony orchestra and how it works

"There is no other activity in which forty, eighty or one hundred and twenty people do the same thing together with a precision approaching a tenth of a second, starting and finishing together" . This immediate description gives an idea of the complexity of one part, the visible part, of the 'symphony orchestra' organisation. If we take Germany, the country with the largest number of large professional orchestras (Kulturalorchester) as an example, we find no less than 131 in 2018. However, there are 111 philharmonic or theatre orchestras (Philarmonie und Theaterorchester), 12 radio station orchestras (Rundfunkorchester) and 8 chamber orchestras (Kammerorchester) . Staggering numbers if we think of states of comparable size, not least because in German culture 'music is the art of the Germanic soul' (Musik ist Kunst der Deutsche Seele) . Obviously, however, and we point this out immediately, volume does not necessarily represent quality: it is mapped annually by Grammophone. The criteria with which the Grammophone jury compares performance approach "several angles, judging concert performances as well as recordings, contributions to local and national communities, and the ability to maintain an iconic status in an ever-improving climate.

Turning to history, the origins of symphony orchestras can be traced back to the first decades of the 17th century. "Nearly four centuries have passed since 1626, when the Vingt-quatre violons du Roi of the court of Louis XIII, accompanied by the ensemble Le Douze Grands Hautbois de la Grande écurie, together formed La Grande Bande. It seems that the evolution of musical complexity found its first witnesses in Lully and Corelli. Jean-Baptiste Lully , a Florentine naturalised Frenchman, who in 1672 went on to direct the Académie royale de musique, and who died of gangrene after being struck on the foot by the pointed stick with which he conducted the orchestra by beating rhythmically on the floor. Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchet jokes about this in the first scene of the film Tar . In Italy, in the same years, something similar happened in the salons of Bologna, at the Corte Estense in Modena and then in Rome with Arcangelo Corelli, who was 'conductor of the orchestra that presented the opera Dov'è amore è pietà, by Bernardo Pasquini. These phenomena give rise to the orchestra as a pan-European phenomenon. Then in the 18th century, the Paris Opera and the Leipzig Gewandhaus began to be permanent orchestras at the service of their respective courts, leading to an irreversible transition, the publicisation of concerts and the standardisation of symphonic ensembles in the second half of the 19th century. The standardisation also concerned the arrangement of the instruments, the uniforms of the members, and, of course, the position of the conductor. Over time, the components grew in number and variety of instruments, up to the inclusion of elements of all kinds in classical orchestras, or the use of orchestras themselves to play Pop music. However, in the 20th century, Leonard Bernstein, also a composer of musicals, introduced instruments and moments of improvisation typical of Jazz into the classical orchestra (see below), following the inspiration in the contamination between genres of one of his naturalised fellow New Yorkers: Antonin Dvorak in the early 20th century.

Nowadays, it is necessary to remove the commonplace of the symphony orchestra where there is a star on the podium who can exercise unchallenged hierarchical power. Henry Mitzberg, at the end of the previous century, observed that his job consists of "deciding the programme of the season, determining which pieces will be played, choosing guest artists (usually soloists, n.d.a.), recruiting the orchestra and managing some external relations". The financial activities, the recruitment of all the technical staff as well as most of the orchestral players, the logistics, the purchase and maintenance of instruments, all other kinds of support functions, are planned, measured and carried out by another manager, who may change his name from orchestra to orchestra or theatre to theatre.

Sometimes the composer is also the conductor. In that case, 'the composer begins the work in front of a blank sheet of paper, but for the orchestral players, we start with the composer's score'. In any kind of performance, if we conceive of it as a normal service, we cannot fail to notice substantial differences in supervision and evaluation since 'for him, the information heard from the music provides the most relevant sources of judgement on the performance. Only by listening with a trained ear does the conductor immediately know what the orchestra has done. None of this needs to be measured." With regard to musicians, therefore, rather than being subjected to a reasoned and recurring evaluation, "being part of an orchestra is just another form of subordination".

According to Mitzberg, "professionals need light direction and supervision, they need protection and support", so "the conductor almost never has to authorise musicians. Inspire them perhaps, but not authorise them." When he then mentions Zubin Meta joining the Israel Philharmonic, one of the most highly rated in the world and where every member feels like a soloist, he describes Meta saying "I am the only Indian here, all of them are leaders". In conclusion, 'conducting a symphony orchestra is a kind of secret leadership' and if you ask a conductor if he perceives himself as a manager, Mitzberg doubts it.

Now suppose we describe the roles of the professions in a topical way, we will represent for each profession a set of aptitudes and skills that serve to fulfil a role, this interpretation leads to the definition of a profession. The professions between the conductor/composer and the manager/administrator are distinct, but the roles are very close and overlapping in terms of meaning and may sometimes even lead to a single person embodying them.

Figure Two possible professions descending from the same role.

Probably in non-permanent orchestras this overlap is complete, in the sense that the conductor performs both professions, by contrast in more structured cultural institutions. It is unlikely, of course, that in the case of full overlap a manager with no aptitude for music, or the visual arts in the case of other institutions, could hold the only position. David Robertson , an American conductor, in a talk at the University of California, argues that the conductor-manager must have two brains, as Daniel Kahneman predicts: one emotional, fast and instinctive, to conduct the orchestra; the second, slow and rational, to negotiate with a financial referent the budgets for the coming season.

