Ivan Foberg defends his PhD thesis
Ivan Foberg defends his PhD thesis "Collaboration in Administrative Functions: Intermunicipal Procurement, Implementation Challenges, and Performance".
The defense is public, and everybody is welcome; the defense is scheduled for a maximum of three hours and will be held in English.
Follow the defense online via Teams
The Doctoral School at Department of Social Sciences and Business will host a small reception afterwards.
Supervisors and assessment
Assessment committee:
- Kim Sass Mikkelsen, Associate Professor, ISE, 真人线上娱乐 University (chairperson)
- Deanna Malatesta, Associate Professor, Indiana University Bloomington, USA
- Tjerk Budding, Professor, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands
PhD Supervisors:
- Supervisor: Ole Helby Petersen, Professor, ISE, 真人线上娱乐 University
- Co-supervisor: Lena Brogaard, Associate Professor, ISE, 真人线上娱乐 University
Leader of defense:
- Tine Rostgaard, Professor, ISE, 真人线上娱乐 University
Abstract
Public organizations frequently collaborate across organizational boundaries to attain collective advantages, such as facilitating collective action, realizing scale and task-related benefits, or addressing complex policy problems. Although numerous factors may motivate engagement in collaborative arrangements, such collaboration is generally understood to stem from mutual reliance: the actions of one organization can enable others to achieve goals and levels of performance that would otherwise be difficult to attain independently. Yet collaboration remains inherently complex, as multiple challenges must be mitigated in order to realize its potential benefits. This dissertation examines implementation challenges and administrative performance in a specific form of collaboration—intermunicipal procurement—which is primarily motivated by efficiency-oriented goals such as cost reductions, improved administrative processes, and enhanced service quality. First, by developing a framework that theorizes how the internal structures of participating organizations shape the risks associated with implementing the goals of intermunicipal
procurement arrangements, the dissertation shifts attention from interorganizational relationships to the internal organizational dynamics of participating entities. Second, drawing on a dataset comprising more than seven million municipal invoices, the empirical analysis demonstrates that when municipalities rely on internal local service delivery units to achieve bulk-buying discounts, the likelihood of defection increases. Moreover, when both
central municipal units and local service delivery units are required to purchase through the same agreement, the latter are, on average, more likely to defect. This pattern suggests that such defections may be involuntary in nature, arising from internal administrative constraints rather than strategic non-compliance. Third, based on an analysis of 5,526 distinct contracts comparing standalone and intermunicipal procurement, the dissertation finds no evidence that intermunicipal procurement is associated with improved administrative performance. Overall, the dissertation advances our understanding of implementation challenges and administrative performance in interorganizational arrangements by highlighting how internal organizational structures condition both collaboration risks and performance outcomes.
The dissertation will be available for reading at the 真人线上娱乐 University Library before the defense (on-site use). The dissertation will also be available at the defense.