Sustainability in the Water Sector: Enabling Lasting Change through Leadership and Cultural Transformation

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-313 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Herrick ◽  
Joanna Pratt
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Transformation ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Leadership Traits ◽  
Water Sector ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Sustainable Operations ◽  
Case Research ◽  
Organizational Inertia ◽  
Lasting Change

There is great interest within the water sector regarding the prospect of sustainable operations. Water utilities tend to be conservative entities characterized by organizational inertia, making achievement of sustainable operations a challenge of cultural transformation. We suggest that the construct of "wicked" problems provides a useful heuristic for leaders and other champions attempting to transform water utility culture to achieve sustainable operations. We observe that the cultural transformation toward sustainable water operations seems to be facilitated through the exercise of particular leadership traits, including the ability to craft and communicate a sustainability narrative, willingness and ability to diffuse authority, and an adaptive or learning-oriented outlook. Based on literature review and case research with US water utilities, we identify factors that can act either to enable or constrain efforts to transform utility culture so as to be more amenable to sustainable operations. We explain how each of these factors pertains to the circumstances of water utilities and provide a matrix with which utility leaders and sustainability champions can enact a plan of organizational transformation. We conclude by outlining research topics that flow from our arguments and observations.

Benchmarking Risk Analysis Practice in the International Water Sector

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
B.H. MacGillivray ◽  
P.D. Hamilton ◽  
S.E. Hrudey ◽  
L. Reekie ◽  
S.J.T Pollard
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Risk Analysis ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Sector ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Analysis Techniques ◽  
The Usa ◽  
International Water ◽  
Practical Guidance ◽  
The Uk

Risk analysis in the water utility sector is fast becoming explicit. Here, we describe application of a capability model to benchmark the risk analysis maturity of a sub-sample of eight water utilities from the USA, the UK and Australia. Our analysis codifies risk analysis practice and offers practical guidance as to how utilities may more effectively employ their portfolio of risk analysis techniques for optimal, credible, and defensible decision making.

Socio economic influences on the restoration and maintenance of the water environment

1998 ◽  
Vol 37 (8) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Peter Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Water Environment ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Services ◽  
Economic Issue ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Influences ◽  
Mind Set

Protection of the water environment has become a modern socio economic issue in which the sociological pressures for a healthy water environment must be balanced with affordability. Reconciliation of these aspects requires clear political thinking and rigorous methodologies. It also requires a shift in mind-set which considers members of the public as customers. Water utilities are the major users of the water environment and potentially its greatest threat – so good delivery of water services is very important. The presentation addresses the topic through the experience of Anglian Water, a privatised water utility serving Eastern England.

scholarly journals How Perceptions of Trust, Risk, Tap Water Quality, and Salience Characterize Drinking Water Choices

Hydrology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Madeline A. Grupper ◽  
Madeline E. Schreiber ◽  
Michael G. Sorice
Keyword(s):  
Water Quality ◽  
Drinking Water ◽  
Risk Perceptions ◽  
Anthropogenic Impacts ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
The Public ◽  
Water Behavior

Provision of safe drinking water by water utilities is challenged by disturbances to water quality that have become increasingly frequent due to global changes and anthropogenic impacts. Many water utilities are turning to adaptable and flexible strategies to allow for resilient management of drinking water supplies. The success of resilience-based management depends on, and is enabled by, positive relationships with the public. To understand how relationships between managers and communities spill over to in-home drinking water behavior, we examined the role of trust, risk perceptions, salience of drinking water, and water quality evaluations in the choice of in-home drinking water sources for a population in Roanoke Virginia. Using survey data, our study characterized patterns of in-home drinking water behavior and explored related perceptions to determine if residents’ perceptions of their water and the municipal water utility could be intuited from this behavior. We characterized drinking water behavior using a hierarchical cluster analysis and highlighted the importance of studying a range of drinking water patterns. Through analyses of variance, we found that people who drink more tap water have higher trust in their water managers, evaluate water quality more favorably, have lower risk perceptions, and pay less attention to changes in their tap water. Utility managers may gauge information about aspects of their relationships with communities by examining drinking water behavior, which can be used to inform their future interactions with the public, with the goal of increasing resilience and adaptability to external water supply threats.

The same deep water as you? The impact of alternative governance arrangements of water service delivery on efficiency

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Rodrigues ◽  
António F Tavares
Keyword(s):  
Regulatory Authority ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Water Governance ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Switching Regression ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Utility Systems ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Switching Regression Models ◽  
Governance Arrangements

This work contributes to the literature on water governance by attempting to provide an answer to the question of what are the differences in efficiency of alternative governance arrangements of water utilities. We test hypotheses derived from property rights, principal–agent, and transaction costs theories using a comprehensive database of 260 water utility systems provided by the Portuguese Regulatory Authority of Water and Waste Services. Using endogenous switching regression models estimated through maximum likelihood, the study is designed in two steps. First, we investigate differences in efficiency between in-house options and externalization and find that in-house solutions as a set (direct provision and municipal companies) are more efficient than externalization options (mixed companies and concessions). Second, we test differences in efficiency within both in-house and externalization solutions, and fail to find statistically significant differences in efficiency between in-house bureaucracies and municipal companies and between mixed companies and concessions.

