Managing emergent and complex change: the case of Dutch agencification

Abstract

An analysis is made of agencification reform in the Netherlands from the viewpoint of the management of the complex change process. We will present a processual analysis of the complex change process of agencification reform by means of organization science insights on ‘emergent change’ and administrative science insights on ‘complex networks’. The analysis of the process of change events shows that it is not an example of centrally planned and controlled change. The reform is rather an example of ‘emergent and complex change’. The reform is a complex system of different intertwined change processes with many different decentralized actors, which is ‘managed’ by different central ‘change agents’. The ‘change managers’ themselves form a complex system as well.

Points for practitioners

One of the important reform trends in Dutch central administration is the ‘agencification’ of executive government organizations, that is, the increase of managerial autonomy of executive parts of ministerial departments. In this article we analyse how this two-decades-long reform process was ‘managed’ by various central actors like Parliament, the National Audit Office, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Home Affairs, various internal and external advisory committees and supervisory committees. It turned out that the reform can hardly be described as a centrally planned and controlled process. Initiatives for reform, in fact, popped up locally within the various ministries and agencies. The reform process was more a continuous accumulation of local initiatives for agencification. The various central actors tried to exercise some coordinating or supervisory influence, but that was rather indirect, reactive and limited.