Management across boundaries: A municipal dilemma

• Published date: 01 August 2018
• Author: Anna Thomasson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/faam.12152
• Date: 01 August 2018

Received: 14 September 2015 Revised: 7 November2016 Accepted: 16 February 2017

DOI: 10.1111/faam.12152

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Management across boundaries: A municipal

dilemma

Anna Thomasson

Schoolof Economics and Management, Lund

University,Lund, Sweden

Correspondence

AnnaThomasson, School of Economics and

Management,Lund University, P.O.Box7080,

Lund220 07, Sweden.

Email:anna.thomasson@fek.lu.se

Abstract

Public sector mergers have the potential of being viable alternative

to other public sector reforms in the striving toward making public

service provision more equipped to confront some of the challenges

faced today.Mergers however often fail to deliver promised results.

Previous research point to the importance of post-merger integrat-

ing processes for realizing the synergies expected from mergers.

However, so far these studies have focused on what occurs inside

organizations and less on the interplay between different levels. By

adopting a governance and top management perspective, this study

increases our understanding of the importance of political decisions

on the outcome of a merger in the public sector context.Further, this

study increases our understanding of how organizational boundaries

on different levels of merging organizations influence post-merger

integrating processes and the role of different actors as boundary

spanners. The results of this study are based on five case studies of

public sector mergers at the local level in Sweden.

KEYWORDS

collaboration,organizational boundaries, public sector merger, resis-

tance, water and sewage services

1INTRODUCTION

Public sector has been struggling with financial austerity for a long period. At the same time, the sector experiences

great pressure to solve increasingly more complex issues. As a response to these challenges, different reforms have

been introduced into public sector during the last decades, with the goal to increase efficiency and competence within

publicorganizations. Onesuch reform that has grown in popularity is to merge public sectorservices (Giessner, Horton,

& Humborstsad, 2016; Lieberherr,2011; Steiner, 2013).

In the private sector, merger is a common strategic tool to increase scope and scale of service provision as well

as to expand into new markets and acquire know-how and competence (Giessner et al., 2016). For similar rea-

sons, we have seen the introduction of mergers as a strategic tool also in public sector (Choi, Holmberg, Löwst-

edt, & Brommels, 2011; Giessner et al., 2016; Lieberherr, 2011; Luoma-aho & Makikangas, 2014; Steiner, 2013).

Financial Acc & Man. 2018;34:213–225. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/faam c

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