Rationality, accounting and benchmarking water businesses

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Pawsey ◽  
Jayanath Ananda ◽  
Zahirul Hoque
Keyword(s):  
Economic Efficiency ◽  
Fair Value ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Data Envelopment ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Capital Input ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Dea Models ◽  
Future Work

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the sensitivity of economic efficiency rankings of water businesses to the choice of alternative physical and accounting capital input measures. Design/methodology/approach Data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to compute efficiency rankings for government-owned water businesses from the state of Victoria, Australia, over the period 2005/2006 through 2012/2013. Differences between DEA models when capital inputs were measured using either: statutory accounting values (historic cost and fair value), physical measures, or regulatory accounting values, were scrutinised. Findings Depending on the choice of capital input, significant variation in efficiency scores and the ranking of the top (worst) performing firms was observed. Research limitations/implications Future research may explore the generalisability of findings to a wider sample of water utilities globally. Future work can also consider the most reliable treatment of capital inputs in efficiency analysis. Practical implications Regulators should be cautious when using economic efficiency data in benchmarking exercises. A consistent approach to account for the capital stock is needed in the determination of price caps and designing incentives for poor performers. Originality/value DEA has been widely used to explore the role of ownership structure, firm size and regulation on water utility efficiency. This is the first study of its kind to explore the sensitivity of DEA to alternative physical and accounting capital input measures. This research also improves the conventional performance measurement in water utilities by using a bootstrap procedure to address the deterministic nature of the DEA approach.

scholarly journals Revealing Unreported Benefits of Digital Water Metering: Literature Review and Expert Opinions

Water ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 838 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monks ◽  
Stewart ◽  
Sahin ◽  
Keller
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Water Conservation ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Australian Water ◽  
Expert Opinions ◽  
Monetary Benefit ◽  
Business Cases ◽  
Water Meters

Digital water meters can take Australian water utilities into the world of internet of things (IoT) and big data analytics. The potential is there for them to build more efficient processes, to enable new products and services to be offered, to defer expensive capital works, and for water conservation to be achieved. However, utilities are not mounting business cases with sufficient benefits to cover the project and operational costs. This study undertakes a literature review and interviews of industry experts in the search for unreported benefits that might be considered for inclusion in business cases. It identifies seventy-five possible benefits of which fifty-seven are classified as benefiting the water utility and forty are classified as benefiting customers (twenty-two benefit both). Many benefits may be difficult to monetize. Benefits to customers may have a small monetary benefit to the water utility but provide a significant benefit to customer satisfaction scores. However, for utilities to achieve these potential benefits, eight change enablers were identified as being required in their systems, processes, and resources. Of the seventy-five benefits, approximately half might be considered previously unreported. Finally, a taxonomy is presented into which the benefits are classified, and the enabling business changes for them to be realized are identified. Water utilities might consider the taxonomy, the benefits, and the changes required to enable the benefits when developing their business cases.

scholarly journals Gaming in a benchmarking environment. A non-parametric analysis of benchmarking in the water sector

Water Policy ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristof De Witte ◽  
Rui Cunha Marques
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Parametric Analysis ◽  
Malmquist Index ◽  
Parametric Estimation ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Water Sector ◽  
Productivity Gains ◽  
Non Parametric Estimation ◽  
Over Time ◽  
Non Parametric

This paper discusses the use of benchmarking in general and its application to the drinking water sector in particular. It systematizes the various classifications of performance measurement, discusses some of the pitfalls of benchmark studies and provides some examples of benchmarking in the water sector. After a presentation of the institutional framework of the water sector in the Belgian region of Flanders (without any benchmarking experience), Wallonia (recently started a public benchmark) and the Netherlands (introduced a public benchmark in 1997), we point to their different stages in the benchmarking cycle. As these three regions are comparable apart from their different implementation of benchmarking, a non-parametric estimation of the productivity gains over time (by a Malmquist index) could be insightful. The ‘carrot’ and the ‘stick’ of benchmarking seem to offer an effective incentive to trigger performance. In addition, the Malmquist decompositions provide some indication on the ‘gaming’ of the stakeholders by the water utilities.

Performance of Portuguese water utilities: how do ownership, size, diversification and vertical integration relate to efficiency?

