Outsourcing and strategy in Spanish town halls: a field study

Purpose – This study seeks to analyse the links between strategies, structures and processes in the case of the largest Spanish town halls, using the Miles and Snow's models about organisational strategies, and asking the following questions: “What is the situation of municipal services' outsourcing in the largest Spanish town halls?”; “Do Spanish town halls follow the strategies suggested in Miles and Snow's model?”; and “Is there a relationship between the strategic position adopted by town halls and their stance on outsourcing?”. Design/methodology/approach – In order to achieve these aims a questionnaire was administered to the human resource managers in the town halls of the largest Spanish cities. Findings – The paper finds that outsourcing is a complement, which seeks to improve the services delivered, and local institutions do not resort to it due to a lack of internal resources but as a way to complement their own capabilities. Originality/value – The paper has identified three distinct strategic profiles in the town halls interviewed which coincide with the profiles that Miles and Snow call prospective, defensive and reactive strategies. It reveals that town halls which outsource to a greater extent are the ones which identify more with the prospective or reactive strategy, whereas those which outsource less are closer to the defensive strategy.

Social Services in Times of Economic and Social Crisis: The case of Spain

The financial and economic crisis which originated in 2008 has had a severe impact on the population of the Southern European countries. The economic policies of austerity and public deficit control, as well as the neo-liberal and conservative social policies are redefining the public social protection systems, in particular the Social Services. In order to get to understand the current situation, we shall explain how the Social Services were developed in Spain and analyse the causes and consequences of the economic crisis. The working hypothesis is that the greater the increase on the population’s needs, the more developed the Social Services should be. We carried out a descriptive analysis of the situation as far as the social impacts of the crisis per region are concerned. We tested the hypothesis through a parametric model of analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) triangulating with the non-parametric Kruscal-Wallis test. The working hypothesis failed. The regions with better developed Social Services show a lower level of poverty and social exclusion. The challenges that the public Social Services system faces in times of crisis is three-fold: 1) re-modelling of local administration and transferring of the municipal Social Services responsibilities to the regional administration; 2) an increase of the population at risk of poverty and social exclusion 3) impact on social policies.