Measuring the performance of collaborative governance in food safety management: an Italian case study

ABSTRACT

Food safety management (FSM) is a public health issue characterised by a high degree of ‘wickedness’ which requires the adoption of collaborative practices to align the interests and expectations of all stakeholders. Measuring and evaluating performance in collaborative arrangements is a complex task and neither the academic literature nor practice have produced clear solutions. This paper adds to the literature by improving our understanding of the determinants of collaboration and performance in FSM and provides a performance measurement framework to support collaborative governance in FSM.

IMPACT

This paper has three key lessons for public sector management. First, by exploring the determinants of performance in collaborative governance arrangements, it shows policy-makers and public managers how they can design and implement the structural characteristics needed to support a public network. Second, it presents a new method for defining performance measures in collaborative arrangements. Third, it provides a set of indicators and performance dimensions to assess performance in food safety management processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaborative governance
• foodborne diseases
• food safety
• performance measurement

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the professionals involved in the interviews and the Delphi analysis and the reviewers for their useful and constructive comments. Moreover, they are grateful to the attendees at the 10th International EIASM Public Sector Conference (Lund, September 2018) for useful feedback on the preliminary version of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).