Living apart together: A comparative evaluation of mergers of cadastral agencies and public land registers in Europe

Abstract

Purpose

Against the backdrop of European eGovernment (eGov) and new public management strategies, public sector mergers are the ultimate transformation after collaboration and integration. The land administration domain is useful to evaluate how and why mergers occur or not. The domain usually comprises two types of organizations, cadastres and land registries. There are both national and international calls to merge these two types, yet some countries have opted to merge these, while others persist in maintaining two separate ones. How and why this occurs is the key question.

Design/methodology/approach

This study applies a mixed-methods approach of data collection and a co-evolutionary perspective on organizational changes. Agencies change alongside perceptions of staff members and external stimuli of policies. These are exposed through narrated personal vignettes and international benchmarking surveys of land agencies.

Findings

Decisions on mergers are primarily embedded in local organizational cultures, and follow non-linear paths and are historically path-dependent. Internal staff members tend to disfavour mergers. Contrastingly, external stimuli such as the benchmark surveys act as national and international stimuli which favour mergers. The common narrative of both perspectives is an increased relevance of “simplicity”, which does not however have an effect on merger decisions.

Research limitations/implications

The land administration domain is perhaps idiosyncratic. It has a long history with discussions on merging collaborating organizations. Still, other domains affected by eGov strategies have so far only focused on operational interoperability and database integration, and less on the potential for institutional or organizational mergers. Therefore, experiences from land administration will be useful in the future.

Practical implications

During the formulation of new eGov projects which foster further collaboration and integration in the public sector, it is necessary to take the merger experiences of land agencies into account. It is especially necessary to be aware of implicit norms which are fostered by positive feedback loops of social networks during mergers, which may influence discretionary decisions. In addition, international benchmarks and ranking need to reconsider their benchmarking criteria which currently only focus on efficiency measures.

Originality/value

Mergers may not be a next logical step when collaborating and integrating. Instead, mergers need to be rooted in personal long-standing collaboration practices. Furthermore, individual staff members may only be willing to engage in the operational aspects of mergers if it significantly makes their own tasks simpler and the quality of their work better appreciated by external customers.

Citation

de Vries, W.T., Laarakker, P.M. and Wouters, H.J. (2015), "Living apart together: A comparative evaluation of mergers of cadastral agencies and public land registers in Europe", Transforming Government: People, Process and Policy, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 545-562. https://doi.org/10.1108/TG-09-2014-0040