In any case, we can conclude that the complex organisation 'symphony orchestra' is composed of two great souls: the first one visible, famous and emblematic of the reputation given by the conductor, who tends to become a star locally or internationally, as well as by the orchestral players, partly or fully permanent musicians; the second soul, however, is given by all that supports the performance and production of the shows, the logistics of the orchestra itself, the intermediaries that place and buy shows, the new digital professions, digital marketing included, up to all the financial support, HR, asset management and legal advice that a complex organisation needs.

4 What kind of Leadership

The visual culture is closely related to the literature on traditional hierarchical leadership while the auditory culture concerns more participative approaches to leadership. The criticism that Koivunen and others make of visual and hierarchical culture is the common assumption that the director's podium represents a position for the exercise of hierarchical and charismatic power by the director. This is a widespread belief; after all, even Peter Drucker, the father of management, falls victim to the cliché, writing that "in the traditional 'baseball' design team, each position - engineering, production, marketing - does its job in its own way. In the football team or symphony orchestra, there is no such permissiveness. The coach's or conductor's word is law. The players (or musicians, n.d.a.) are only obedient to this boss for their disposition, their rewards, their evaluations, their promotions."

According to common sense, "organisational processes are considered less important than lasting, measurable results. The logic is this: visionary individuals at the top of a hierarchical organisation know what the future holds; it follows that positive results are also known and must be measured or otherwise clearly defined. The idea that the future can be built by interacting with a limited number of key players over time is not a common philosophical approach in leadership thinking. (...). Effectiveness criteria such as productivity, fulfilment, direction and clarity of objectives continue to be important outcomes to be measured and controlled." A further effect, which also affects conductors, when compared to mere orchestral players, concerns the 'distance and differentiation between leaders and subordinates'. this may often concern the choice of seats on the plane, the height of offices, in the case of modern buildings, proportional to the power wielded by those making the choice, rather than the vertical, and thus hierarchical, display of organisation charts publicly, visually, pyramid-like or inverted tree-like. "Organigrams and hierarchies define a person's position in the organisation. Hierarchy also indicates the position of power and knowledge in the organisation itself." "Even today, the offices of top people are often located on the top floors of buildings, above everyone, as if to suggest the ordering of the people in that company. In addition to the location, the size and furnishings of the office rooms further reflect the same order'. (...). "It could be argued that it is not unexpected that such a visual pattern divides rather than unites".

In interpreting the role of the conductor, i.e. the orchestra itself by extending the object of our analysis, and in contrast to the visual (hierarchical) leadership, which is here portrayed as divisive, exclusionary, inauthentic and ultimately ineffective to the emergent property of orchestral performance: harmony, a new aural leadership is defined. Tan Dun rightly talks about this (see below), not only with regard to harmony, but also when he talks about perceiving and connecting people from different regions, cultures and languages, as emblematic of the term symphony (see below). In general, 'instead of marvelling at great conductors, we could rather grasp the intertwined processes through which the musicians and the conductor create music. This process of interaction (...) is essentially non-verbal, involving communication through body language, sensual perceptions and the art of playing." "Gadamer argues that anyone who listens is fundamentally open. Without this kind of openness to the other, there can be no genuine human relationship. Being well together always means being able to listen to the other." This type of leadership also feeds on 'aesthetic factors', such as 'emotions, intuitions, symbols and perceptions of meaning that are equally important in organisational behaviour as cognitive activities' . Indeed, the conductor "is really a rough profession, it requires a lot of mental courage. When you face the orchestra, you can count on the fact that at least 20 out of 80 people will hate your guts (Musician, Tampere)".

But "justice and aesthetic leadership can certainly be observed in other organisations as well: (...) project managers of large power plants use improvisation in their work or, as they call it, engineering improvisation. Improvisation requires a lot of experience and discipline and cannot be acted upon by beginners, nor is it something that can be resorted to when everything goes wrong. Improvisation can be applied within certain limits and roles. In power plant construction, normally carried out as industrial bureaucracy dictates, improvisation is often required when the unexpected happens." In summary, we can say that aesthetic leadership is based on three dimensions: "(1) Relational activities, (2) Aesthetic judgement, (3) Embodiment. "Musicians react with their bodies to the conductor's movements. If these movements are confused, there will be a lack of emotion between the groups of instruments, and music always requires this. It then becomes difficult to play (Musician, Tampere)."

Returning to the subject of improvisation, one cannot help but think that the "growing tension of improvising something but keeping the improvisation fresh is the essence of Jazz". Weick proposes four stages of complexity in the friction between a musician's imagination and concentration: Interpretation, Embellishment, Variation and Improvisation.

"Wynton Marsalis observed that in playing, just as in a conversation, the wrong people to talk to and play with are those who, when you're talking, are already thinking about what they're going to say to you, instead of listening to what you're saying to them. (...) So Jazz improvisation is about the conversation between emerging paths and certain things like the formal characteristics of the underlying composition, previous interpretations, the logic possessed by the musicians, the responsiveness of the instrument, the other musicians and the audience. Managerial activities, which are dominated by language and conversation, often become synonymous with improvisation."

Weick's conclusions also seem, fifteen years earlier, to come to similar conclusions to the invention of aural leadership, as opposed to visual leadership, carrying out analyses in the world of music and then transposing them to management in general. This should not surprise us since, as stated so far, the conductor can play several different roles, can be assimilated to a manager and, above all, the symphony orchestra is a particular complex organisation that was born in the seventeenth century, evolves and spreads around the world and, as such, can be digitally transformed (see above).

