Simple rules strategy to transform government: an ADR approach

Abstract

This paper takes our research work with VDAB, the public employment service for the Flemish region in Belgium, as a starting point to study the transformation of government from New Public Management (NPM) to Digital Era Governance (DEG). This study focuses on how to work towards disruptive DEG innovation in a turbulent strategic context by employing a strategy of simple rules. Together with VDAB, we apply an Action Design Research (ADR) approach to develop a simple rules strategy specific for VDAB's context, which we call a set of “boundary breaking rules”. Coining these rules represents a first significant step in VDAB's journey towards achieving a radical business innovation. In addition to the main artifact specific for the VDAB context, i.e., the “boundary breaking rules”, we derive design principles concerning the nature of this artifact. This paper aims to lay the foundations for a more broadly applicable design theory of simple rules, useful in contexts generalizable from the specific VDAB context.