Abstract
At a time when, in France, the central government is placing new hope in the principle of governance of its utilities by means of performance indicators, this article argues that governance through performance measurement and management tools alone, however sophisticated, is not enough to meet the current challenges facing public water governance. However, the debate triggered on the objectives of the performance measurement tools raises substantive issues relating to public water governance. These substantive issues touch as much on the (strategic and organizational) components of the model of governance as on its control system. This is demonstrated by the action research experiment conducted in conjunction with the water utility of Nantes Métropole (Urban Community of Nantes), where the introduction of a new performance measurement tool leads the actors within the system to focus on the question of the values that the public water governance model must carry. These values, which relate to the very ‘public’ and multidimensional component of water, appear in the local governance system under construction as a cornerstone of the model of governance.
Points for practitioners
In the case of the water utilities where the legitimization of the systems of governance is based on a rationale of technical justification, managerial instrumentation and performance evaluation must contend with the strategic and political vacuum resulting from the weakness of expression of political choices. How, then, to take up the challenge of a dynamic and participatory governance? Putting the objectives of the new evaluation tools into the centre of the debate is a relevant approach to question the ultimate meaning of the action, whose content is inevitably associated with the values that should govern water governance.
The technical constraint is the one thing from which the water utility cannot escape. On the other hand, the question of the meaning of the action, the control over the decision-making process and public accountability are a permanent challenge. 2
In the French world of water utilities dominated by ‘the PPP model’ 3 the ‘performance phenomenon’ spread and took centre stage from the early 1990s in a context marked by an unprecedented inflation in the price of water and the recurring controversy surrounding this price increase. The performance indicators were therefore brought in to provide evidence of the performance of the water utilities. After the stage that saw the standardization and regulation of the content of performance in 2007, a national observatory of water utilities available for online consultation by the public 4 was launched in 2009 with the aim of establishing a model of governance for utilities where the performance indicators are designed as ‘instruments of good governance of utilities to ensure user satisfaction’ (Salvetti and Wittner, 2012).
In addition to this national model that is struggling to get off the ground, we are witnessing the emergence of local water governance models whose originality lies in their specific territorial components and the processes that bring them about.
In this article, where we are not dealing with water governance from the point of view of ‘water as a resource’ (see in this respect, volume 77 of the RISA journal published in 2011), but from the point of view of ‘water as a service’, we will be focusing on one of these emerging local governance models of ‘water as a service’.
On the basis of action research conducted within a large urban water utility, we show how the implementation of a new performance evaluation tool will lead players to examine the very content of the performance of the utility and thereby prompt a refocus and redefinition of the local water governance model. We then characterize this emerging system of local governance before, finally, discussing the scope and limitations of the management tools in the steering of the governance of the water ‘world’.
Questioning the water governance model in Nantes Métropole
The emergence of Nantes’ local water governance model is the result of a process that can be put down to both a tradition of managerial innovation and the effects of its transition to an urban community in 2001.
