4 ms·
This sounds simple, but it isn't. In reality there are complicating factors. For instance, the introduction of New Public Management ideas can complicate thin
by bborud 3y ago
This sounds simple, but it isn't. In reality there are complicating factors. For instance, the introduction of New Public Management ideas can complicate things immensely. You fragment an organization into multiple smaller organizations, each responsible for some part of the business. Then you require each of them to be profitable. This also provides an opportunity to privatize by then having the resulting companies having to compete for contracts.
This sounds sensible the first time you hear about it. The reality is pretty awful.
This happened to the national railway company in Norway (NSB). The result was lack of investment, poor service, and a bureaucracy where nobody seems to be responsible for anything. Which means that rather than concerns being addressed, they get ignored. Because when, for most things, you can blame someone else, nothing gets fixed because nobody is really in charge anymore. As a consumer you do not really deal with one company anymore - you have to deal perhaps half a dozen companies that do not work well together.
NSB went from a somewhat poorly run public sector organization to an entirely dysfunctional failed NPM experiment. The reasoning behind this was about as sane as suggesting we terraform Mars rather than try to not screw up the Earth.
I have seen this in the private sector as well. I worked for a telco for a decade, and they are very similar to how New Public Management works in the public sector. (Which isn't too odd since a lot of them are former state monopolies, so they will be prone to the same sort of defective reasoning you see when NPM is applied in the public sector).
You fragment, outsource and then pulverize accountability. Telcos are usually fragmented from the outset. The restrictions on ownership models, a large telco will typically have separate companies with entirely separate cultures, technology stacks and business processes for every country they operate in. Yet within those countries they will fragment further - ensuring that you have siloed organizations working at cross purposes. Usually due to very localized prioritization to achieve goals that affect bonuses, ignoring the large picture.
One thing that is very striking in telcos is that it is really, really hard to find people who actually understand telecoms technology within them. And they rarely have much control over the technology. Which most of the time has exorbitant operating costs and extremely slow evolution when compared to large internet companies.
In the telco sector it tends to lead to an inability to make sensible use of capital to act on opportunities and evolve the business. You have companies that make a lot of money, but because of how leaders are incentivized and promoted, nobody wants to take risks and evolve new business areas because that might affect short term profitability or personal compensation for leaders. And even if you have leaders who want to, they will typically have very little manouvering space and anything that doesn't have a quick payoff will typically be sabotaged and then axed.
The way you "solve" problems in the telco sector is typically through mergers and acquisitions. The latter often having a very low chance of realizing much value. I've also seen a lot of examples of companies just selling their operations when, due to failure to respond to how markets develop, just have to give up and find new markets where their outdated strategy still works. (One way to look at this is to see what happens when a market reaches various saturation milestones).