Kostnadseffektiv drift av Forsvaret : teoretisk fundament

The White Paper for the Norwegian Armed Forces, St.prp. nr. 48 (2007–2008), asserts that the Defence Sector needs to be organized in a way of providing best possible support for operations. At the same time, the support functions must be run in an efficient, lean and comprehensive manner. In economical terms, efficient, lean and comprehensive corresponds to cost-efficiency. It is the intention of this report to establish a common understanding of how the Defence can be made more cost-efficient, and what the preconditions are for a cost efficiency process to be successful. Per definition, a cost-efficient organization produces its goods or services with the smallest amount of input necessary. How cost-efficient the Defence is and the size of the potential cost savings, are amongst the issues addressed in this report. The lack of measures of output and comparable activities at the aggregated level complicates this analysis. At lower levels in the organization there will, however, be a number of areas where costs and activity can be compared, and subsequently cost-efficiency can be derived. At this level a productivity analysis can be used to map a unit’s development over time, or to compare several units’ productivity. These kinds of analysis can reveal potential areas where cost-efficiency may be improved. The range of tools at hand related to improving cost-efficiency is limited to four factors: Economies of scale, learning effects, economies of scope, and organizational specific effects. Economies of scale are gains arising from increased production of goods or services, due to among other factors distribution of fixed costs to an increasing number of units. Learning effects are related to the fact the individuals and organizations gain experience by each repetition of a task. Economies of scope are cost reductions originating from use of a joint resource in production of different, but related products or services. Organizational specific effects can be characterized as everything that can not be explained directly by using economic models, and include among other effects incentive- and management systems and organizational culture. There is a further factor that will affect cost-efficiency of an organization; transaction costs. These can be defined as the cost related to running an economic system. By utilizing these tools, the total cost savings potential of the Defence can be substantial. How much of this potential that may be realized will among other factors depend on the leeway for change of the organization. All the tools in question will be able to provide significant contributions to the cost-efficiency improvement efforts, with the gains from learning effects and organizational specific effects likely to be the largest. This is partly due to the fact that these areas traditionally have received less attention than economies of scale and scope in the Defence.