The main economic hub in Western France, Nantes Métropole serves an area covering 24 communes representing 595,000 inhabitants. Two operators provide the water supply for this urban community:
la Régie Communautaire de l’Eau (RCE), dating back over a century and under public management, supplies water to 75 percent of the population; Véolia and the Saur, private water companies, serve the remaining quarter of the territory. The action research covering a five-year period established between our research team and the Water Directorate
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is a research programme co-designed with practitioners that pursues the dual purpose of responding to issues regarding managerial change while furthering our fundamental knowledge in the humanities and social sciences (Christen-Gueissac, 2006). The method implemented borrows from constructivist approaches (in accordance with Lewin, 1951, and Mucchielli, 1991). It is based on the definition of a research strategy and protocol that puts the emphasis on the specific situation that is causing the problem (in our case, the shift away from the technical mindset within which performance evaluation was confined), takes into consideration the actual social relations (daily action) and is related to the managerial innovation project (the introduction of an analysis tool with a new dimension of performance). The research is carried out on the basis of a protocol consisting of different stages ranging from planning (objectives, methods, timing) to the collection of data through phases of debriefing and reflective feedback on the results and progress of the research. On an operational level, a research steering group consisting of members of the water directorate
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and researchers from our team headed and facilitated the research. The ‘field’ phase resulted in 15 sessions with different groups of the utility’s staff, two comparative sessions with the quality unit, three group feedback and discussion workshops bringing together the steering group of the action research, management and middle management. Focus groups involving service users and members of staff working for the two water operators were also organized to identify public water values. Our empirical analysis is based on the study of the material collected in the course of the research (interviews, field observations and reflective feedback conducted with the players). We also make use of the internal documentation of the utility. The ‘solidarity’ value and the similar values identified (social justice, equity, protection of the basic human right of access to water) are not a new subject in the field of the French doctrine of public service. What is different in the new space of the urban water governance is the fact that, on the one hand, this social dimension of the action hitherto lacking in managerial concerns, has become a hot topic on the various stages of water management (local, national and international) due to the rising socioeconomic vulnerability of some populations accentuated by increases in the price of water. This concept of solidarity emerged within the context of the qualitative inquiry as a criterion necessary for the justification of the public weal aspect, a fundamental value that serves as the foundation of the specificity of public performance and is likely to differentiate the public water operator from the private operators. ‘We're talking about life products. I mean water is vital. We cannot leave people in difficulty in a country where we have a developed network... The authority, whatever it is, has a social role, inevitably...’ (excerpt from the focus group B). A second interesting value that belongs to the fundaments of the core public values of the utility in Nantes is the ‘credibility of the politician’ value and its co-values: integrity, sense of political accountability and openness. The ‘credibility of the politician’ value has a special status in the typology of the values identified because it falls within the anthropological values supposedly embodied by persons. Its importance in the system of public governance is due to two things. It accredits the expression of the political choices with a quality considered as significantly lacking in contemporary political systems: the trust that is considered as one of the key issues of the water utility: ‘So here, it is very simple, you can’t put your trust in any political party. They are manipulators, liars, there are no two ways about it, I simply don’t trust them at all. They can come up with all the arguments they want, the next time they do something else and they do exactly what they want to do’ (from the focus group C). Here we touch on the professional code of conduct and the ethical dimension of governance, which, within the framework of the management of an asset as symbolic as water, effectively chart its multidimensionality. Finally, this value of ‘credibility of the political player’ is interesting in the apprehension of the new governance framework by providing elements that were objectified collectively to feed the necessary reflection on the clarification of the role of stakeholders in the governance of water.Box 1 Challenges, objectives and method of the action research approach set up in conjunction with the water utility of Nantes Métropole
Box 2: Example of two public values of the utility to be evaluated that structure the public water governance model under construction in Nantes Métropole
Clarifying the concept of governance
Despite the conceptual vagueness and polysemy that characterize the concept of governance, a portmanteau word that lacks stability at theoretical level, its global spread seems to have turned it into an obvious choice to better grasp the complexity of contemporary collective action.
According to Marcou (2006), the first occurrence of the concept dates back to the fifteenth century and is attributed to an English legal expert, John Fortescue, in his book The Governance of England where he contrasts the mode of governance by contract of his own country with that of the kings of France who ruled by tyranny and without regard for their subjects. The concept was to reappear in the late 1980s in the work of political scientists and sociologists in reference to the impasses of structural adjustment policies in African countries. The concept of governance was used at the time as an alternative to that of government because it does not prejudge the location, character and the real decision-making authority (McCarney and Stren, 2003). 7
For the World Bank in the late 1980s, the concept took on a normative slant used in terms of ‘good governance’, and ‘refers to how legitimate power should be exercised in interaction with the various components of society, for the common good’. 8
The term went on to make a much remarked comeback in developed countries in the early twenty-first century where it has spawned a vast literature over the past 15 years (Osmont et al., 2008). Today, the concept of governance has been broken down into different elements: overall governance, global governance, local governance, territorial governance, urban governance, water governance, etc. In reality, there are different models of governance that have emerged in recent years with their local characteristics (Mazouz et al., 2005).