5 What Tan Dun tells us

The maestro's first statement concerns the theme of the orchestra's unity of purpose, emphasising that 'symphony is something that unifies singing. Consequently, I think, what a symphony orchestra really is, is to realise that it is the mission to connect people, to integrate technology to connect the contours in a specific way, this is very important and it is a great joy to be a symphony orchestra'.

A succinct response that links the concept of digital transformation to the word symphony, thus seeing the dynamism of its interpretation as the key to transformation. Casting his thoughts back to 2008 and the intuition of the Youtube Symphony Orchestra: 'For me, at that time (in 2008, n.d.a.), it was the first time to connect different people through the internet, from different time zones (of the planet, n.d.a.), different cultures and different languages. I thought the idea of an Internet symphony was very interesting. So, we can recognise that in the end we reached 25 million people, but above all I was looking for something that would change substantially, so that my music, my creation, could be shared more among young people. And I love to be judged by young people and I certainly love to challenge young people, I recently wrote my first Metaverse Symphony: from the Universe to the Metaverse, so here's another important subject, because it's all about the intelligence of our life, the intelligence of our connections and our contact with the whole universe and the soul that tells us, as a conductor and composer, why we need to communicate and what kind of media is needed to do it."

Here Tan Dun sums up the concepts of aesthetic leadership in full and gives us an original definition of the Metaverse, adding that "you see science and art, but they are eternal lovers."

After that, "technology, at present, is an important part of the history of civilisation and the arts specifically." "The question of harmony is very interesting, it could be a truly universal meaning, very spiritual, as well as physical. But if I am asked to explain the difference between western and eastern music, I would say that the former is, in a word, chromatic A kind of chromatic harmony, of chromatic art. A word, chromatic, that very much represents the Western musical system and process. The East, on the other hand, is organic, so we imagine that organic and chromatic harmonise in a harmonic idea that becomes interesting. Sometimes everything is harmonic."

One cannot help but be surprised how in a few words Tan Dun has summed up the entire bibliography above, as well as citing Eastern philosophy as a point of view from which to observe music, technological evolution and the question of harmony. One might wonder, at this point, if the quantum leap of the effective integration of harmony, performing arts and technology, use of data, etc., can only take place around the centre of gravity of the Pacific Ocean, i.e. between the Far East and California, and not between the regions bordering the Atlantic, as has been the case for the past two centuries.

6 Conclusion: What Perspective for Symphony Orchestras

Given the considerations made above, we can conclude that the symphony orchestra of the Western world of the 2000s is made up of musicians with a much higher cultural and technical level than the average of the ensembles that became established and 'stabilised' after the Second World War (the training paths became not only technical but with a stronger cultural imprint). This has already led to a profound transformation of the relationship between conductor and performer. Therefore, as stated above, the modern conductor today must be able to listen, a primus inter pares capable of stimulating creativity by harmonising it in an organic vision to which he or she aspires.

That said, the model of the orchestra of the future should be configured as that of an organism that strikes a balance between flexibility and contractual conditions that allow professors, aware and responsible, to have elasticity in dealing with different musical genres, rapidity in decision-making shared with the management, and openness towards solutions that lead to adopting communication and promotion methods by exploiting all the possibilities of digital: from the widening of the audience (open rehearsals in streaming, live lesson-concert pills where the audience can intervene live, interaction with composers in the analysis of new pieces before the start of the actual rehearsals) to the possibility of experimenting with different 'products' to be marketed (from masters for young musicians or performances included in multimedia and multidisciplinary events, to the exploitation of archives, to the creation of international formations of excellence that can work with increasing digital precision and effectiveness even meeting remotely).

In short, a Digital Transformation that starts from understanding and supporting organisational, professional, cultural, artistic models can play a very important role in the development of modern symphony orchestras.

Article published in “Studi Organizzativi”, Italian Review of Organizational Sciences, May 2023.

Transformations

From Airbnb to Moskva even war has been changed by digital

Alessandro Bogliolo and Francesco Raphael Frieri

Computer science professor at the University of Urbino, DG Emilia-Romagna Region

Article published in the newspaper "Il Domani", April 27, 2022

The cruiser Moskva is the largest warship ever sunk since 1983, at the time of the Falkland Islands War. NATO is careful not to say how it happened that a missile supplied to what remains of the Ukrainian regular army hit such a cruiser exactly where it was. Yet, according to the Guardian, the cruiser had been spotted several times by satellites in recent days. As the major American newspapers and Italian reporters from the battlefield know, the geolocation of photos taken by mobile phones and collected by Telegram bots has made it possible to make the intervention of the Ukrainians towards Russian tanks surprisingly effective. At the same time, the hashtags used on the major social networks have allowed the Ukrainian resistance to immediately identify useful information. From the earliest stages of the war, cell phones in the hands of civilians became the subject of Russian roundups. Technological evolution is advancing relentlessly and produces an impact on every sector reserving continuous surprises even for the most attentive observers. But what we are witnessing is a new and unexpected phenomenon, a manifestation of the formidable acceleration that the two world emergencies underway have produced, not so much on the technological innovation front, but on the adoption of existing technologies and their global, collective and conscious exploitation. This is the nature of the digital transformation, accelerated by the pandemic, which has irreversibly changed the very paradigms of war and solidarity.

