Change Management in the Italian Judicial System: The Case of “Ufficio per il Processo”

Despite many reforms efforts during the past decades, the Italian judicial system is still poorly performing. For this reason, Italy’s Recovery and Resilience Plan includes specific measures to reduce the length of civil proceedings, improve the efficiency of the judicial system and reduce the backlog of pending cases. Among such measures, a relevant role is assigned to the strengthening of the Ufficio del Processo (UPP), originally established in 2014, through the recruitment of new personnel with competences not only in law but also in management, organization, public administration, and ICT. From an organizational perspective, the injection within the Italian Courts of multidisciplinary competences was intended to activate change management processes toward the implementation of a more collaborative organizational model based on horizontal coordination and better integration between the judicial and the administrative structures. Based on a case study and organizational ethnography methodology, the qualitative paper reports some preliminary evidence concerning the local implementation of the UPP program considered as a change-management process within a highly regulated organizational system. The data collected from four courts in a North-Western area of Italy highlight some critical factors that limited the potential transformative impact of the UPP and that should be removed to make the implementation of the UPP a true change management process. The study is part of a research funded under the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan project “Next Generation UPP: nuovi schemi collaborativi tra Università e uffici giudiziari per il miglioramento dell’efficienza e delle prestazioni della giustizia nell’Italy Nord Ovest - PON Governance e Capacità Istituzionale 2014-2020 - Asse I - Azione 1.4.1”.