In the water sector, the term ‘governance’ has spread with the international promotion of the model of public–private partnership (PPP) and in particular the ‘French model of water’ considered at the time by the main international financial institutions as the ultimate reference (World Bank, 2003). The failures of this model in the past two decades have brought back to the table the issue of coordination of the stakeholders and the political game in a multistakeholder context marked by divergent interests, asymmetric information and imbalance of power relations that blur and complicate the smooth running of the governance processes.
Also, at a time when the idea of global water governance is under discussion, in France, where water management is local, the concept of governance is being built at the level of local territories and at the national level. In Nantes Métropole, the water governance model is emerging and being built step by step in the face of new challenges.
The emergence of Nantes’ water governance model: the shift in the legitimization and instrumentation of public action
The management of the Régie
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communautaire de l’eau (RCE) of Nantes Métropole is rooted in a past where the choice of public water management dates back more than a century in a global context of delegation of water services to the private sector. Therefore, legitimizing the choice of public governance has always been a concern for both the politician and the public manager who must constantly provide evidence of the performance of the service. This justification through performance as a means of legitimizing public action has taken different forms over time (see Figure 1):
Evolution of Nantes Métropole management of the water utility performance in and the way of legitimation
The first period can be considered that prior to the territorial restructuring of the water supply, where action was legitimized mainly by the technical aspects, the related standards and management tools to instrument it: it was the age of governance by means of the ‘technical citadel’;
The second period, which started with the expansion of the water utility’s territory of action in 2001, marked a turning point in the justification and instrumentation of local public action: this marks the beginning of the era of ‘urban water governance’.
When technical rationality is enough to legitimize the public service governance system: the model of the ‘technical citadel’
The governance model of the water utilities that imposed itself structurally and that we have called the ‘technical citadel’ (Tsanga Tabi, 2003), has characteristics peculiar to ‘network’ public activities which form the contextual landscape in which the actors’ representations of the service are rooted.
Indeed, the management of the large urban utilities (water, sanitation, electricity, etc.) is part of a world where responsibility for the public interest embodied in the ideal of public health comes within a framework of action defined by a number of regulatory, legal and budgetary constraints that need to be satisfied. This regulatory approach prevailed throughout the first century (1895–1995) that constitutes the first period of water governance in Nantes, first of all determined by technical considerations.
The performance management tools at work then emerge from a rationale of ‘specialized rationalization’ of the action (Moisdon, 1997). Management tools are the ‘invisible drivers of public action’ (Lorrain, 2005) and raise the question of ‘who governs water?’ (Citroni et al., 2007; Massardier, 2011).
This form of technical rationalization through management tools was to take on such magnitude that it was to over-determine the management of the utility and a priori structure the representations of the performance of the players and the criteria of legitimizing governance. This model was to prevail for nearly a century without being questioned.
The 1990s saw the arrival on the national stage of considerable controversy aroused by the ‘explosion in the price of water’ (Guellec, 1995) brought about by the monopoly enjoyed by the system. This triggered a movement of re-regulation of the water sector. 10 It was in this national context of turmoil that the water utility in Nantes began to modernize the operation of the technical citadel. Its aim was to upgrade this system of governance centred on technical considerations towards a system open to the politician and the user who benefited from the service. Two new tools were introduced.
The objective contract in 1995 as the first tool to set objectives for the action that resulted for the first time in a dialogue between politicians and engineers and paved the way for the emergence of a hitherto non-existent managerial relationship.
The instrumentation of performance through a quality tool in 1997 as a means of taking into account the user, considered the poor relation of water utility management.
The quality tool was to enjoy its heyday: the water authority obtained several quality labels and won several regional awards. However, the ‘quality of service’ tool did not seriously call into question the way of legitimizing the action according to technical considerations.
The emergence of the water governance model in Nantes: when territorial effects join forces with managerial innovation
From 2001 onwards, the effects of the territorialization of the water supply combined with the dynamics of managerial innovation were to play a central role in the process of restructuring the governance of water in Nantes Métropole.