The Airbnb case

One of the first signs of the change was the case of Airbnb, the platform for finding a place to stay between individuals, which, despite having been hit hard by the reduction in revenues during the lockdowns in the whole world, wave after wave, managed to find refuge for 300,000 Ukrainians near the battered country and to transfer 19 million dollars from the whole Western world to Ukrainian hosts whose destinies were unknown. As the conflicts progressed, numerous anonymous donors from North America and Central Europe began spontaneously booking private rooms and apartments in Ukraine, attaching messages of solidarity and establishing personal relationships with very recent refugees. In other words, a phenomenon has occurred where, after a pandemic that has pushed the digital skills of grandparents to the same level as those of their grandchildren, a platform capable of upsetting the characteristics of the traditional tourism economy has become a crowd-sourcing platform to locate inhabitants in Ukraine and transfer money there on the pretext of replying to a tourist advertisement.

A new role

This is not the normal brokerage of donations that all platforms have proposed, starting with Meta, which a few weeks earlier had seen its prices halve due to a cryptic announcement from Apple that declared that it did not allow easy tracking of all the activities of the its unsuspecting users. Rather, thanks to data, we are witnessing the customization of war and humanitarian actions, where large and small humanitarian organizations disintermediate and, in some cases, themselves benefit from the speed with which they can locate refugees, receive and transfer money or launch appeals.

If there hadn't been this war and we had correctly planned a humanitarian emergency scenario, we would have had to use several large-scale applications: one capable of transferring money, such as PayPal or Money Transfer, a second capable of geolocating photos and information, Maps or Google Maps, a third to send messages of motivation or encouragement to justify the value transferred. But no: the emergency of war leads to instantaneously and massively distorting platforms that already existed to do all three things together and, when it happens in relation to combat functions, displacing (outmaneuvering) the regular Russian army (perhaps even the mercenaries connected to it) which instead proceeds on the ground with a twentieth-century logic, which is analogical. Here we must add the use that the Ukrainian government has made of the app developed for Covid.

In War and Peace, Tolstoy stages the different points of view of the war from an ethical point of view, but also from an organizational point of view: he had been a soldier in the Crimean war and he understood the weight of the organizational parameters on the outcomes of the battles, as he knew how to read the underlying mood of the soldiers away from home and the reason for how they reacted to orders from headquarters. Who knows if he would agree with us today, in grasping the link between technology and human solidarity, between data and religious humus, after the acceleration of an unprecedented global pandemic.

ADRION PROGRAMME

FIRST ANNUAL FORUM

Catania, may 23, 2018

WELCOMING AND OPENING BY

FRANCESCO RAPHAEL FRIERI

MANAGING AND CERTIFING AUTHORITY ADRION PROGRAMME

Ladies and Gentlemen good morning!!

I'm glad to welcome all of you to the First Annual Event of the Interreg VB Adriatic-Ionian program - ADRION which is a peculiar initiative in the 3rd EUSAIR Forum, organized by the Italian Republic in close cooperation with the European Commission and with the support of the EUSAIR Facility Point.

The ADRION Event purposes are twofold:

·         on one side to present where we do stand as far as programme implementation. It is a crucial aspect, with a high relevance in terms of transparency and accountability, in favour of all the stakeholders of the macroregion.

·         The new principles of public management put accountability among the core activities between citizens and their institutions, therefore today we want to present ADRION and let the programme talk to beneficiaries and to EUSAIR, the macroregional strategy in which we are embedded.

·         Finally, we want to take the chance of the EUSAIR Forum to support the enhancement of the European Territorial Cooperation, of which ADRION is an important example. And in general to sustain the macro regional strategies.

Before entering into detail in the spirit of the Adrion event, let me thank all the Institutions who have allowed this event to happen.

First of all  the Municipality of Catania and its Major – Enzo Bianco – for offering us this wonderful location, rich in history and culture that are the distinctive heritage of the Ionian Adriatic Region.

Let me thank the Presidency of the Italian Council of Ministers that, through the Department for Cohesion Policies, under the coordination of Mr. Nicola Favia, organized all the events of this week dedicated to EUSAIR Macro regional strategy.

I would like also to spend few words, as General manager and one of five CEO of the Emilia Romagna Region, about the reasons of our active engagement as Managing Authority of Adrion.

Our Region ranks among the best European performers with reference to Europa 2020 indicators.

With a per capita GDP of 34.602, euros (current prices), 4,5 million inhabitants, more than 420.000 enterprises, (including agriculture), Emilia Romagna has a GDP that counts about the 10% of Italian GDP.

Unemployment has reached last year 6,5%, a paramount result if we consider the effect of the global crisis that affected the entire world starting from 10 years ago.

Our region is engaged in a sound policy of new territorial governance, within the aim of modernizing the local institutions and the governance systems: we have reduced the number of Municipalities (from 348 in 2010 to 331 in 2018), we are promoting the aggregation of Municipalities (Unioni di comuni) to deploy services and functions in an integrated ad innovative way to citizens.

We are working to improve the competitiveness of our regional economic systems by strengthening the education system, from school to vocational training, to University and high specialisation centres.

Our Region hosts the 75% of research computing capacity in Italy, the reason why in Bologna it will be settled, in the next months, the European centre for calculation and weather forecast, previously settled in Reading (UK).

Let me talk a bit about our values, our historical tradition: we still believe that welfare and public healthcare system shall go hand in hand, by promoting universal services for citizens, newcomers, in favour of social inclusion and integration and fight the inequality. But we trust in a rigorous managing of pubic accounts, with a thin stock of debt.

