Check out our new blog about the impact of repetitive reforms at Do Better by Esade Business School; https://dobetter.esade.edu/en/repetitive-reform (English) or https://dobetter.esade.edu/es/reforma-reiterada?_wrapper_format=html (Spanish)
I am a research professor (TTZAPBOF) at the University of Antwerp (Faculty of Business and Economics, Department of Management). My main research focuses on the way organizations react, or can be organized to adapt, to changing environments. Previously, I worked as an assitant professor at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. Prior to my academic career, I worked as a consultant for IDEA Consult (research-based consultancy).
Download my CVPhD in Social Sciences, 2014
KU Leuven/ Antwerp University
Advanced master in International Business Economics, 2008
KU Leuven
Check out our new blog about the impact of repetitive reforms at Do Better by Esade Business School; https://dobetter.esade.edu/en/repetitive-reform (English) or https://dobetter.esade.edu/es/reforma-reiterada?_wrapper_format=html (Spanish)
Inspired by advancements in neuroendocrinology, this funding aims at supporting a pilot study on the usefulness of hair cortisol concentration (HCC) analysis for understanding the effect of intense change sequences on civil servants.
Inspired by advancements in neuroendocrinology, this BOFKP aims at supporting a pilot study on the usefulness of hair cortisol concentration (HCC) analysis for understanding the effect of intense change sequences on civil servants.
In response to today’s hectic and complex society, waves of reforms have been implemented in OECD countries to modernize the public sector. This reform appetite has caused many public organizations to be involved in near-endless cycles of reforms. Recent findings indicate that the ambiguity and uncertainty that intense reforms bring about may drastically increase employee work stress. Structural reforms therefore may paradoxically undermine the very performance and adaptability of public sector organizations they seek to improve, a process that has been labelled repetitive reform injury. The question then becomes: how can government reap the benefits of reforms (flexibility, adaptability,…) without negatively affecting employee work stress? Given the continued interest in, and necessity of, reforming public organizations, it is crucial to deepen our understanding on how to avoid repetitive reform injury. This project addresses this question by theorizing and testing the influence of the full-range of leadership behaviors (transformational, transactional, and laissez-faire leadership) on employee work stress in settings of varying reform intensity. The project contributes not only theoretically, but also answers to recent calls for the application of more innovative and rigorous methods.
This BOF funded project will qualitatively investigate (a) the short term and (b) the long term impact of extensive structural changes on decision-making processes within organizations. Two measurement point will be applied, not only allowing to assess the long-term impact, but also to improve causal inference.
In the last three decades, public tasks have been shifted from central government to a proliferated periphery of autonomous agencies. According to the New Public Management (NPM) doctrine, organizational autonomy would induce these agencies to develop a more private sector-like management, to be more customer-oriented, and to be more accountable for results. Although many governments of most OECD countries continue(d) to change the structure of their public sector fundamentally, following NPM and post-NPM recipes, little was known of the effect of increased autonomy. More precisely, there was a lack of theoretical modelling, appropriate methodologies and empirical evidence about the effects of organizational autonomy. This research addressed this gap by testing the effects of organizational autonomy on (1) the organizational capacity, (2) the managerial and policy processes, and (3) the accountabilities of public sector organizations. These have been identified as necessary preconditions for a better organizational performance.
In response to economic pressures and increasing demands on public sector performance, subsequent waves of public sector reforms were introduced over the last decades. This research examines effect of an organization’s history of structural changes on a key variable for the functioning of a public sector organization: the way it deals with organizational autonomy.
Public organizations are subject to a multitude of reforms. Yet, little is known on the precise effects of such continuous reforms. This VENI research project analyses the effect of such repeated structural reforms on the entrepreneurial nature of public sector organizations.
In the last decades, waves of structural reforms have been implemented in OECD countries to create more efficient public services, causing some organizations to have experienced severe and continuous trajectories of for instance mergers, splits and changes in legal form. While governments continuously impose structural reforms to improve public sector performance, we may simultaneously expect such continuous structural reforms to have detrimental side-effects, such as strong reductions in employee job satisfaction. Recognizing that continuous structural reforms have become a pervasive feature of modern public sectors, the research proposed here will innovatively investigate (a) the effect of extensive structural reform histories on post-reform levels of job satisfaction and (b) the impact of such reform histories on the long-term recuperation of job satisfaction levels following sequences of reforms. We utilize a combination of both large-N regression analysis and a small-N natural experiment. Both the large-N and small-N phases will utilize two measurement points, not only allowing us to assess the long-term development of job satisfaction, but also to improve causal inference. As job satisfaction has been linked with factors such as performance, turnover and even sick leave on the basis of single reform studies, but the long-term effects of continuous structural reforms remain unexplored, the project holds important implications for scholars and policy-makers.
Together with prof.dr. Koen Verhoest I co-supervise this PhD project which analyses the effect of repeated structural reforms on the organizational climate of public sector organizations.
Customer satisfaction regarding public services is often only loosely coupled to changes in actual performance. This gap between satisfaction and performance may lead to misguided reforms and may erode trust in public services. Literature shows how the incapacity of customers to assess actual performance can be attributed to the bounded rationality of customers. We know less about how public communication influences this bounded decision making that underlies the performance-satisfaction gap. With the rise of social media, the communication channels for public sector organizations have grown extensively. Twitter has become the dominant medium since it allows public organizations to interact directly with large audiences and offer live updates on services. Twitter should be ideally suited to address the information problem and thus to mitigate the performance-satisfaction gap. Yet, studies to the potential benefits and effects of social media within a public sector context are lacking. This project therefore asks whether and how public communication by public service providers via Twitter reduces the performance satisfaction gap. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest setup with advanced time series modelling, this project will bring new insights on what influences satisfaction of public services, the effect of public communication through social media as well as methodological innovation in the use of social media sources for Public Administration research.