The amplification of the effect of extending the territory and the provision of urban utilities
It was in 2001, at the time of its transition into an urban community
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(covering 24 instead of four communes) that the idea of urban governance was rolled out at political and managerial levels with the introduction of the idea of a new schema of players and rules of action. How is the local governance of the utilities in Nantes metropolis organized? It is a schema of players and a framework for action that form what we have called the triangular model, which is our theoretical basis and that makes the organizing authority a major player in local sustainable development, and not just a regulatory authority. The tool that allows it to become this organizing authority is intercommunal cooperation, which gives it a critical mass, with its own resources and real bargaining power by combining the skills transferred and expanding the area of operation under a single authority. (Director of Utilities of Nantes Métropole, extract from the first seminar of Public Water Management organized within the framework of the action research IRSTEA-Nantes Métropole, June 2007)
The effects of this reterritorialization of the utility have been felt at two levels:
First of all, the action system is becoming increasingly complex and new issues that emerge not only from technical rationality come to the fore. Expanding the territory brings on board a new category of players (two private operators) inducing a mix of management systems. 12
Second, this new configuration of action creates a revaluation of the ‘policy-making’ functions of the new Urban Community: how now to organize this diversity of management systems and define the strategy of the utility across the new territory, how to develop a level of expertise to support decision-making and establish control of the three water operators?
The new urban governance project is organized around the theme of ‘the organizing authority’ 13 and is analysed within the ‘triangular model’ represented by the triptych of elected officials-operators-users, where the role of the elected official, in interaction with the two other players of the triangle, is discussed and translated into political language. One of the first priorities will be to harmonize the price 14 and level of service across the metropolitan area regardless of the management system. The reformalization of water policy across the whole water cycle 15 is the most recent episode (2012) of this rearrangement of local governance.
The second major element that drives this reconfiguration of urban water governance is played out within the water utility itself.
The effects of the dynamics of managerial innovation
While an ad hoc committee got down to securing the objective of harmonizing the price of water, an original managerial innovation was initiated by the water utility. An action research programme 16 for a period of five years was designed in the course of 2005 between our research team and the water utility directorate.
In the new context of Nantes Métropole, the action research tool gave a new dimension to the issue of performance, emerging from a change of vision by some of the players within the utility. There was a switch from a public service approach perceived as a ‘technical object’ to a perception of public service considered as a support ‘to a public action system’ where the global dimension of the action is meant to incorporate both the political and the social in the act of production (Muller, 2000). The performance was put into question. This is the third season of the management of the performance of the water utility (see Figure 1) and new performance issues have made their way onto the agenda:
The first is the issue of efficiency whose measurement is considered as a condition for the identification of the economic performance of the RCE, resulting in a first evaluation project through activities based costing (ABC). 17
The second topical issue of the action research was the democratization of the functioning of the ‘technical citadel’. The aim was to try out a ‘citizen dialogue’ approach in appropriate forms in order to overcome this structural deficit in water management. A thesis was undertaken and submitted in 2010 (Bédu, 2010). 18
Finally, the economic sustainability of the utility was the third important issue on the agenda of the action research. It aimed, through the instrumentation of a local observatory of water consumption, to assess and analyse future water consumption.
The contribution of the new performance management tools to the construction of Nantes’ system of governance
The rollout of the ABC project triggered an internal debate about the objectives and utility of the new cost measurement tool and gave rise to a new understanding of governance.
From questioning the objectives of efficiency measurement to questioning the specificity of public water management
Until then, the understanding of the cost of the service had only been perceived in terms of the consequence of the technical and regulatory rationale. The context of mixed management changed the rules of the game by raising the problem of comparing the performance of the two categories of operators. The efficiency of public water management was put into question and the criterion of the ‘fair price’ of water was taken as an analytical point of reference to question the economic performance of the public and private operators. In the absence of evaluation and discussion of this performance, thinking and expressing the constraint of efficiency emerged as a new subject, difficult to define concretely, as alluded to by one of the line managers of the utility: The price of water is not high if it is perceived as the minimum necessary, but the boundary between the minimum necessary, the necessary and unnecessary is in fact very permeable.