This is a short description of Emilia-Romagna region.

I want to highlight that for us, being MA of Adrion, means letting available to all our partners our practices, to share with you our experiences, in a mutual and peer to peer approach.

For us, the added value of ADRION stands in the enormous potential of exchange of knowledge, of setting up networks enabling more and more trust among partners, be it Institutions or private sector.

So please, consider us as a proactive partner, willing to fully collaborate in the implementation of European policies.

We believe we need more Europe now, therefore we support in any possible situation the values of Cohesion policy, so as the values of European Territorial Cooperation.

We shall contribute, all together, to a new Europe, open to citizens and able to make clear that the founding values of Europe are still valid.

Welfare, inclusion, growth, sustainability are not mere slogan, on the contrary they are the core of European and national policies to be implemented with actions, investments and projects.

At this time, we have spent around 60 million of Euro, we are spending other 33 million, but we would like to double the available budget in the next plan 2020 2027. Now we are committed for this goal, and I would like to invite all EU and IPA members for reach this goal. We must, all together maintaining a pressure for reach the goal of 250 million for the New Adrion Programme.

We are the impression that the quality of a plenty of presented projects don’t demonstrates the quality evidence of an administrative strength, but that is one of the meaning of the existence of Adrion Program: improve the public sector in the South East Europe.

Looking for the next EU plan 2020 2027 we could also reasoning about the new pillars in this forum, talking of our ability of cross the themes inside the presents pillar and axis, if at all introducing some innovation like a proposal to the EU commission.

These are some of the reasons why we are actively involved as MA of Adrion.

Believe me, for our region playing such a role is highly costly, in terms of human resources to be dedicated, time devoted in trying to reach efficiency goals in a framework of strict national and European rules.

Such strong efforts are done because we believe that ADRION is a very good tool for the development and internationalization of the territories of the Adriatic Ionian region and of the Western Balkan areas in general, also considering the expected and necessary enlargement of the European Union and to the debate on the future of the European Territorial Cooperation for the post 2020.b

Concluding, I want to thank all the experts who will provide their contribution to today’s Event.

In particular, my thanks go to:

-        the representatives of the projects approved during the first ADRION call and to the coordinators of the Thematic Steering Groups of the 4 EUSAIR pillars who will participate in the panel "ADRION as most implementing of the EU Strategy for the Adriatic and Ionian Region – EUSAIR;

-        the members of the ADRION Monitoring Committee who will take part to the panel "ADRION contribution to strengthening trust across borders and fostering European integration ",

-        Mr. Jean Pierre Halkin – from DG Regio and his staff so actively involved in supporting ADRION programme

Let me also thank the euro-deputies Mercedes Bresso and Ivan Jakovcic who, although not able to attend in person, have made a major contribution through video messages to provide a contribution to the items to be discussed today.

Before starting our working day with a video message from Stefano Bonaccini, President of the Emilia-Romagna Region, and entering into the heart of the event, I would like to thank the Joint Secretariat of ADRION which, with its professionalism and spirit of sacrifice, is a needful technical tool for managing the program ADRION. I especially thank Ms Barbara di Piazza for her commitment, passion and professionalism and I ask her to convey my thanks to the whole JS team for what they have done and for the future challenges we will face together.

Finally, I would like to thank the Managing Authority team, which is always available to all of you and willing to solve the problems and difficulties that rise day by day in the management of such a complex program as ADRION is.

The experience that they are developing with the ADRION programme, is increasing the professionalism and skills of the entire administration of the Emilia-Romagna region.

Grazie Caterina, Lodovico, Agnese, Rossana and Salvatore for the commitment, professionalism and passion you put into your work.

Thanks for your attention!

http://www.adrioninterreg.eu/

PMA 2012 Conference, Cambridge UK 11-13 July 2012

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT – THE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT CYCLE AT THE UNION OF MUNICIPALITIES OF BASSA ROMAGNA

Fabrizio Bocci, Francesco R. Frieri

Keywords: Performance Management Cycle, Public Sector Reform, Local Government, Inter-municipal cooperation, shared services

The aim of this paper is to investigate the key success factors that make the Union of Municipalities of Bassa Romagna (UMBR) one of the best performing Unions in Italy, analyze the influence of public sector reform on its approach in managing performance, describe how its shared performance management system has been implemented and highlight results achieved.

INTER-MUNICIPAL COOPERATION

In a context where resources for the public sector are diminishing and public expectations are growing, local governments are under pressure to deliver the same level of services in the face of massive cuts to their budget. Small Municipalities suffer more than larger ones because they lack critical mass. Scarcity of resources make them unable to fulfil needs and wishes of their inhabitants and provide them with the quality and the quantity of services they require. In these conditions improving performance and creating public value (Moore, 1995) is quite a tough challenge. A feasible solution is to join efforts through an inter-municipal cooperation (Hulst and van Montfort, 2007): sharing resources with other Municipalities in order to integrate processes, increase efficiency, save money, deliver better services and generate greater outcomes.

There might be different forms of cooperation among Municipalities in different countries: from setting up a few shared services to integrating vision, strategies and actions.

Inter-municipal cooperation practices are widespread throughout European countries, even if there are remarkable differences in the way they are implemented (Bolgherini, 2011).

