Key Differences of Private and Public Sector Business Process Change

The public sector is subject to constant changes. In order to tackle the current financial, social, and political challenges, public sector organizations all over the world need to rethink, adapt, and change their underlying service processes. Prompted by these challenges public managers have turned to the private sector for solutions. By facilitating resource efficiency and allowing for a more straightforward way of service provision, business process change (BPC) assumes a leading role in the transformation of public administrations. Yet, in the past decades many BPC projects both in private and in public have failed to realize their objectives. However, the public sector should not only learn from its own failures, but also from the mistakes made in private sector BPC implementations. A huge amount of case studies exist on the topic of BPC which provide comprehensive reviews of past failures and successes. So far, this rich pool of knowledge has remained unexploited. This paper identifies the main differences between private and public sector BPC implementations as reported in 128 case studies. Based on this meta-case analysis, we juxtapose current consensuses as well as contentious issues.