Water Policy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tânia Correia ◽  
Rui Cunha Marques
Keyword(s):  
Vertical Integration ◽  
Economies Of Scale ◽  
Stochastic Frontier Analysis ◽  
Stochastic Frontier ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Economies Of Scope ◽  
Translog Cost Function ◽  
Water Sector ◽  
Frontier Analysis ◽  
Portuguese Water

This research applies the stochastic frontier analysis benchmarking method to measure the performance of the water sector in Portugal. It estimates a multiproduct translog cost function in order to study the efficiency of the water and sewerage services, using an unbalanced panel comprising 68 Portuguese water utilities for the biennium 2004–2005. The sample is formed by concessionaire companies, municipal companies and semi-autonomous utilities which represent approximately 61% of the Portuguese population, around 6.4 million inhabitants. The water utilities studied have a satisfactory level of efficiency (89% on average). The study points to the assumption that private utilities are, on average, more efficient than public utilities and that there are benefits if the companies specialize in providing a single activity. It also leads to the conclusion that there are increasing economies of scale and decreasing economies of scope associated with the Portuguese water sector.

scholarly journals Economic impacts of drought risks for water utilities through Severity-Duration-Frequency framework under climate change scenarios

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego A. Guzmám ◽  
Guilherme S. Mohor ◽  
Denise Taffarello ◽  
Eduardo M. Mendiondo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Aversion ◽  
Economic Impacts ◽  
Regional Climate ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Climate Change Scenarios ◽  
Model Framework ◽  
Water Utility ◽  
Drought Resilience

Abstract. Climate variability and increasing water demands prioritize the need to implement planning strategies for urban water security in the long and medium term. However, actions to manage the drought risk impacts entail great complexity, such as the calculation of economic losses derived from the combination of severity, duration and frequency under uncertainties in the climate projections. Thus, new approaches of risk aversion are needed, as an integrated framework for resilience gap assessment, for water utilities to cope with droughts, thereby linking drivers of climate, hydrology and human demands. This paper aims to present the economic impacts of risk aversion for water utilities through a framework linking severity, duration and frequency (SDF) of droughts under climate change scenarios. This new model framework addresses the opportunity cost that represent the preparedness for risk aversion to cope with potential future impacts of droughts, involving a set of options for planning of water resources, under different demands and climate projections. The methodology integrates the hydrological simulation procedures, under radiative climate forcing scenarios RCP 4.5 and 8.5, from a regional climate model Eta-INPE, with time horizons of 2007–2040, 2041–2070, and 2071–2099, linked to Water Evaluation and Planning system (WEAP) hydrologic model and under stationary and non-stationary water supply demand assumptions. The model framework is applied to the Cantareira Water Supply System for Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region, Brazil, with severe vulnerability to droughts. By using hydrological simulations with WEAP, driven by Eta-INPE Regional Climatic Model base line scenarios (1962–2005), were characterized the SDF curves. On the one hand, water tariff price associated to calibrated and modelled scenarios constitute supply/demand proxies of the water warranty time delimited by drought duration. Then, profit loss analysis scenarios are assessed for the regional water utility. On the other hand, for drought resilience gap, results show water utility profit losses per period between 1.3 % and 10.3 % of the regional GDP in 2016. Although future economic impacts vary in a same order, non-stationary demand trends impose larger differences in the drought resilience gap, when the future securitization are linked to regional climate outputs.

scholarly journals Bridges over Troubled Waters? The Political Economy of Public-Private Partnerships in the Water Sector

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 10127
Author(s):  
George Shambaugh ◽  
Shareen Joshi
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Water Treatment ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Fossil Fuels ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Water Utilities ◽  
Public Private Partnerships ◽  
The Political ◽  
Infrastructure Projects ◽  
Water Sector

Global concerns about water security and water scarcity are motivating local governments, investors, and international financial institutions to prioritize investments in the water sector. Over the past thirty years, public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been popular mechanisms for encouraging private sector investment and helping local governments overcome economic, political, and technical challenges associated with large infrastructure projects in the water, electricity, and transportation sectors. We argue that the political economy factors that affect the prevalence of PPPs in the water sector—which must serve broad populations of people at low cost—are different than other types of infrastructure projects. We use the World Bank’s Private Participation in Infrastructure (PPI) database to explore factors that affect the likelihood that PPPs will be initiated in water relative to other sectors, and in water treatment relative to water utilities. We demonstrate that the likelihoods of PPPs in the water sector and water treatment are positively correlated with levels of output from industries that are water-intensive and pollution-intensive when the host country relies heavily on fossil fuels to generate electricity. Furthermore, when corruption levels are high, projects are more likely to be initiated in water than in other sectors, but those investments are more likely to be in water utilities than water treatment.

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