It is almost impossible to compare the degree of autonomy of local governments in different European countries (Hulst and van Montfort, 2007), but the level of autonomy usually plays a fundamental role in the quest of cooperation among Municipalities. In countries with a centralized structure of governance, competences and resources of local authorities are limited and there is little room of cooperation. Central government takes responsibility for most decisions that directly affect Municipalities. In countries where Municipalities are endowed with more autonomy in delivering services to citizens and managing their costs, there are more opportunities to practice an effective inter-municipal cooperation1.

In England often councils “compete, rather than to work collaboratively with each other and there are few examples of increased horizontal cooperation between local authorities”. (Kelly, 2007). In Italy and in other countries the willingness to aggregate on an inter- municipal basis is expressed in ways and degrees that range from less structured solutions governed through agreements, such as Associations of Municipalities, to more structured solutions, such as Unions of Municipalities (Sorrentino et al., 2010)

The Union of Municipalities

In Italy the most effective form of inter-municipal cooperation is when a few small Municipalities join together in a Union of Municipalities (UM). Of course not all the Unions achieve the same level of benefits for the associated Municipalities.

To be successful, cooperation among Municipalities requires a strong commitment: clear governance, shared strategies, trust, mutual respects and accountability of all partners. Without these ingredients little can be accomplished. But to make the whole mechanism really actionable and effective it is necessary to implement a shared performance management system in order to share vision and strategic intents, plan objectives, define targets, measure progresses and evaluate actions, behaviours and performance results.

Union of Municipalities is a form of local government, with a legal identity, explicitly provided for in the Italian law. It consists of an optional and voluntary integration of Municipalities, based on respect for local authorities’ self government (Deffigier, 2008). Even if a Union has its own legal identity, Municipalities involved preserve their own legal identity. The bylaws appoint one of Mayors of the partner Municipalities president of the Union and establish that “the other bodies are composed of local council members and the boards of the associated Municipalities to guarantee the representation of minority  interests” (Sorrentino and De Marco, 2012)

The key elements that characterize an effective Union are "the joint definition of long-term strategies, the allocation and distribution of the resources among the partners and the regulation of the activities and relations with the end-users" (Sorrentino et al., 2010).

THE UNION OF MUNICIPALITIES OF BASSA ROMAGNA (UMBR)

In this section we analyze the path followed by the Municipalities that joined in the Union of Municipalities of Bassa Romagna, how they have delegated the whole administration of a range of duties and tasks to the Union, how the Union has produced benefits for each Municipality unavailable through isolated activities and unilateral actions. The Union of Municipalities of Bassa Romagna (UMBR) is a Union of nine Municipalities that lie between the provinces of Ravenna and Bologna (this territory is named Bassa Romagna): Alfonsine, Bagnacavallo, Bagnara di Romagna, Conselice, Cotignola, Fusignano, Lugo, Massa Lombarda e S.Agata sul Santerno. The smallest Municipality counts just over 2,000 inhabitants and the largest about 33,000. UMBR has a total population of over 103.000 people and a territorial extension of about 490 square miles. UMBR was established in 2008 after an experience of 7 years as Association of Municipalities to provide a few shared services. At the time it was founded the Union inherited 48 employees and 4 shared services provided on behalf of its members by the previous association of Municipalities: legal and administrative management; human resources training and development; tax collection; assistance to elderly people who do not required hospitalization, people with disabilities or psychological distress, adults and children living in poverty, abandoned children. At the beginning of 2008 the total number of employees was about 700 (48 in the UMBR and the rest in the individual Municipalities). In 2012, four years later, the UMBR consists of about

360 employees out of a total of 670. Today the Union is directly responsible for the management of 28 out of a total of 32 services provided by Municipalities in the territory. The chief executive officer is unique, and has an overall responsibility for all employees. Almost all activities and policies are coordinated at the Union level. Individual Municipalities maintain their decisional autonomy just in a few local matters.

The following table show the progression of shared services provided by the Union on behalf of individual Municipalities.

2008

2009

2010

2011

14 services

17 services

24 services

28 services

Both Union and Municipalities have legal identities and it might create some confusion. For the purpose of this paper we define “the whole organization” as the sum of the Union and the Municipalities.

One of the major challenges faced by Unions lies in the efforts require to make mutual decisions (a few Union’s decisions must be approved by every single municipal assembly) and generate results that are more than the sum of their contributions. (Messina 2011). One of the key points in the success of the integration process implemented in Bassa Romagna was to align the efforts with the creation of a common Strategic Plan in 2009. In public sector organizations the strategic plan outlines the decisions they made to create public value for the community they serve (Bocci, 2005). In the Union, the plan was developed using the guided principles and the framework proposed by Bryson in Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations (Bryson, 2004). In making the strategic plan the Union shared the long-terms goals with all the key stakeholders in the territory and, in the meantime, put great attention on the specific needs of its members.

THE PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM

“The new approach to public sector management is linked to an increasing interest in performance measurement in the public sector” (Neely et al., 2006). To help public sector organizations to focus on their performance, the latest reform of public administration in Italy (OECD, 2010), influenced by the New Public Management (Osborne, Gaebler, 1993), introduced the “performance management cycle” that should be adopted by all public sector organizations (centrally and locally). For the first time, in Italy, the approach to performance measurement and management in public sector organizations was defined by law. This reform, implemented through the legislative decree 150/2009, aimed at ensuring a higher level of Public Administration’s accountability towards its citizens, increasing efficiency, productivity and effectiveness of the public sector, improving the quality of public services provided to citizens, rewarding employees on the basis of performance and merit.

Every public organization should measure, evaluate, and report the performance of itself as a whole, of its functional units, of its managers and employees.

