Deseconomias de escala

Neste blogue é comum o voto de confiança num futuro onde as PMEs, por serem mais ágeis, mais disponíveis para a interacção e mais concentradas em tribos, podem ter sucesso.

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Enquanto que aqui pregamos a importância da eficácia, da proximidade, da simplicidade, do contacto humano; os economistas, da esquerda à direita-socialista, todos os dias colocam oferendas na comunicação social ao Grandes Deus da Eficiência.

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A crença na eficiência leva ao exagero do eficientismo, à aposta em mega-organizações, para tirar partido da escala e do volume. Por aqui, no blogue, chamamos a tudo isso: treta!!!

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Vejo exemplos dessa treta quando o meu filho me conta que quando acaba um marcador na escola, quem vem trazer um novo, traz 3 ou 4 porque o mais certo é 2 ou 3 deles não terem tinta... pudera, a escola comprou-os num concurso onde tem de fazer a encomenda ao que apresenta a cotação mais baixa ainda que esteja a vender lixo.

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Adiante, há anos, quando li "Switch" dos irmão Heath fixei este caso:

"Kelman, a professor of public management at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, got a call from the Clinton administration in 1993, asking him to lead the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP). As the head of OFPp, he would be responsible for reforming the government's procurement efforts. Procurement is the process by which people buy things, and the government does a lot of procuring. In 2003, it spent $320 billion on purchases of discretionary goods and services, a figure that includes everything from paper clips to helicopters for the National Park Service.
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There were lots of problems with procurement. Over the years, the government had established many protocols and protections to prevent abuses of various kinds. There were good intentions behind these protections, but as they built up, layer upon layer, they began to cause more harm than the abuses they'd been designed to prevent. For instance, when making purchase decisions, procurement officials could not use evidence of vendors' "past performance."
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One day, a conversation with a government employee sparked an idea. The employee told Kelman that when she needed simple, inexpensive items, such as a few computer disks, the procurement rules made it impossible for her to walk to the computer superstore across the street and buy them. She found this limitation was infuriating. Kelman spotted an opportunity. He went to the senior procurement executives and issued a challenge: I want you to double your agency's use ofgovernment credit cards over the next year."

Kelman com esta medida, conjugada com a medida de ter em conta a "past performance" conseguiu:

"Five years later, in an internal survey, 70 percent of frontline employees said that they were proponents of procurement reform. Five years later, in an internal survey, 70 percent of frontline employees said that they were proponents of procurement reform. The Brookings Institution, a well-respected think tank, published a study in 1 998 that graded the success of various "reinventing government" initiatives attempted over the previous eight years. Kelman's procurement reform was the only initiative that earned an ''A.'' A single guy had managed to come in and catalyze a big change in the federal government."

Escrevo tudo isto por causa disto "Saving money by doing the right thing: Why ‘local by default’ must replace ‘diseconomies of scale’":

"the underlying assumption, that the difficulties facing public services will be met through scale and standardisation, is not being challenged.
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This report presents a counter view. We argue that scale and standardisation are the problem, not the solution. (Moi ici: Pois, Mega-hospitais, por exemplo)
As the report sets out, far too many public service systems ‘assess rather than understand; transact rather than build relationships; refer on rather than take responsibility; prescribe packages of activity rather than take the time to understand what improves a life’.
The result is that the problems people face are not resolved, that public services generate ever more ‘failure demand’, that resources are diverted to unproductive ends, and that costs are driven ever upwards.
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This report shows why public sector organisations fail to meet people’s needs and why demand is rising. The two main causes, discovered empirically in the studies, are the belief in ‘economies of scale’ and the belief in the standardisation of services. Together, these beliefs prevent organisations from understanding and meeting people’s needs."

Recordar:

• "Os egos institucionais são demasiado fortes..." (Fevereiro 2013)
•  "Fazer escolhas" (Abril 2012)