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Objectives pursued in the quest for economic performance of the RCE
Naturally, the measurement of economic performance in local public organizations is not a recent phenomenon, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries (Poister and Streib, 1989, 1994). In England, the impact of New Public Management (NPM) has resulted in the introduction of management by numbers (Hood, 2007), which trickled down into the water sector in 1990 with the privatization of the water utilities. The calculation of the performance by Ofwat, the national water regulatory authority, documents and publishes the financial and economic activity of the English water companies (under the heading ‘junereturns’ 20 ).
In France, paradoxically, the efficiency of water utilities management has always been a sensitive and controversial issue because the cost has always been an informational rent for private operators. The effects expected in terms of efficiency have hardly been convincing. Jensen and Stonecash (2004) reveal a reduction in costs following the transfer of the management from a public to a private service, but the contracts involving public operators also resulted in cost savings (17 percent). Additional analyses evaluate the average level of savings at between 6 and 12 percent (Hodge, 1999).
In actual fact, it was the development of legal expertise in the negotiation of contracts and the development of tools to reconstitute the costs of delegated water services 22 that contributed to the price adjustment. This was observed in particular in the recent renegotiation of water contracts, and in some cases, the price reduction renegotiated was such that the notion of ‘low-cost’ contracts was mentioned in the press. However, the asymmetric information and financial opacity of the accounts remain (Cour des Comptes, 2011). One symbolic illustration of this situation is without a doubt the absence of an economic efficiency indicator in the list of performance indicators selected at national level. The debate over the extent and origin of the efficiency gains and their effects in the organization and governance of water remains open on the theoretical and practical level (Jensen and Stonecash, 2004).
In Nantes, the discussion about the costs and the very identity of the public operator were to prompt players to probe the ‘public’ content of their action.
From the questioning of the ‘public weal’ aspect to questioning values: the need for a public service axiology
The debate triggered around the tool to measure the economic performance of water utilities was to have impacts on three levels.
The face-off between the ABC tool and the quality tool and the reconfiguration of the utility’s performance measurement tools
While one of the aims of the ABC process is to identify the basis of the strategic and operational activities of the utility to drive forward performance, the quality unit, having already developed its mapping of the process, questioned the value of reproducing the exercise. The face-off led to the simplification of the existing system. The ABC model that reduced the initial model from 21 to seven processes was to be retained as the basis for alignment of the performance measurement tools (see Figure 2).
Reconfiguration of the performance measurement and management tools within the framework of the new area of governance of the water utility
Reflection on the public foundation of the utility’s performance and the identification of the water public values
While the mixed systems of management and their entry into competition is interesting as a governance principle, the homogenization of the services provided and the price of water prescribed by the politicians does not make their comparison possible in view of the criteria of price and service rendered to the user. It is therefore necessary to reconsider the causal relationship between the action and the criteria governing the judgement of its purpose outside the rationality in terms of means that had governed the action to date. This gives rise to a reflection on the content of ‘public weal’ and to a demand of a new type, the ‘publicness’ (Bozeman, 1987, 2007; Gibert, 1994; Moore, 1995) of the utility that was to be translated by the idea of an evaluation reference framework for the the utility (see Figure 2).
A qualitative survey was conducted on the basis of focus groups with a view to collectively identifying the values emerging from the ‘ publicness’ of the water utility. Two of the basic public values that make up the foundation of the publicness of the utility 23 are presented in box 2. They chart a new vision of ‘public’ water governance.