The performance management cycle is organized as follows:

1.      Planning the performance: definition and assignment of objectives, targets and indicators and alignment between agreed objectives and resources allocation

2.      Monitoring over the period to identify issues, performance gaps and non compliance and put in place corrective actions

3.      Measuring and evaluating organizational and individual performance at the end of the period

4.      Rewarding employees on merit and achieved results using a forced ranking system (bell curve 25/50/25) to differentiate top, medium and low performers

5.     Reporting results to politicians, chief executive officers, directors-general and citizens

In order to support the performance management cycle, every public organization should produce three documents:

1.       The performance measuring and evaluating system

2.       The performance plan

3.       The performance report

Public administrations are required to disclose their performance plan and performance report containing strategic and operational objectives, as well as results achieved and outcomes of the performance appraisal of staff. (OECD, 2010).

Despite its innovative elements and pragmatic approach, extending the reform program to local governments has proved to be a difficult challenge and a quite slow process. At the local level most public organizations still do not understand the value of measuring and managing their performance using a structured system. Due to the large autonomy they have in making decisions about their internal organization, up to now, only a few local administrations have fully applied the reform principles and implemented an effective performance management system. One of them is the Union of Municipalities of Bassa Romagna, recognized as an example of excellence by the Public Function Department of the Ministry of Public Administration.

THE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF THE UNION

Achieving results in the public sector requires collaboration and alignment. There is the need to provide all units and departments within the organization with the opportunity to demonstrate how their specific actions contribute in making a difference and helping the organization fulfil its mission its strategic objectives (Niven, 2003). One of the biggest challenges faced by the UMBR was (and still is) unifying the approach to performance management in each Municipality. “A shared understanding is a necessary element of moving towards the culture of performance management”. (Micheli and Pavlov, 2009) Therefore, the idea was to create a shared performance management system to provide meaningful, fact-based information to every decision maker in the Municipalities, and avoid to build it as an extension of the current accounting system, just to keep costs under control (Ogata and Goodkey, 2002). They started by developing a shared strategic plan and defining common priorities to create agreement about directions and ensure the sustainability of the project. The second step was to integrate processes, set shared objectives, indicators and targets and educate employees public officials, decision makers to think beyond the boundaries of their Municipalities and manage performance in partnership with the other Municipalities (Frieri et al., 2012). Now the system is supported by a software infrastructure: every Municipality may control the level of a shared service (just for a few services, at the moment) that is delivered by the Union in the Municipality’s territory.

Union redefines, organizes and provides shared services. In this process it shares also employees coming from the single Municipalities, with different backgrounds and different carriers. So one of the issues to solve is how to balance the initial differences among employees in terms of status, compensation etc. The UMBR leveraged on the new public sector reform by introducing a common performance management system based on a very tight link between organizational and individual performance: individuals work for the Union that in turn works for the single Municipalities.

The UMBR’s performance management system is based on the following principles:

•       Sharing and integration of knowledge and tools

•        Link between Union’s strategic priorities and operational objectives

•       Link between organizational and individual performance

•       Feedback to learn and improve

•       Reporting and communication of the performance, internally and externally

•        Careful selection of objectives and solid execution of plans

•       Differentiation based on merit and achieved results

•       Testability to support the transition

The performance measurement and management system of the Union ensures an high level of transparency. Objectives and performance measures are limited to only the critical few for each unit and department within the whole organization. Objectives and indicators are described in clear words anyone can easily understand. Both are published on the website, so every citizen can realize what are the objectives of every unit/department and how progress in achieving them are measured. If objectives are related to the impact of policy decisions (outlined in the Strategic Plan), they are measured with outcome indicators. If they are related to the ordinary activities and the management cycle, they are measured with output indicators.

At the end of the year there is a formal performance evaluation of all people working within the whole organization. Performance evaluation refers to the degree of achievement of assigned goals as well as to the level of competences and their use. Individual goals are derived by organizational goals, competencies are those required for the role they fulfil. The assessment system is designed to evaluate results and behaviours. In 2011 most of the functions previously performed by the Municipalities were conferred on the Union. For this reason, the core competencies required to everybody were: the ability to contribute to services and facilities integration and the problem solving capability. For Departments Heads the other competencies evaluated were: differentiation in the evaluation (requested by the public sector reform), team building and leadership. For employees were: technical competency, relational competency and service orientation.

The system applies an increasing weight to the achievement of strategic objectives, particularly to those related to the impact of policies, at the increase of the level of responsibility within the organization. The common planning system of the organizational performance makes Union’s goals and objectives complementary to those of individual Municipalities. The “Independent Organism of Evaluation”, provided for by the last public sector reform, is entitled to evaluate the organizational and individual performance in both the Union and the individual Municipalities. The following picture shows the appraisal form for Department Heads.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

One of the indicators to measure the financial health of Local Governments is the annual current expenditure (Farneti et al. 2010). More interesting than analyzing the evolution of this indicator in the financial statement of the Union or in those of each Municipality, is making a trend analysis of the current expenditure of the whole organization and of some functions and services performed in the past three years. The graph in the picture shows the evolution of the current expenditure.