The re-formalization of the governance structure of the public service: the four pillars of the water governance under construction in Nantes
On an analytical level, the mirror effect that the action research has for the utility provides original elements to the understanding of the challenges of water governance and the resulting organizational and management issues. Thus, four structural elements of public water governance emerge from the cross-fertilization between the empirical evidence gleaned from the action research and the specialized literature relating to governance (see Figure 3):
The first structuring level of the model of governance formed by the tip of the pyramid is made up of the pillar of values carrying and guaranteeing the system. In the actors system of, this pillar is that which primarily involves the organizing authority and is the political dimension of governance. This dimension has emerged in large cities such as Bordeaux, Grand Lyon, Rennes and Paris
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that illustrate establishment of a political type of leadership in the structure of local governance manifested by the development of competencies particular to policy-making and expertise to manage the utility. The second pillar of governance that represents civil society and citizens, in particular citizen-users of the water utility, relates to the democratic dimension of the governance model. Strengthening the political dimension of the governing function also involves the activation of citizen dialogue between the organizing authority and the inhabitants. This democratic aspect of governance is the greatest challenge to the technical citadel which considers the user as a layman.
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This opening of the construction of public policy to civil society processes must be assessed in relation to the notion of the common good and general interest which cannot be reduced to an aggregation of individual interests. Hence the need for a common repository reflecting the axiology of the action whose values reflect a higher standard, an ideal, a general and universal equivalence (Bolstanski and Thévenot, 1991) on which to base the assessment of the public weal. The third pillar relates to the managerial dimension of the governance system, of which the management tools and performance evaluation of local public water policy are a part. This component involves the operators-managers of the water utility (public and private). In the proposed new governance of the utility, the tools come into play at two levels:
–Tools for performance measurement should allow the management dialogue to be extended to the citizens in order to activate the relationship between the organizing authority and the users.
Characterization of the public water governance model under construction in Nantes Métropole Indeed, while the opening of the technical citadel to users is in its infancy in Nantes Métropole,
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the challenge faced by performance management is based on its ability to stimulate a public debate around the topic of water that has been lacking far. The internal reporting system at work has always operated in a vacuum driven by the production of performance indicators focused on immediate results (the output): quality of tap water, permanent service, leakage rate of the networks, rate of unpaid bills, etc. However, the ongoing reshaping of water governance is only possible if it is based, from a practical point of view, on indicators of accountability that come under policy considerations and that are concerned about the ‘outcome’ of the utility. These are the indicators that reflect the impact of the water utility on citizens and society (Gibert, 2000; Smith, 1990; Trosa, 2003): equal access to the water utility, service continuity for vulnerable populations, fair price of water, etc. This analytical distinction between output and outcome that ties in, according to Gibert (1986), with the image of the first production function (output) and the second production function (outcome) specific to public action, is not easy and is one of the recurring points of discussion surrounding the analysis of the performance of the public sector (Gibert, 2003). Thus, a new dimension of the tool for measuring performance appears, that of a use located in a context of social legitimation of water management (Brooks, 2002). The performance measurement tools must take into account the public dimension of the performance of the water service. In the new area of governance, the social utility of the performance measurement tools could not be imagined without being linked to a list of the axiology of action reflecting the multidimensionality of the issues of governance and based on a rationality of values in the Weberian sense of the term, i.e. understood here as an ideal to be achieved. This new requirement involves going beyond the sole logic of internal reporting to integrate the outcomes and the underlying values in the external reporting.
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Finally, between the organizing authority and the operators-managers, we put the spotlight on the specific category of actors who hold the ‘expertise’, the expert being the one who ‘holds a special knowledge in a professional environment. A recognized specialist, he derives his specific competence from his experience, acquired from long years of practice...’ (Lascoumes, 2005). This function is performed here by an administrative bureaucracy when it comes to the ‘manufacturing’ of public policy, and the Water Directorate, when it comes to the activities of project ownership of the water utility. When water price harmonization was rolled out, it was this pillar of expert actors that served as the architect of the project. Alongside the traditional knowledge of engineering experts specific to the water industry and dominant in the process of strategic decision-making, we are witnessing the development of a new indispensable ‘managerial’ style expertise.
At the end of the day, by highlighting the political dimension of governance that involves both the political actor and the user, the action research raises questions about the public values. This repositioning of the governance system in terms of values and its political dimension ties in with the ethical challenges in the system of public governance. In 2000, the OECD saw it as ‘the keystone of good governance’. Clearly, the new balance under construction is not a categorical break with the rationale inherent to the technique citadel ‘from which it is impossible to free oneself completely’. 28 In a system of action where public managers who serve as experts on the technical and financial levels have tended to influence the formulation of objectives and means to be implemented, this new balance is part of a hybrid of the old and new rationales. The exercise of the sense of responsibility by the politician and his capacity of arbitration in favour of priorities defined collectively (i.e. involving the user upstream of the decision) will determine the effectiveness of this reshuffle.
Discussion: scope and limitations of the performance instrumentation tools in public water governance
At this point, it is interesting to question the scope of the dynamics of the new performance evaluation tools in the remodelling of the model of governance system in question.
Lessons drawn from the implementation of the quality tool: the illusion of governance by performance indicators alone
Beyond the traditional role of rationalization and formalization of action at the heart of any form of managerial instrumentation (Cochoy et al., 1998; Segrestin, 1996, 2004), the results of Nantes quality approach and the first feedback from the ABC approach show the difficulty that management tools have in releasing the technical citadel from its inertia and the organizational anomie in water management.
While some authors have seen in management through quality, evidence of a revival of the bureaucratic model (Emery, 2009), in Nantes Métropole the partially beneficial effects of this tool (culture of participatory management, organizational changes around the relationship with the user,
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formalization of a local charter of public service obligations of the water utility,
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systematic measurement of performance) are mixed. The overall impression of the employees, in actual fact deprived from a margin of budgetary manoeuvre, is that of the ‘isolation’ of the pilot process. It's a false accountability ... where they do not give us the authority to decide. We are told that it is our problem, we just have to cope with the quality. (Extract from discussions of an ad hoc group, 2009)
The other well-known criticisms relate to the mechanistic model of the organization underpinned by the quality approach (Lambert and Ouedraogo, 2006) 31 whose justification in terms of performance is based on the means. In actual fact, this observation is not new in the world of water. The quality tool ‘embedded’ in the technical rationalities has not reformed the operation of the service, as the change expected for the user of the service, the poor cousin of the technical citadel, does not take place. The instrumentation of performance through the quality tool is only exercised in favour of a consumerist vision of the user excluding the figure of the ‘citizen-user’, a figure that is more collective and necessary for the exercise of the democratic demands of public action. However, on a theoretical level, it is determined that the user of the public service cannot be reduced to the imposed figure of the ‘client’ (Clarke et al., 2007; Jeannot, 1998; Warin, 1997). Furthermore, the rejection of the customer-centric dogma ties in with an assertion of water’s image as something that is essential and a public property for which the figure of the client is inappropriate (Tsanga Tabi, 2006).
Moreover, the figure of client as an argument of modernization in the context of non-regulated natural monopoly where the user is captive is not relevant. While the user of the water utility changes nomenclature, this is no reason to cry victory for the user, because ‘the true victory of the customer, is the end of monopolies’ (Dupuy, 1998). In our case, the argument for using the term client does not take into account the issues of fair price and citizen dialogue. As the management of performance through the prism of quality only comes into play in the context of the relationship between operator and user, it does not address any ‘quality issues’ arising from the relationship between the elected official and the user or the relationship between the elected official and the operators likely to affect the satisfaction of the ‘user client’. 32 This hijacking by the actors of the use of indicators for their own purposes is a well-known phenomenon in the world of management (Boussard, 2001; Gibert, 2000).
Such an approach can only lead to a narrow reading of water governance that does not take into account the multidimensionality of the governance issues which requires at least a ‘process of coordination of actors, social groups and institutions in order to achieve the objectives defined and discussed collectively’ (Le Galès, 2006). However, when taking stock of the actual participation of citizens in public decision-making in the field of water, the results are mixed (Bédu, 2010; Pflieger, 2007) while the effects of such participation are difficult to assess. Hence, the evaluation of the reality and the expected benefits of governance are much more demanding than the generation of the results of the first production function (output) of the public service. The risk posed by this approach to governance is the confinement of citizen dialogue to the output level, without looking beyond towards the ethical, social and political issues implied in the idea of public water governance.