In two years, the annual current expenditure dropped from 82.4 to 79.4 million euro: a decrease of 3.7% in the annual current expenditure of the whole organization. Units and departments (overhead expenses) that perform activities that do not have any direct impact  on citizens contributed for about 10% of the saving. While two services that have a strong impact on the quality of life of citizenship, the Social Service, provided by the Union, and the Educational Service (age 0-6) provided by the individual Municipalities, showed an increase in both available resources and extension of the service. It is important to underline that the Union of Municipalities created new services, like the management accounting function and the strategic planning office, that did not exist before or improved quality standards of many services provided on territory, while decreasing annual expenditure.

Due to the limitation of the analysis, it is hard to generalize the UMBR case as an example of good practice for policymakers that work at the national level on the reconfiguration of local services through collaboration, but results achieved by the Union show that optimizing the organization, increasing the efficiency and reallocating resources to better serve the community is possible even under conditions of scarcity of financial resources. The increasing number of shared services provided by the Union, the sharing of staff functions, the introduction of management accounting, the implementation of a common software system for both management and general accounting, the compliance with the new public sector reform, the implementation of an integrated performance management system, allowed to build a culture of performance planning and evaluation in the whole organization and achieve results that exceed expectations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bocci, F. (2005) “A multi-dimensional approach to the Community perspective in the Balanced Scorecard architecture for the Public Sector. Empirical evidence in Healthcare Organizations”, EGPA Annual Conference, Bern

Bolgherini, S. (2011) “Local Government and Inter-Municipal cooperation in Italy and Germany” PIFO Politische Italien-Forschung - Occasional Paper 12/2011

Bryson, J. M. (2004) “Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit Organizations”, Jossey Bass 3rd ed., San Francisco, CA

Deffigier, C. (2008) “Intermunicipal co-operation: Manual of the European Committee on Local and Regional Democracy (CDLR)” retrieved February 28, 2012 from http://www.coe.int/t/dgap/localdemocracy/programmes_democratic_stability/imc/IMC_Manu al_en.pdf

Farneti, G., Padovani, M. Levy Orelli, R. (2010) “La sana gestione finanziaria delle amministrazioni comunali: quali sviluppi a distanza di dieci anni dall’emanazione del Testo Unico Enti Locali?”, IV Workshop Nazionale Azienda Pubblica, Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, Roma.

Frieri, F.R., Gallo, L., Mordenti, M. (2012) “Le Unioni dei Comuni”, Maggioli, Sant’Arcangelo di Romagna (RN)

Hulst, R., van Montfort, A. (2007) “Inter-Municipal Cooperation in Europe”, Springer, Dordrecht

Kelly, J. (2007) “The curious absence of inter-municipal cooperation in England”, Public Policy and Administration July 2007 vol. 22 no. 3 319-334

Messina, P. (2011) “Policies for strategic territorial development. Inter-Municipality association as a form of network governance: the Italian experience”, Eastern Journal of European Studies Vol: 2 Issue: 1 Pages/record No.: 111-128

Micheli, P. and Pavlov, A. (2009) “Establishing a culture of performance management in the public sector”, PMA Conference, University of Otago, Dunedin, NZ, 14-17 April, 2009.

Moore, M.H. (1995) “Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government”, Harvard University Press, Boston, MA

Neely, A., Micheli, P., Martinez, V. (2006), “Acting on information: Lessons from theory and practice - Report prepared for the National Audit Office”. Publication sponsored by the Advanced Institute of Management

Niven, P.R. (2003) “Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step for Government and Nonprofit Agencies”, John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York

OECD (2010) “Modernising the Public Administration: a Study on Italy” Retrieved February 28, 2012 from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/3/48455315.pdf

Ogata, K., Goodkey, R. (2002) “Redefining government performance”, in Neely, A. (Ed.) Business Performance Management: Theory and Practice pp. 107-122 Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

Osborne, D., Gaebler, T. (1993) “Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector”, Plume, New York

Sorrentino, M., Simonetta, M., Bramati L. (2010) “Can mandates shape inter-municipal collaboration? The Lombardy case” XI Workshop dei docenti e dei Ricercatori di Organizzazione Aziendale: Incertezza, creatività e razionalità organizzative, Bologna

Sorrentino, M., De Marco M. (2012) “Managing Paradoxes in Public Partnerships” XVI IRSPM Conference Contradictions in Public Management: Managing in volatile times, Rome, 11th - 13th April 2012

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY (FIRST LEVEL HEADING)

Fabrizio Bocci

Fabrizio Bocci is a trainer, facilitator and consultant in strategic thinking, performance measurement and management, organization design and change. Fabrizio operates through the brand Bocci Consulting and is the creator of the online resources centre on performance measurement and management: www.balancedscorecardreview.it. He consults with public sector, profit-driven and not-for-profit organizations, coaches executives in Strategy and Balanced Scorecard and speaks internationally. In the healthcare sector, Fabrizio operates in collaboration with Ce.Ri.S.Ma.S. In 2010 he was engaged as performance consultant by the Italian Commission for the Evaluation, Transparency and Integrity of the Public Administration. He is a chartered engineer in Italy and used to work as Managing Director of the Italian subsidiaries of Media 100 and Data Translation, two multinational American companies.

Francesco R. Frieri

Francesco R. Frieri is the Chief Executive Officer of the Union of Municipalities of Bassa Romagna since 2009. He is member of the Federal Council of Local Governments and collaborates with A.N.C.I. the Nation Association of Italian Municipalities. Expert of inter- municipal cooperation, he wrote books and articles on that topic. Francesco received a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University Alma Mater at Bologna. He is involved in many projects, related to performance management and coordinated by the Public Function Department of the Ministry of the Public Administration, to spread local government best practices and lessons learned.