Dynamics of the ‘square’ remain to be triggered in the field of public water governance in Nantes Métropole
The assertion of public performance to which the tool to measure the efficiency of the water utility leads and that makes it possible to inject the system of water governance with public values is an idea that the actors of Nantes Métropole must take on board and start learning from scratch.
One of the key elements of the structure of public water governance emerging in Nantes Métropole is this reality that cannot be overlooked today: that of an open and multidimensional system. Hence the need to order this multidimensionality in the relationship of the ‘square’ of governance. The identified public values of water contribute to this ordering, and in particular to the introduction of the meaning of public action in the governance system. However, if there is a background element that is lacking in the system of governance of water introduced at the national level, it is that of the ideal of governance to be achieved, of the values and the meaning of the strategic action, a new and unrelenting challenge. In fact, as pointed out by Segrestin (2004): ‘The headlong rush into the order of values is one of the major mainsprings of managerial work ... It is always so, for every significant innovation requires a change in perception, the invention of new mental figures.’ Public values in the system of water governance in emergence are primarily an innovation by the force of ideas, the starting point and ferment of the change.
However, between the time of the change and the adaptation to the change in the world of action, there is this phase of resistance to change that coexists with reflection on the new tools and its maturation. While the first calculations of activities based costing within the public water service allowed a productivity analysis that tended to reassure the department of water, the aim is not only to make the public employees more ‘cost-conscious’ (Groot and Budding, 2004). Information on the cost of the service and its measurement is intended to render visible the economic value of the public service to establish the fair price intended to reflect the fair value in the context of tariff policy. These data on the cost are supposed to make visible ‘the coveted aggregate that is the income from the monopoly’ (Ruffat, 2000) through productivity gains. How do we then get the private operators of the action system to report transparently on their costs? This is another of the governance challenges to be taken up.
The other operational difficulty of implementing the new ABC tool lies in the implementation of the new collective agreement of internal transversality and the decompartmentalization of operation that the public employees have set out to build. Overcoming the hierarchical barriers and taking into consideration non-technical data in the internal management dialogue is still in its infancy. The desire for transversality comes face to face with the tendency to fall back on the specific objectives of the actors that we also observe in other major reforms of other large public service networks (Poupeau, 2010).
Moreover, the ongoing reshaping of the governance of the water utility of Nantes Métropole highlights, in particular, the importance and role of the political player in the activation and defence of governance values. This actor is involved in this capacity at three levels:
–In terms of knowledge manifested in its ability to manage the public demands and problems; –In terms of life skills,
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i.e. in its ability to embody the values of governance (credibility, integrity, sense of political responsibilities, etc.); –Finally, the third challenge lies in the ability of the organizing authority to activate the relationship between the elected organizing authority and the citizens of the ‘square’ IN the actors system. While the technical feasibility of the activation of this relationship by means of citizen workshops has been demonstrated (Clémence Bédu, 2010), the real challenge remains that of the political risk induced by any commitment in terms of values (Rhodes and Wanna, 2007).
Conclusion
In the world of water that cannot free itself from the technology, the new performance measurement and management tools that promote effectiveness such as ‘New Public Management’ (NPM) will always have the support of managers and still incur the admiration of the layman. However, the tendency of this instrumentation of performance to become empowered and to focus the attention of the actors on the mechanics of the technical citadel, to the detriment of the public service aims, has so far been a constant. The phenomenon of the metropolization of the water utilities in France, which is taking place in a rapidly changing context, heralds a new era of public water governance characterized by a strong local presence and the multidimensionality of challenges facing public services. In this open public water governance system, the abuse of the managerial instrumentation which had a tendency to justify water governance with reference to the technician and commercial dimension of the service alone is no longer legitimate or relevant.
The experience of the action research that we have presented shows how, in the current context of local governance, the introduction of new performance instrumentation tools can help reshape and strengthen the governance system in question in line with the public weal management ideal. In particular, the dynamics of experienced managerial innovation leads us to identify four key centres of local governance, where the appropriateness of the performance management tools lies primarily in their ability to allow public governance its full potential, which lies in the fulfilment of the essential public values that the system of governance must carry.